US Insights to Professionalise Higher Education Fundraising

A Multirational Analysis

US universities are very successful in fundraising. In Europe, such level of professionalism is still in its infancy. This article sheds light on the organisational characteristics of three US universities’ fundraising departments and aims to provide recommendations for European higher education institutions. The fundraising entities are at a high hierarchical level in the institution and have strong ties with faculty members. This set-up has implications for the structure of the teams. Ideally they are highly diverse and the members have strong interpersonal and communication skills. As managing diverse teams can be challenging, leaders of such fundraising entities need to be “multirationally competent”–being able to collaborate effectively with representatives of different rationalities, or logics. This article formulates a set of recommendations for practitioners, fundraising managers and university management.