The news last week that the Hartsook Companies had made a major contribution to The Hartsook Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy at Plymouth University in the UK is great and encouraging news on a variety of fronts.

First, this gift helps advance the important academic work of the Centre’s Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang. Their dedicated and prolific research and writing in the field has done wonders to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field of fundraising.

Next, the Hartsook Companies’ commitment brings to three the number of significant contributions the firm has made to advancing professional education and standards in fundraising. The other two are The Hartsook Institutes at Indiana University and Avila University.

Francis Bacon, the 17^th century lawyer, philosopher and early proponent of the scientific method was firm in his admonition that it is the duty of every professional to give back to his/her profession.

(Certainly Bob Hartsook and his colleagues have heeded Bacon’s admonition and I for one am grateful.)

But what strikes me as monumentally important beyond the generosity is the trend that both the gift and the recipient illustrate. Let me explain.

For years I refused to call fundraising a ‘profession’ and those who engage in it ‘professionals’. The reason is simple. For any human endeavor to qualify as a ‘profession’ there not only has to be a body of knowledge, but that knowledge must be empirically based and built on consistent and integrated theory.

I’m not splitting semantic hairs. The difference between a trade (bricklaying carpentry, fundraising) and a profession (law, medicine, science, engineering) is this: A ‘trade’ or ‘craft’ is based on knowledge of the effects of certain actions. A ‘profession’ encompasses not only ‘effects’ but also ’causes’ behind those effects.

Until fairly recently, fundraising, like good carpentry or bricklaying, relied mostly on an apprentice-like system. Those with the greatest experience in the craft passed their knowledge and techniques on to those just starting out.

Lots of tribal wisdom and so-called ‘best practices’ handed down from one fundraiser to another, but little or no knowledge of ‘why’ particular actions worked or didn’t. Lots of effect, not much understanding of cause.

Don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with good bricklaying and skilled carpentry as long as the house gets built properly. But fundraisers aren’t building houses. And learning on the job is not well-suited to an increasingly complex world where the increasing need for money and the public’s intolerance of waste is growing almost geometrically.

Fortunately, more and more empirically-based research and knowledge is entering our field. Social scientists like Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang are among the leaders, with additional research and insights on the why’s of giving and asking being contributed by a host of economists, behavioral scientists, and social psychologists.

And so I really do rejoice when anyone in our trade makes an important move toward professionalizing the work we do in a way that enables us all to understand not just ‘how’ to do it but ‘why’ what we do works or doesn’t.

It’s on the rock of empirically grounded knowledge that a true profession is built.

Roger

P.S. By way of disclosure I’m a member of the board of the Hartsook Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy and a long-time fan of Adrian and Jen’s work.

Do yourself a favor and see what they’re  up to by way of their Charity Lab and other research — research that matters to the work you do. It’s summarized nicely on the Centre’s website and you can get a sense of the range of their research and reports here.