He navigated the streets of Chicago in a black limousine. He was measured in his uptown condominium for his expensive dark suits. He held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger with his palm touching his chin.

“Now Greg,” he intoned in a nasal voice, “this ministerial background of yours is going to be a problem” (then, taking a long drag and slowly exhaling) "but we will make a normal person of you yet!"

Until that moment I had been a pastor, happy with my duties at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Minnesota. Now I had been hired to return to my seminary (United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities) to become a development officer.

And in need of a makeover, it appeared.

No one seems to come into the profession of development through the front door. We didn’t major in it, our parents didn’t do it, and most of us grew up not even knowing it was there.

“Don’t worry, Greg,” seminary president Dayton Hultgren  assured me, “you’ve got the right instincts. And besides that, we’ve retained a consultant who will help you learn the trade.”

Enter Robert E. Nelson, described above.

For four years I studied the profession and practiced the skills of development under the watchful eye of my mentor. He critiqued my first foundation proposal draft in less than a minute, flinging it back at me with the question, “Who would read this junk? Don’t expect to drag a busy foundation executive through boring pages of history. Put it in the appendix, for God’s sake.” I did hear the Lord’s name mentioned at least as often in my new profession as I had at Oak Grove Church.

Here was a man accustomed to pushing around university presidents from some of the most esteemed institutions in our land by telling them to “get off their cushy chairs and make their calls before Hell freezes over.” Behold, my new ministry.

He would have been a lousy minister, but Robert E. Nelson knew the profession of development backward and forward. And neither he, nor his associate, Robert Parrish, showed any signs of letting up on me until I did, too.

We started with what we already knew, that philanthropy means the love of humankind and the impulse it represents is as ancient as it is honorable. Motivation for charity has ranged from pity for the unfortunate, expressed in Egypt’s Book of the Dead, to the concept of general kindliness pervasive in ancient Greece, and from the medieval church emphasis on giving as a means of salvation to the United States Treasury Department’s legalistic definition of an “allowable contribution” for income tax purposes.

The techniques of philanthropy have ranged from the ancient Jewish practice of tithing to the generous grants of wealthy patrons, from jousting tournaments for the benefit of medieval hospitals to bingo games in support of the parish church.

Regardless of changes in the motives for philanthropy, in the techniques for its advocacy, and in the purposes to which it is applied, all methods for raising funds are but variations on a simple theme: Somebody has to ask somebody for some money. But the subtlety of these variations and the complexity of their orchestration are well-nigh inexhaustible.

Organized, systematic fundraising is said to have originated in Colonial America in the early 1640s in support of Harvard College.* A team of solicitors was sent to England by the Massachusetts Bay Colony to raise funds. After some initial success, they requested some sales literature and were provided with a tract: New England’s First Fruits. It was probably the world’s first fundraising brochure, and like many that would follow, it apparently did not yield the results anticipated, for the project collapsed. One of the Harvard solicitors became an English clergyman, and another was hanged!

Harvard and other early American colleges continued the struggle for funds through public subscriptions and lotteries. As might be expected, Benjamin Franklin applied his creative mind to the task of advancing philanthropic causes and developed a plan based on personal solicitation of a carefully selected list of prospects. His advice on this procedure is often quoted and belongs in every fundraising manual, for it cannot be improved upon:

In the first place, I advise you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next, to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give anything or not, and show them the list of those who have given; and lastly, do not neglect those whom you are sure will give nothing, for in some of them you may be mistaken.

Franklin went on to create the first challenge grant by convincing the Assembly in Philadelphia to match, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the funds contributed by the citizenry to build a new hospital.

Institutional fundraising during the 19th century was largely a single-handed proposition on the part of ministers, college presidents, and others who assumed the role of “financial agent” for a particular cause. In typical fashion, when Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) was founded in the 1850s, its first president, Clarke Titus Hinman, devoted a great share of his time to canvassing, often on horseback. In a year, he raised $64,000, much of it from the sale of $100 “perpetual scholarships” entitling all descendants of purchasers to education at the university. Although heroic labors were often accomplished, the assignment of fundraising to a single individual had (and has) obvious limitations. In the case of President Hinman, it was thought to have contributed to his death “from overwork” at the age of 35.

As the century progressed, vigorous use of newspaper publicity on behalf of charitable causes became common, and the number and variety of social agencies dependent upon philanthropic support multiplied enormously. Charity bazaars and entertainments became an accustomed part of social life, along with subscription programs, letter appeals, and personal calls by paid solicitors. In the early 1890s, a YMCA worker named Charles Sumner Ward began to streamline the fundraising operation and through careful organization and planning managed to raise the year’s budget within a short period of time. “To get the agony over with quickly was the main idea which prompted this movement,” he said.

At about the same time, another YMCA secretary, Frank W. Ober, hit upon a similar plan and trained a young apprentice, Lyman L. Pierce, in the new procedures. Shortly after the turn of the century, Pierce and Ward teamed up to conduct YMCA drives across the country, in the course of which they instituted much of the technical artillery of the short-term, intensive, fundraising campaign. These strategies, which are still fundamental to nearly all successful fundraising, include the carefully prepared list of prospects, the organized teams of volunteers, the calendar of deadlines against which to work, the pressure of competition among the teams, the added incentive of the challenge gift, the use of publicity, and the graphic representation of progress toward the goal in the form of a “campaign clock” or “campaign thermometer.”

While Ward and Pierce were propagating the “lightning drive,” an Episcopal bishop who hated the very terminology of fundraising (“campaign” suggested, he said, “methods whereby people are dragooned to give,” while “appeal” implied exploitation of the emotions) was developing new approaches that have had lasting impact on the field. His name was William Lawrence, and as 1904 president of the Harvard Alumni Association he initiated one of the first major alumni giving programs. The drive was novel in several respects. It was to be conducted with “no crowding or jamming for subscriptions.” And its purpose was to better support what Harvard already had—a fine faculty. Stimulated by some large initial gifts, a fund of approximately $2.5 million was raised to increase the salaries of the liberal arts professors.

In 1916, Bishop Lawrence headed a $5 million national pension fund campaign for Episcopal clergy. In this drive, the estimated campaign costs were raised in advance from a small group of people. Subsequent donors could then be assured that every dollar they contributed would go directly into the pension fund. Heeding the advice of the public relations pioneer Ivy Lee, who noted that emotional appeals soon lose their force, Lawrence based the publicity for the drive on facts and figures rather than on pathetic stories of indigent clergymen. This theme of the appeal to reason was later developed by the fundraiser John Price Jones in his plan for a detailed study of the fund-seeking institution and development of the well-documented “case” for its support.

A key assistant to Lawrence in the pension fund was a man named Guy Emerson, who would soon become prominent in the great national fundraising campaigns of World War I. Emerson in turn would tutor John Price Jones and Robert F. Duncan, who, in 1919, would form the fundraising firm of John Price Jones Corporation (later to become Brakeley, John Price Jones, Inc.). All of these men were Harvard graduates; all but the bishop had journalistic backgrounds.

One of the firm’s undertakings was managing a $5 million campaign for Northwestern University, in which over $9.5 million was ultimately raised. Robert Duncan directed the drive, and one of the Northwestern staff with whom he worked was a young alumnus named Thomas A. Gonser. At the close of the campaign in 1924, Gonser was asked to create a special department of the university to build a continuing program in support of long-term institutional advancement.

This unprecedented long-term undertaking was called a development program, and the department responsible for servicing it was conceived as embracing all of the fundraising, public relations, and alumni program functions. Gonser thus became the first director of development. During two decades of service at Northwestern, he pioneered in establishing the development concept and its place in institutional management. Subsequently, as founding partner in the consulting firm of Gonser and Gerber (later Gonser Gerber Tinker Stuhr), he helped gain acceptance for the development function among colleges throughout the nation. Today, hospitals, museums, symphony orchestras, religious organizations, social agencies, and libraries—in fact, virtually all not-for-profit institutions—find principles of development applicable to their organizations.

Among Gonser’s apprentices at Northwestern was one Robert E. Nelson.

Raising Money, by Greg Ritter is scheduled for publication on the web in January, 2009. The book will be updated in January of each year as the philanthropic landscape changes and more effective practices evolve