CompassPoint has received an enormous amount of feedback from the nonprofit sector in response to UnderDeveloped, their new study with the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund that confirms what nonprofits already know: It’s hard to create the conditions for fundraising success. Nonprofits are caught in a vicious cycle, from being unable to find and keep good fundraisers to having an executive who avoids fundraising to having an organizational culture where asking for money is considered distasteful.
But what about another key player in the third sector: philanthropy? Even though grantmakers were key partners in gathering data for the report, so far the funding world has been surprisingly quiet. It would be a shame if this important information falls on deaf philanthropic ears.