AAR’s work in fundraising & development stems from one core principle – a sustainable base of resources can only be generated through the development and maintenance of appropriate and meaningful relationships. All arts entities must identify and nurture the relationships they need in order to develop resources for the programming and infrastructure to deliver their missions. This must be an ongoing and evolving practice that continually renews the resource base and adapts to changing organization needs and environmental realities. There is no shortcut or quick fix when it comes to contributed revenues and what often looks like overnight success is either the result of the actualization of a long-term investment or a brief and unsustainable windfall that will disappear as quickly as it arrived.

We always link the ideas of fundraising and development: fundraising being the act of securing contributed income for an initiative or organization and development being the essential arc of relationship building from which such support is secured. While we often hear from arts professionals and board members who consider themselves poor fundraisers or from those who are uncomfortable with the idea of fundraising, they are usually only focusing on one aspect of fundraising – the act of asking for money – and not on the broader fundraising & development spectrum. Asking for money is a small component of fundraising & development and taking it out of the context of the whole cycle of relationship building diminishes the potential that ‘the ask’ will result in support. When fundraising & development are appropriately linked as part of a complex and ongoing process, asking for support is not an act of persuasion or sales but a process of connecting each supporter with the work they find meaningful.

Unlike other fundraising systems and approaches in which different strategies are applied to institutional funders and individual donors or to donors making large financials gifts and donors making small gifts or to operational supporters and project or capital supporters, relational fundraising & development follows the same basic principles of relationship building for all constituents, making it easier to apply without having to create numerous separate processes and protocols. While different supporters will enter into different relationships with the arts entity, the process of building and maintaining relationships is the consistent strategy that ties them all together.