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Purpose – Although not extensively documented, academic libraries in the United States of America have been involved in fund-raising for centuries. In more recent years, decreases in university budgets forced academic libraries to rely more heavily on philanthropy in order to operate or expand collections. However, much remains unknown about many aspects of academic library fund-raising. This study expands knowledge regarding library development efforts so that scholars and library administrators can better understand library fund-raising and become more successful in raising money.

Findings – Development work for academic libraries has shown to differ from other forms of development activities on a campus due to the fact that donors to academic libraries tend to differ from other kinds of donors on a campus. This research highlights strategies academic library development officers believe work in cultivating donors from a limited target population and how they believe this differs from or is similar to the work of other development officers in higher education.

Practical and social implications – This research sought to understand how organizational placement of the library development officer in the university has an impact on successful fund-raising.

Originality/value – This is the first research to directly study academic library development officers. This will help library administrators and those involved with academic library development efforts learn what library development officers believe works and doesn’t work in fund-raising.

Professional fund raising techniques have been developed relatively recently (in the last fifty years or so in the US and “imported” to the UK in the late 1950s) and give a good range of methods for the development of a base of influence through which a particular end can be achieved. In fund raising consultancy financial influence is all important. Techniques employed thus aim to research and identify potential sources of finance for a project, identify particular individuals with the maximum influence on the application of funds from those sources, develop the involvement of those individuals in the aims of the project so that their influence will be brought to bear on the sources of funds they represent. Clearly this process can be applied equally as well to non‐financial targets as to financial ones; the process in fact provides a well defined methodology for tackling personal communications problems of the kind frequently encountered by public relations agencies, management consultants and lobby consultants. This monograph commences in Part I with a detailed description of the development, theory and practice of fund raising consultancy, including two descriptive case histories. It then discuses in Part II the role of public relations, both in relation to communications theory and to the marketing mix, and concludes with examples from a detailed survey carried out by the author of some of the types of problems currently undertaken by PR agencies which would benefit from the application of communications techniques developed in fund raising.

With well over 250,000 registered UK charities vying to attract generosity, fund‐raising has become a fiercely competitive and professional activity. This article empirically analyses the popularity of different fund‐raising techniques and shows that specific fund‐raising methods are preferred by distinct market segments. The managerial implications for fund‐raising strategies are outlined and suggestions for future research are made.

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which academic libraries are using social media to fundraise, what tactics they are using to fundraise on social media and how academic libraries’ social networks are responding to their fund-raising efforts.

This research is a content analysis of 276 posts from 2015 on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts of 16 academic libraries.

This study found that academic libraries are just beginning to use social media for fund-raising with many adopting non-profit best practices that brought significantly more likes and shares/retweets to their accounts.

This research is one of the few systematic examinations of how libraries use social media to discuss fund-raising, and the findings suggest tactics for libraries to adopt in their fund-raising posts to generate more likes and shares/retweets.

Describes how professional fund‐raisers write and speak persuasively to many audiences, utilizing various media. Explains that the essence of fund‐raising is motivating individuals through symbolic action to behave in a desired way. Argues that fund‐raising is essentially a rhetorical exercise and that the utilization of criteria for assessing rhetorical acts is warranted. Rhetorical criteria direct the fund‐raiser to ask important questions pertaining to the purpose, audience, barriers ‐ the rhetorical problem ‐ and the structure of persuasive communication. Argues also that the fundamental Aristotelian genre is apparent in most fund‐raising rhetorical acts and the genre is identified through recurring characteristics of the rhetoric and helps to define the relationship between form and content. Maintains that successful fund‐raisers relied as much on experience and intuition as on formal rhetorical theory but rhetorical criteria may provide the practitioner with a template by which to create persuasive symbolic action in a broader context not limited to a single communicative act.

Two hundred members of the public were interviewed in high street and railway station locations in central London to ascertain the considerations that encourage them to donate generously to a disaster relief fund‐raising appeal. It emerged that the major fund‐raising triggers involved media representations of the indigency of aid recipients, portrayals of people helping themselves, and highly emotive advertising imagery. Although they were potentially patronising and demeaning to disaster victims, such depictions seemingly exerted powerful influences on donation decisions. Factors discouraging donations included media reports of unfair aid distributions, warfare or internal insurrection, and inefficiency in the relief operation. Combined fund‐raising efforts covering several organisations were viewed more favourably than individual charity initiatives. State endorsements of particular campaigns exerted little influence. Some but not all of the variables known to determine levels of donations to charity in general also explained the incidence of donations to disaster relief appeals. However, people with young children gave to disaster appeals more frequently than the rest of the sample, contradicting previous findings in the general (non‐disaster) charity fund‐raising area.

The three Rs of Web‐based fund‐raising are discussed: raising money; recognition; and reaching out. Raising money describes and provides examples of online Friends of the Library pages, Web‐based fund‐raising events, online giving pages, and library stores. Recognition describes cyber‐plaquing and provides an example. Reaching out discusses ways to advertise a library’s online fund‐raising pages. Suggestions include advertising in traditional library flyers, media, and local businesses. A discussion of e‐mail forms and smart linking is included.

A FABLE: Once upon a time, a library decided to launch a direct‐mail campaign at Christmastime for a new endowment fund. The library had made meager attempts at fund raising for several years. A mock Christmas card was developed, inviting the recipient to “celebrate with a gift that lasts forever,” i.e., a gift to the library's new Book Endowment Fund. Design help was engaged, copy was written, a slick brochure was developed, and 20,000 pieces were prepared and readied for mailing between Thanksgiving and December 1. As visions of dollar signs danced in their heads, the library administrators settled down to await the returns. Responses began trickling in, along with legitimate Christmas cards, publisher's catalogs, bills for books, and seasonal solicitations from other organizations.