This week The NonProfit Times named Sargeant to its “Power & Influence Top 50” list of the most influential people in the nonprofit sector.
“Building fundraising efforts on a foundation of proven research honors donors and makes it more likely nonprofits will earn their support,” said Patrick M. Rooney, executive director of the Center. “From conducting research that increases fundraisers’ success to challenging them to strive for ever-higher standards, Adrian is changing the way fundraising professionals approach their work and their relationships with donors.”
Sargeant is internationally known for his expertise in fundraising management, donor loyalty and retention, and nonprofit marketing. He is a leading proponent for increasing fundraising research and basing fundraising strategies on tested research, and is developing detailed curricula for fundraisers.
“If we’re serious about growing philanthropy in the U.S. and improving the quality of our donors’ experience, we need to do two things,” Sargeant said. “First, we have to dramatically improve the quality of fundraising education, replacing our war stories with modern professional syllabi informed by the best of both practice and research. Second, we need the help of the major foundations to help us build this evidence base. If they invest in one nonprofit program they deliver funding for that program. By contrast, if they were to invest in enhancing fundraising they would build the capacity of literally thousands of organizations to go out and fund programs on their own.”
In the United Kingdom, Sargeant recently received the Civil Society Award for his Outstanding Contribution to Fundraising. He is the first scholar ever to receive the honor. Fundraising magazine called Sargeant “undoubtedly the most qualified of any individual” to have been honored with the award.
Readers of Fundraising also recently voted Sargeant the fifth most influential person in United Kingdom fundraising in 2010. The only academic on the list, he has been ranked in the top 10 since it was created a decade ago. Published by Civil Society, the magazine is one of the U.K.’s leading philanthropy publications.
The author of seven books and more than 100 articles, Sargeant is a frequent speaker at international fundraising conferences and was the founding managing editor of the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing. He pioneered the website Charityfacts.org to provide the U.K. public with greater understanding of charities and fundraising and is creating a similar resource for the U.S. He recently developed the U.K.’s national fundraising standards and authored a blueprint for doubling U.K. charitable giving by 2015. In 2008, he was named an honorary fellow of the Institute of Fundraising.
In addition to holding the Hartsook Chair at the Center on Philanthropy, he is professor of Philanthropic Studies in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts and professor of marketing in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, both at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Sargeant teaches on both the IUPUI and IU Bloomington campuses.
About the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University
The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, a part of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, is a leading academic center dedicated to increasing the understanding of philanthropy and improving its practice worldwide through research, teaching, training and public affairs programs in philanthropy, fundraising, and management of nonprofit organizations.