‘You can try to press different emotional buttons’: The conflicts and strategies of eliciting emotions for fundraisers

In a competitive climate in which charities must increasingly rely on fundraising with the public, emotions such as hope, guilt, and fear are powerful tools that can be used strategically to secure donations or participation. This paper explores data from interviews with 23 fundraisers and voluntary sector workers, managers and officials, to argue that decisions around how, why and when to invest in the elicitation of emotion in fundraising are often difficult and conflicted, with some identifying a battle between ethics and effectiveness. We identify three key levels of conflict that must be negotiated: at the level of the charity sector, where the emotional ethics particularly of larger charities have been met with some resistance from the public and press; at the level of the organisation itself, where the ethics of representation are often a subject of conflict between fundraising and other departments such as policy; and finally at the experiential level of individual fundraisers themselves, who report being routinely internally conflicted around the rights and wrongs of using emotion in their work. A strategic approach to eliciting emotion emerges in the data as a useful way to address some of these areas of conflict, with fundraisers making careful 'balancing' decisions about how and with whom to mobilise certain emotions at specific times

Reviews of teaching/learning resources

Books COMMUNICATE! By Rudolph F. Verderber. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc., 1975; pp. 246; Instructor's Manual, pp. 65. $5.95 paper. EASY-TO-MAKE-PUPPETS. By Joyce Luckin. Photographs by Livia Rolandini. Boston: Plays, Inc., 1975; pp. 48.$4.95, paper. CHILDREN AND DRAMA. By Nellie Mc-Caslin. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1975; pp. v+193. $4.95, paper. TRUE, FALSE, OR IN BETWEEN: AN ELECTIVE COURSE IN LOGICAL THINKING. By Donald A. Hiatt. Lexington, Mass.: Ginn and Company, 1975; pp. 140.$2.00, paper. Teacher's Guide, pp. 44. $1.50, paper. INTIMATE COMMUNICATION. By Gerald M. Phillips and Nancy J. Metzger. Boston, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1975; pp. x+412.$8.95. PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE ON INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND TEACHER EDUCATION. Eds. Nemi C. Jain and Richard L. Cummings. Milwaukee Urban Observatory: University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, 1975; 148 pp. $450, paper. TEACHING ELEMENTARY LANGUAGE ARTS. By Dorothy Rubin. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975; pp. vii+452.$10.95. TREASURY OF TEACHING ACTIVITIES FOR ELEMENTARY LANGUAGE ARTS. By Richard A. Thompson. West Nyack, New York: Parker Publishing Company, Inc., 1975; pp. v+263. $9.95. CREATIVE DRAMATICS FOR THE CLASSROOM TEACHER. By Ruth Beall Heining and Lyda Stillwell. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Pientice-Hall, Inc., 1974; pp. xiii+ 285.$8.95. INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION by Alan C. Filley. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Fores-man, 1975; pp. 322. Paper, $4.75