No, we’re not. Ian MacQuillin explains why Ashley Scott’s new series of papers for Rogare on fundraising’s place in the postmodern world is highly relevant to fundraisers.
I can pre-empt some of the comments that will be made on finding out that Rogare has published a paper on postmodernism and fundraising (actually the first of three, which will all be written by British consultant Dr Ashely Scott, who is also a member of Rogare’s Critical Fundraising Network). They’ll contain words such as ‘overthinking’, ‘inaccessible’, and ‘élitist’. People might be saying things like ‘what the hell has this got to do with how I do my job as a fundraiser’, or ‘this is all just academic posturing with no real-world application’.
Fair point, what on earth does an understanding of postmodernism have to do with coming in to work at a fundraising department every day? Actually, quite a bit.
For a start, we live in a postmodern world in which postmodernist ideas are all around us, in almost every walk of life.
Ever looked at a building that has a Chinese pagoda-style roof sitting atop classical Grecian columns (and if you’re like me, thought what a total eyesore)? Postmodern architecture. Enjoy the filmmaking of Quentin Tarantino? Postmodern storytelling (no straight story arc, mixing up genres, having the viewer superimpose their own interpretation on the film, etc).
Peter Blake’s montage for the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album? Yep, you guessed it. Along with all the other pop and op artists from the 50s and 60s such as Lichtenstein, Warhol and Riley, who were each in their own way part of the postmodern art movement.
Sitcoms such as Community, Episodes (and other such shows in which actors pretend to be themselves) and The Simpsons are all postmodern. A music scholar has argued that The Beatles’ White Album – an eclectic ‘bricolage’ of styles and genres, pastiche and parody – is an exercise in postmodernism.
The distinction between our culturally postmodern age and what came before it is not a distinction so much between postmodernism and modernism, but rather postmodernism and traditionalism and romanticism.
modern jazz.
Modernism represented a break with traditional realistic and romantic ways of seeing the world, through surrealism, cubism, modern jazz and other similar art forms. Postmodernism is a break from this modernism, but, arguably, our dominant paradigm has been traditional/romantic.
Most films we see follow a very traditional narrative arc (Star Wars, for example). Most songs we listen to follow the conventions of tried and trusted traditional songwriting and composing – most of us don’t listen to Cage, Stockhausen and other avant garde modernist musicians.
Lingering romanticism aside, we’re all so culturally postmodern these days, it’s hard to think of a time when we were not. In short, postmodernism is a way to see the world – it is a pick-and-mix and mash up of the bits you like from different styles and genres.
‘Donorcentred fundraising communications and the donor journeys they recount often read like some kind of Grail Quest.’
It’s also a different way to think about the world.
With a stream of thought that began in the mid-19th Century, and grew wider and deeper from the 1920/30s, postmodernist thought – particularly in the form of Critical Theory – challenged the modernist Enlightenment notion that the world could be explained by ‘grand narratives’, such as a political ideology (democracy, liberalism, Marxism), religion, any form of economic idea such as capitalism or, even, science.
You could caricature postmodernist thinking with an adapted John Lennon lyric: Instead of ‘nothing is real’, ‘everything is real’. All interpretations of reality are as valid as all others and no one grand narrative has any special claim to reveal what is ‘true’ about the world – not even science.
Postmodernist ideas challenge the hegemony of established power structures by providing alternative viewpoints to interpret and critique the same set of facts and ideas. But they have also given us climate denial and the anti-vax movement. Neither of these would have been possible without the postmodern dethroning of science as the privileged arbiter of what is true (factual) and not true in the physical world.
What’s all this go to do with me?
So what, you’re probably still thinking, what has this got to do with me? Why do I – a practising coal-face fundraiser – need an understanding of postmodernity to do my job?
Two reasons.
The first is a matter of practice. Fundraising is a storytelling profession. You are telling stories to audiences that are culturally highly-literate and have imbibed postmodern influences for 50 years or more.
Yet fundraising storytelling techniques are steadfastly traditional/romantic, by positioning the donor as the hero of their own story, who overcomes challenges in order to complete their mission and bring their story to a conclusion by helping some or other beneficiary. Fundraisers then tell donors how what has just happened could not have happened without them. Donorcentred fundraising communications and the donor journeys they recount often read like some kind of Grail Quest.
So, might there be other ways that fundraisers could tell stories, ways that use a postmodern approach to storytelling? How fundraisers could incorporate postmodern ideas in their practice is what Ashley Scott will look at in the second part of this series. Some charities are of course already taking such an approach – see for example the Rogare praxis paper on overcoming social taboos by David Harrison (2022).
The second reason is because many of the big contemporary challenges in fundraising are framed in post-modern discourse.
- The challenge presented to ‘romantic’ donorcentred fundraising by Community-centric Fundraising (CCF) is a postmodern challenge, since CCF is a movement that is built on concepts and ideas that are probably underpinned, albeit perhaps unconsciously and unintentionally, by some kind of postmodern thinking and/or critical theory. The challenge to the donor being positioned as the hero in their own story is a postmodern challenge based on deconstructing hegemonic power relations.
- Arguments that structures and practices within the profession should be based on the lived experience of individual members of the profession rather than aggregated data about all members is a postmodern challenge to a scientifically modernist approach.
- Relationships between fundraisers and their stakeholders can also be analysed through discourses around resistance to power that fundraisers and charities are perceived to hold, for example, the response to the death of Olive Cooke and resulting changes to regulation, such as the Fundraising Preference Service.
Service was the solution to redress that power imbalance
To properly make sense of these issues and debates, it’s necessary to understand the ideas that underpin them. And it’s also important from our perspective since Rogare adopts a methodological approach called critical realism, which is an approach between modernism and postmodernism; between seeing and thinking; between theory and practice. That’s why Dr Scott is writing this paper series.
- In part 1, Ashley will take you through the key ideas that constitute ‘postmodern’ thought so you can unpick and read between the lines of current debates and issues in fundraising. You can download that here.
- In part 2, Ashley will look at how postmodern ideas could be used more directly in fundraising practice. We aim to publish this in the second half of 2024.
- And in part 3 he’ll look at what postmodernity might have in store for fundraising in the future, coming in 2025.
If you’re still thinking none of this has anything to do with how you practice fundraising, I’d urge you to think again. I think you’ll find its worth the time. Also, if you at all interested in postmodern ideas but don’t know where to start, Ashley’s paper is one of the best layperson’s introductions to the topic I’ve read.
- A version of this blog appears as the foreword to the Ashley Scott’s first paper.
- Ian MacQuillin is the director of Rogare – The Fundraising Think Tank.
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