Have you ever wondered where charity fundraising originated?

Since here at Charity Link we make it our business to know all there is to know about face to face fundraising, what better topic to explore than the history and evolution?

It turns out that professional fundraising is far from the new kid on the block.

Since the birth of charitable causes, there has been a need to finance them. So we weren’t too surprised to learn that charity collectors - or face to face fundraisers - have actually been around for well over a century.

Although there’s no doubt things have moved on quite a bit from Edwardian times. Learn about the fascinating origins of the humble fundraiser right up to the now of the modern charity fundraiser job and the (many!) improvements along the way.

The beginning of fundraising

In January 1892, Charles Sumner Ward was the General Secretary of a YMCA in Michigan America. And he was getting frustrated.

Any new YMCA was built using money raised from external sources, so his main issue was that, rather than being able to get on with his ‘real’ job, the lions share of his time was spent fundraising.

He devised a plan whereby directors were asked to leave their desks for an amount of time every day with the sole intention of increasing the YMCA budget.

Since fundraising was pretty unpopular, the idea was to get it done with as quickly as possible. The group of young men would split into teams and head onto the streets for two weeks at the beginning of the financial year to recruit donors to give in instalments.

And so ‘Lightening Canvass’ was born...

We invite you to read the rest of this fascinating article, along with dozens of other charity fundraising blogs over on our website blog page here

https://www.charitylink.net/blog/the-face-to-face-fundraising-evolution

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