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The Practitioner Roles of Fund Raising:
An Assessment of Gender Differences

by

Richard D. Waters
Doctoral Student
Department of Public Relations
College of Journalism and Communications
University of Florida


Kathleen S. Kelly, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA
Professor and Chair
Department of Public Relations
College of Journalism and Communications
University of Florida

and

Mary Lee Walker
Consultant
Orlando, FL






Running Head:  Fund-Raising Roles



Correspondence to:
	Richard D. Waters
700 SW 16th Ave #102
Gainesville, FL  32601
(352) 359-6837
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Paper submitted to the Public Relations Division, Association for 
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication 2005 Convention.











Abstract

A national study of members of the Association for Healthcare 
Philanthropy found that Kelly's (1998) adaptation of public relations 
roles—liaison, expert prescriber, problem-solving process 
facilitator, and technician—account for the daily activities of 
fund-raising practitioners.  Similar to public relations studies, all 
but the last role were found to be highly correlated, indicating a 
two role typology might be a better descriptor.  One-way ANOVAs 
revealed that males enacted managerial roles more than females; 
however, no significant differences were found for the technician role.
Introduction

	Even though fund raising has been practiced for as many years as 
public relations, it has not attracted equal scholarly 
inquiries.  Public relations scholars generally ignored the 
profession until Kelly (1991) demonstrated the similarities of the 
two practices.  In 1998, Kelly formally defined fund raising using 
public relations terminology:  Fund raising is the management of 
relationships between a charitable organization and its donor publics.
In the past 15 years, scholars have explored several public 
relations' concepts in the context of fund raising, including J. 
Grunig's four models of public relations (Kelly, 1995), the public 
relations campaign process (Worley & Little, 2002; Hall, 2002), and 
J. Grunig's situational theory of publics (Kelly, 1998).  However, 
despite the popularity of inquiry into the roles enacted by public 
relations practitioners, very little investigation has been made as 
to the extent to which these public relations roles represent fund 
raisers.  The purpose of this study is to assess the applicability of 
public relations role theory to the fund-raising profession and to 
determine if men and women perform these roles equally.
	Currently, there are more than 1.6 million nonprofits in the United 
States, of which more than half are charitable organizations that are 
eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions according to IRS 
guidelines (Schwinn, 2004).  In 2003, Americans donated $241 billion 
to charitable organizations (Wellner, 2004).  Over the past 50 years, 
Americans have consistently given donations to the charitable sector 
that are equivalent to two percent of the nation's gross domestic 
product (Salamon, 2002).  Fund raisers play a large role in ensuring 
that individual nonprofit organizations receive their share of these 
contributions.
	As practiced in the United States, fund raising is carried out by 
full-time and part-time fund-raising professionals (Hager, Rooney & 
Pollak, 2002), volunteers (Lysakowski, 2002), and outside groups, 
such as consultants and solicitation firms (Hooper & Stobart, 
2002).  Kelly (1998) estimated that in the late 1990s, there were 
approximately 80,000 full-time fund raisers; Hager, Rooney, and 
Pollak (2002) placed the number much higher, saying there are as many 
as 296,000 full-time U.S. practitioners.  The precise number of fund 
raisers is difficult to assess for the same reasons that counts of 
public relations practitioners are imprecise, such as diverse titles 
and absence of licensing.
	Fund raisers are most frequently hired by education and healthcare 
organizations (Kelly, 1998).  Scholars outside of public relations 
have conducted several studies to determine the characteristics of 
the average fund raiser.  Their research has shown that fund raisers 
lack a formal training program and that most knowledge about the 
profession and its processes come through on-the-job training and the 
apprentice system (Carbone, 1987; Bloland & Bornstein, 1991; Duronio, 
1993).  Fund raisers are predominantly Caucasian; minorities 
represent only 10 percent of the memberships of the three major 
fund-raising associations:  the Association for Healthcare 
Philanthropy (AHP), the Council for Advancement and Support of 
Education (CASE), and the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP).
Fund raisers generally have high job satisfaction, though roughly 40 
percent want more management responsibility (Mongon, 
1992).  Regarding personal traits, Duronio (1994) found that AFP's 
members believed that integrity, honesty, commitment, intelligence, 
and possessing an outgoing personality were the characteristics 
attributed to the "best" of the profession; however, Miltner (1990) 
found that the only personal traits that statistically correlated to 
a fund raiser's potential for success were age and years of experience.
	Paralleling trends in public relations, fund raising has experienced 
a feminization of the profession since the early 1980s.  Drawing on 
literature on the differences in the orientations between men and 
women, J. Grunig and White (1992) concluded:
Conventional wisdom has been that these differences make men more 
suitable as managers because of their preference for competition and 
"toughness."  However, researchers have begun to realize that women's 
preferences for nurturance and relationships may be exactly what is 
needed. (pp. 49-50)
Today, more than half of the members of the major fund-raising 
associations are women.  Despite their presence in the field, women 
earn less than their male counterparts even when other factors are 
even.  Williams (1996) and Kelly (1997) calculated that in the late 
1990s, women were paid almost $13,000 less per year than their male colleagues.
Literature Review
Roles Theory
	According to Katz and Kahn (1978), "Role behavior refers to the 
recurring actions of an individual, appropriately interrelated with 
the repetitive activities of others so as to yield a predictable 
outcome" (p. 189).  They concluded that organizational roles are 
abstractions of these continuing features.  Roles provide an 
important insight into the function of professions, including public 
relations (Dozier, 1984).  A practitioner's role may be influenced by 
an individual's level of autonomy, organizational expectations, or 
emerging standards of the profession.  Other practitioners might 
perceive a set of role expectations, but modify their behavior based 
on their skills and training.  These influences allow for a wide 
range of role expectations (Katz & Kahn, 1978).
	Dozier (1992) said that the existence of a range of role 
expectations is key to the evolution of public relations as a 
management function.  To assess roles enacted by public relations 
practitioners, Broom (Broom & Smith, 1979; Broom, 1982) developed 24 
items to measure the extent to which practitioners perform four 
organizational roles, conceptualized from a review of the 
literature:  (a) communication facilitator, (b) expert prescriber, 
(c) problem-solving process facilitator, and (d) communication technician.
	A full description of the four roles can be found elsewhere; the 
following is a brief summary of the roles.  The communication 
facilitator acts as a mediator between an organization and its 
publics.  The expert prescriber is viewed as the organization's 
authority on public relations problems and solutions.  Practitioners 
in this role research and define the problem, develop and implement 
plans of action, and take responsibility for success or failure.  The 
problem-solving process facilitator, on the other hand, collaborates 
with other managers to define and solve organizational problems.  The 
communication technician carries out the technical services for the 
public relations function (Broom, 1982; Broom & Dozier, 1986; Cutlip, 
Center & Broom, 1994).
Drawing on results from factor analysis of role data, Dozier (1992) 
argued that practitioner roles were more parsimoniously accounted for 
as two main roles, manager and technician.  Toth and L. Grunig (1993) 
also believed that using the manager/technician typology was 
important.  Nonetheless, Broom (Cutlip, Center, & Broom, 1994) argued 
that important conceptual differences are lost when the three 
managerial roles are combined.  Kelly (1998) viewed these 
distinctions as critical to understanding fund raisers' behavior patterns.
Guided by public relations role theory, Kelly (1998) analyzed 
practitioner literature on fund raising to identify four 
organizational roles enacted by fund raisers, which she named:  (a) 
liaison, (b) expert prescriber, (c) problem-solving process 
facilitator, and (d) technician.  As with public relations, 
fund-raising practitioners play all four roles to some extent, but 
enact one predominantly.
Liaison is the role predominantly enacted by consultants, who do not 
solicit gifts but advise organizational managers and volunteers on 
doing so (Kelly, 1998).  The role casts practitioners as interpreters 
and mediators in bringing together organizational representatives 
with prospective donors.  A weakness of this role is its reliance on 
other actors, which makes fund raising vulnerable to unmet goals and 
inefficiency.
Expert prescriber is the exact opposite of liaison (Kelly, 
1998).  Fund raisers in this role act and are viewed as the only ones 
in their organization with the skill and responsibility for raising 
gifts.  Senior administrators, trustees, and faculty are content to 
leave fund raising in the hands of the _expert_ and assume relatively 
passive participation.  Among the role_s many weaknesses, fund 
raising is isolated from the institution_s operations, which hampers 
efforts to address institutional needs and establish meaningful 
relationships with donors.  Commitment to fund raising and its 
success is limited to practitioners, which often leads to unrealistic 
expectations and dissatisfaction with results.
Practitioners enacting the problem-solving process facilitator role 
are part of the management team (Kelly, 1998).  They collaborate with 
others in the organization and manage key actors_ participation in 
the fund-raising process.  In turn, they participate in decision 
making on organization-wide problems.  Kelly argued that the role is 
superior to the other three because it integrates fund raising in the 
overall management of charitable organizations.
Fund raisers usually begin their careers in the technician role, in 
which they primarily are concerned with producing and implementing 
the various techniques used in raising gifts (e.g., direct mail; 
Kelly, 1998).  Technicians carry out decisions made by others.  They 
are not part of the management team, and they generally are 
indifferent to the purpose of their work.  Problems arise when 
fund-raising departments consist only of technicians.  In such cases, 
the function contributes little to advancing the organization_s 
mission or meeting its goals.
An exploratory study testing the four roles was conducted using 
in-depth interviews with a small sample of fund-raising practitioners 
(Kelly, 1998b).  The study provided evidence that the four roles do 
describe how individual fund raisers behave in carrying out their job 
responsibilities.  The next step in theory development called for 
empirical research on a large sample to verify the four roles.  This 
study attempts to do so by addressing the following research question:
	RQ (1):  To what extent do the technician, liaison, expert 
prescriber, and problem-solving
   process facilitator roles explain the behavior patterns of fund
   raisers?
Gender Discrepancies
	Public relations studies have shown that men tend to outnumber women 
in managerial roles and that women tend to cluster in technician 
roles (Broom, 1982).  Studies also reveal significant salary 
differences between male and female members of the Public Relations 
Society of America (PRSA; Jacobson & Tortorello, 1990; Tortorello & 
Wilhelm, 1993; Dozier & Broom, 1995).  Even when controlling for 
years of experience, a significant gap exists between salary for male 
and female public relations practitioners.  A review of public 
relations roles studies found that male practitioners advance faster 
and earn more money than their female counterparts (Cline, Toth, 
Turk, Walters, Johnson, & Smith, 1986; Toth & Cline, 1989; Creedon, 
1991; Toth, Serini, Wright, & Emig, 1998).  After reviewing evidence 
from a series of longitudinal studies that showed women were not 
advancing to the manager role, Broom and Dozer (1986) concluded that 
"professional growth in public relations [is] a function of the 
practitioner's gender and role" (p. 55).
	Exploring role activities within the context of a technician/manager 
typology, Toth and L. Grunig (1993) found that women performed both 
technical and managerial functions for less money than men.  Men were 
also found to do more managerial tasks while working in the 
entry-level technical role, which prepares them for advancement into 
managerial positions.
	Broom (1982) found that men and women differ significantly on their 
role behavior activities.  Men were more likely to predominantly 
enact the expert prescriber role, while women reported the 
communication technician as their dominant role.  While the role 
indicators were found to be reliable, three of the roles were highly 
intercorrelated:  expert prescriber, problem-solving process 
facilitator, and communications facilitator.  This intercorrelation 
led to the conclusion that despite having conceptual distinctions, 
the roles were performed interchangeably by some practitioners.  No 
correlation was found between the managerial roles and the 
communication technician role.
	Dozier, Chapo, and Sullivan (1983) believed that the technician role 
of public relations created a ghetto for women by providing the 
organization a place to put them so they can be used but paid less 
than their male counterparts.  Kelly (1998) claimed the same 
situation exists in fund raising.  She stated, "One reason female 
fund raisers occupy lower status positions and earn less than men is 
because the expectations of women and the role they predominately 
carry out are as technicians not managers" (p. 99).
	Philanthropy scholars also have recognized gender 
discrepancies.  Conry (1991) predicted that female fund raisers would 
find difficulty in progressing in their chosen career and that they 
would mainly occupy technician positions in nonprofit 
organizations.  Cutlip, Center, and Broom (1994) argued that 
practitioners who understand the roles are able to adapt their 
behavior to take on additional responsibilities to break out of the 
technician role.  Kelly (1998) advocated that female fund raisers 
should learn managerial skills, such as strategic planning, to 
advance beyond technician status.
	Drawing on previous work regarding gender and roles, this study 
explores job discrepancies in fund raising by attempting to answer a 
second research question:
	RQ (2):  To what extent are the four roles of fund raising practiced 
differently by gender?

Methodology
	A random sampling of the professional fund raisers who are members 
of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) was conducted 
for this study.  Six hundred questionnaires were mailed to the sample 
in 1999.  After the initial mailing, a follow-up mailing was sent 
requesting participation in the study.
	The survey consisted of two main parts:  24 statements describing 
typical fund-raising activities, which were modified from Broom's 
(1982) indicators of public relations roles; and 19 descriptive 
questions, which included questions on personal demographics and 
organizational characteristics.  The 24 statements consisted of six 
items associated with each of the four fund-raising roles.  Broom's 
(1982) statements were altered to reflect the fund-raising profession 
in accordance to suggestions from Kelly's (1998b) qualitative 
study.  Personal demographic information that was collected included 
gender, ethnic background, age, salary, education level, years of 
fund-raising experience, and fund-raising certification.  In terms of 
organizational characteristics, information collected included the 
size of the fund-raising department, the number of dollars raised 
annually, size of the organization, and the number of years the 
organization has been operating.
	The role items were measured with a fractional open-ended 
scale.  Respondents were asked to evaluate each of the 24 items on 
the basis of how much time they spend performing the activity.  They 
were asked to give a number representing their time on a scale of 
zero to as high as they wanted to go; instructions on the survey 
indicated that 100 was the average rating that a fund raiser would 
have on each item.  Following the method used by J. Grunig et al. 
(1992) in the Excellence in Public Relations and Communication 
Management study, figures were transformed by taking the square roots 
of the reported results to reduce the positive skew of the open-ended 
scale.  Indices were developed for each of the four roles by summing 
scores on the six items associated with the role.
Index Reliability
	The indices achieved varying levels of statistical strength.  Of the 
four roles, the technician role (.86), the problem-solving process 
facilitator (.85), and the expert prescriber (.86) met the Carmines 
and Zeller (1972) alpha standard of .80 for measuring index 
reliability.  The remaining index, liaison (.76), failed to meet this 
standard; however, it was significantly over the minimum alpha level, 
.70, that Bowers and Cartright (1984) urged communication scholars to 
adopt in the early phase of index development.  Indices reliability 
assessment and statistical analysis were completed using SPSS© software.
Results
Demographics
	The survey had a response rate of 47 percent, with 286 useable 
questionnaires being returned.  There were 101 male and 179 female 
respondents.  The average age of the fund raisers was 46 with a range 
of 23-years-old to 80-years-old.  The vast majority of the 
respondents were Caucasian (85.7%), with Hispanics (5.1 percent) and 
Native Americans (2.8 percent) constituting the largest minority 
representations.  There was only one African-American and one Asian 
respondent, representing .6 percent of the sample; the remaining 5.8 
percent did not identify their ethnicity.
One-fourth of the sample earned less than $50,000 per year while 56 
percent earned between $50,000 and $100,000.  Slightly more than 19 
percent of the respondents earned more than $100,000.  In terms of 
education, 33 percent had a bachelor's degree, 33 percent had a 
master's degree, and five percent had a doctoral degree; 18 percent 
had some graduate school, 9 percent had some college but no degree, 
and less than one percent had only a high school diploma.
One-fifth of the respondents had received their Certified Fund 
Raising Executive (CFRE) certification from CFRE International, 
somewhat equivalent to the APR credential.  Only five percent had 
become certified through the AHP association.  Two individuals held 
APR certification.  The average respondent had 16.3 years of 
fund-raising experience, of which 9.4 years were with his or her 
current employer.
Kelly's Four Roles
	Mean scores were calculated for the items that comprised the roles 
indices, as well as a total mean for each of the role indices.  The 
indices were shown to be reliable, and they were correlated among 
themselves to test their validity.  The findings of this study 
support Kelly's (1998) four roles of fund raisers.
	Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which the six items 
for each role reflected their daily activities as a fund raiser.  The 
mean scores reveal that the expert prescriber (11.34) and 
problem-solving process facilitator (10.12) roles are enacted on a 
daily basis more frequently than the liaison (8.73) and technician 
(8.25) roles.  Table 1 presents the total mean scores for the four 
indices and the items that comprise each role.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Insert Table 1 Here
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

	These results indicate that fund-raising practitioners in healthcare 
are more often involved in the managerial roles than that of the 
technician.  Examination of the mean scores for each item indicates 
that these practitioners are fund-raising leaders for their 
organizations and are active in strategic planning and developing the 
organizations' programs.
Validity of the Roles
	To explore the relationships between the four roles, the indices 
were correlated against one another to determine if Dozier's (1992) 
two-level typology of technician and manager for public relations was 
applicable to fund raising.  These correlations are shown in Table 2.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Insert Table 2 Here
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

	As shown in Table 2, the technician role correlates moderately with 
the liaison role (.49), and the technician activities have little 
correlation with those of the other two roles.  The problem-solving 
process facilitator role has strong correlations to both the expert 
prescriber (.86) and liaison (.75) and weak correlation with the 
technician role (.25).  Similar to Broom's (1982) findings, this 
study found strong evidence for an intercorrelation between the three 
roles that have managerial activities associated with them and that 
none of the roles have strong correlation to the technician 
role—though this role did have a modest correlation with the liaison.
Gender Differences and the Roles
	Broom (1982) found that there were significant differences in the 
roles that male and female public relations practitioners performed 
on a daily basis.  To evaluate these distinctions in the fund-raising 
profession, mean scores were tabulated for each of the 24 activities 
by gender.  Table 3 contains the mean scores of the items in the four 
roles indices.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Insert Table 3 Here
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

	For the three roles consisting of managerial activities, males had 
higher mean scores on the entire index than females did.  The 
greatest difference between the mean scores was on the expert 
prescriber role, for which male practitioners had a mean score of 
12.16 and their female counterparts had a mean score of 10.87.  The 
difference was not as great for the liaison (9.22 for males, 8.46 for 
females) and the problem-solving process facilitator (10.68 for 
males, 9.79 for females) roles; however, male practitioners were 
still likely to perform more managerial tasks in their healthcare 
organizations.  Females had a higher mean score (8.36) than males 
(7.99) on the technician role.
	For two activities, the genders had mean scores that ran opposite of 
the overall trends.  On the technician index, males indicated that 
they were more likely to write fundraising materials that presents 
information on issues for donors and for the organization; on the 
problem-solving process facilitator index, results indicated that 
females were more likely to encourage management participation when 
making important fund-raising decisions.
	To test the statistical significance of the variation in the 
genders' mean scores, a one-way ANOVA was run.  As Table 4 shows, 
three of the four roles were found to have statistically significant 
differences.  Males were more likely to enact the liaison (p<.05), 
problem-solving process facilitator (p<.05), and the expert 
prescriber (p<.01) role than female practitioners.  Even though women 
had higher mean scores on the technician items, differences with men 
were not statistically significant.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Insert Table 4 Here
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

	When the two activities that displayed opposite trends of the index 
were removed, the significance of the remaining items did 
grow.  Despite a widening gap in the mean scores of the technician 
index, the relationship still was not statistically significant when 
the writing fund-raising information for donors and the organization 
item was removed from the index.  The original p-value (.416) did 
shrink, although the result was not significant (.261).  Removal of 
the item measuring practitioners' encouragement of management to 
become involved in fund-raising decisions from the problem-solving 
process facilitator also resulted in a strengthening of the variance 
of the index.  The p-value of the original six-item index was .017; 
the p-value from the five-item index was .006.
Discussion
	This study produced two significant findings:  (1) the study 
provides strong evidence that Kelly's (1998) fund-raising roles do 
describe how individual practitioners behave in carrying out their 
job responsibilities, thus confirming her original thesis that public 
relations role theory can be used to explain fund raisers behaviors; 
and (2) the study supports previous public relations studies that men 
are more likely to engage in managerial tasks while women more often 
enact the technician role.
	Similar to the roles research conducted by Broom (1982), three of 
the fund-raising roles were strongly intercorrelated, indicating that 
they were routinely performed by some of the same individual.  The 
correlations between the liaison, expert prescriber, and 
problem-solving process facilitator roles support Dozier's (1992) and 
Toth and L. Grunig's (1993) recommendation that the four roles should 
be condensed into two roles, manager and technician..   Although 
still statistically significant, the somewhat weaker correlation 
between the liaison and the expert prescriber roles reiterate Broom's 
(Cutlip, Center, and Broom, 1994) argument that scholars consider the 
four-role dichotomy in order to preserve distinctions that would be 
lost when three roles are combined into one.
	While the results show that the four roles do account for a 
fund-raising practitioner's daily behavior, further analysis of the 
mean scores provide a deeper understanding of their actions.  Even 
though men were found to participate in managerial activities more 
frequently than women, statistical tests did not establish a strong 
relationship to show that women enacted the technician role more than 
men.  While women did have a higher mean score on the technician 
index than men, the women's mean score on the technician index (8.36) 
was actually lower than their mean scores on the liaison (8.46), 
expert prescriber (10.87), and the problem-solving process 
facilitator (9.79).  The results suggest that fund raisers in 
healthcare nonprofits—regardless of gender—are more likely to guide 
the organization's fund-raising efforts and participate in strategic 
planning with their nonprofits' dominant coalition.
	When comparing female respondents' mean scores on all four role 
indices, women did participate in managerial activities more 
frequently than technical ones.  However, they have not attained the 
same level of management responsibilities that their male 
counterparts have.  Nonprofit management and philanthropy scholars 
have argued that "women have long been the backbone of the everyday 
activities, carrying out essential, mundane, unpaid or low-paid 
responsibilities, while men have filled the top leadership roles" 
(Critz, 1981, p. 285).  These sentiments have long been echoed in 
trade publications (Goss, 1989; Joseph, 1992; Mongon, 1992; Greene & 
Murawski, 1996; Williams, 1996) and in scholarly works (Conry, 1991; 
Kelly 1998b; Walker, 1999).
In describing the hierarchy of fund-raising careers, Kelly (1998) 
maintained that women are more frequently found in the lower-level 
positions that have low pay, such as special event planning and 
annual giving programs.  She argued that in order to break through 
the glass ceiling in their organizations and pursue advanced 
fund-raising positions (e.g., major gifts or foundation relations), 
women must take on greater managerial responsibilities within their 
organizations.
Though there are no previous data to compare against the current 
results, it appears that women are beginning to take on additional 
managerial activities to advance in the fund-raising profession.  The 
lower mean score of the technician index for female practitioners 
when compared to the mean scores of the other three role indices is 
promising; additional data needs to be collected to confirm this trend.
Conclusion
	This study found that healthcare fund raisers are more frequently 
involved in managerial roles than technical roles.  The four roles 
did account for the daily activities of these fund raisers.  Even 
though women were more likely to enact the three managerial roles 
than the technical one, tests of statistical significance showed that 
men were far more likely to be managers in their organizations.
Implications for Practice
The results of this study found that fund raisers primarily enact 
managerial roles more than technician roles.  While public relations 
literature advocates for its practitioners to be involved in the 
management of the organization, these nonprofit organizations are 
setting themselves up for potential fund-raising crises as the 
practitioners are most commonly performing the expert prescriber 
role.  As defined by Kelly (1998; 1998b), fund raisers in this role 
often are placed in charge of the program with little input from 
management.  These practitioners are held accountable for the 
fund-raising campaigns' successes or failures though they often 
receive little support from outside of their department.
For both men and women, the mean scores of the expert prescriber 
index were significantly higher than the remaining three roles.  A 
one-way ANOVA post hoc test showed that the expert prescriber role 
was enacted more frequently than the technician (F = 1.616, p = 
.006), liaison (F = 3.144, p = .000), and problem-solving process 
facilitator (F = 8.212., p = .000) roles.  In this role, 
practitioners "are viewed as the only ones in their organization with 
the s kill and the responsibility for raising gifts" (Kelly, 1998, p. 
195).  While this role is appealing to many practitioners because of 
the increased authority, it is dangerous for an organization.  For a 
nonprofit to reap the benefits of cultivating prospective, current, 
and past donors, the dominant coalition (e.g., board of directors, 
upper management) must understand the fund-raising process.  The 
compartmentalization of the fund-raising department is risky, 
especially as the demand for fund raisers grows.  Practitioners not 
gaining the support and assistance of others within the organization 
are likely to seek another fund-raising position where they do 
receive this support.
Fund raisers have been aware of the increasing demands of the expert 
prescriber role since the early 1990s.  Grace (1991) stressed that 
organizations who ask practitioners to enact this role are in danger 
of fund-raising failure.  Carbone (1989) interviewed a practitioner 
with 10 years of experience who said, "Organizations tend to have 
unrealistic expectations of their development professionals; tend to 
see them as (isolates) who should do their work without commitment 
from and integration with the rest of the organization" (p. 29).  A 
comparison of two studies of development results at U. S. colleges 
and universities shows that the role of the expert prescriber is 
rapidly increasing.  Winship (1984) found that only 23 percent of 
major gifts were raised by fund-raising staff; studying the same 
universe, Winfree (1992) found that 57 percent of major gifts were 
raised solely by development personnel.  This hands-off approach by 
organizations' upper management runs opposite of the fund-raising's 
best practices (Rosso, 1991; Worth, 2002).
Limitations
	This study assessed the daily activities of fund-raising 
practitioners in healthcare organizations.  Even though fund raising 
is conducted similarly across the nonprofit sector, the structure of 
hospitals and healthcare research centers might have an impact on how 
their practitioners function.  The respondents were a random sample 
of fund-raising practitioners who are members of AHP; therefore, the 
results are generalizable only to that specific population.  Despite 
the similarities of the profession, it is plausible that a study on 
the other two other major associations, CASE and AFP, might yield 
different results.
The use of a professional association is another limitation of the 
study.  Practitioners who join professional associations are more 
likely to be in higher paid positions because of the cost of dues; 
therefore, they may be more likely to enact managerial roles in their 
organizations.  Practitioners who enact the technician role may be 
unable to pay association dues.
Future Research
	The findings of this study provide several areas for future 
research.  Public relations scholars first began studying role theory 
more than 20 years ago, and it continues to be a bountiful source of 
inquiry.  Similar to the work of Broom and Dozier, research needs to 
be replicated on the fund-raising roles to determine if the four 
roles explain the behavior better than the two-role typology.  While 
the results in this study indicate that women are working more in 
managerial tasks, they have not achieved the same levels of 
management as male fund raisers.  Comparisons to future results could 
be made to determine if women are heeding Kelly's (1998) and Conry's 
(1991) advice and taking on additional tasks to move into management 
positions.
Additional work needs to be conducted to evaluate the significance of 
other demographics on the four roles.  Does education impact a 
practitioner's role more than gender?  If practitioners earn their 
fund-raising certification, are they more likely to enact the managerial role?
One other promising area of study concerns the population being 
studied.  This project examined AHP, an association for fund raisers 
that work for hospitals and healthcare research 
organizations.  Scholars should examine to what extent fund raisers 
belonging to CASE and AFP enact these roles.  Research involving 
these other membership groups would provide a better understanding of 
the roles practitioners enact.
Much like the independent public relations practitioner, fund-raising 
consultants operate independently of the organizations they 
serve.  Because consultants are outside of the organization's 
operating environment, do they enact roles differently than in-house 
practitioners?  Specifically, do they predominantly practice the 
liaison role, which would be a logical hypothesis?
	In conclusion, this study represents an important step, one that not 
only adds to the public relations body of knowledge but also aids in 
building support that fund-raising is indeed a specialization of 
public relations.  Fund-raising practitioners enact roles in patterns 
similar to their public relations counterparts.  These parallel 
experiences in the workplace reinforce Kelly's (1991) original view 
that public relations and fund raising do share not only similar 
goals and processes, but also similar career experiences.

Table 1:  Means and Standard Deviations for Four Roles of Fund
Raisers and Cronbach's Alpha for Scales of Roles Indices



Role								           Mean	Std. Deviation	

Technician
I write materials and present donor information.			9.59		4.20
I edit materials produced by others.					9.02		4.38
I produce brochures, pamphlets, etc.					8.89		4.31
I manage technical aspects of production.				8.49		4.63
I coordinate photography and graphics.				6.84		4.99
I maintain media contacts and place press releases.			6.57		4.98
						 Index Mean		8.25 (Alpha = .86)	

Liaison
I represent the organization at events and meetings.			11.9		3.56
I inform management of donor reactions.				10.34		3.58
I create opportunities to hear donor views.				8.99		4.23
I keep the organization informed about media reports.		8.09		4.55
I report donor opinion survey results to management.		7.06		4.75
I conduct research on problems with donors.				5.96		4.80
						Index Mean		8.73 (Alpha = .79)
				
Expert Prescriber
I take responsibility for fund-raising success.				12.36		4.69	
I stand accountable for success to others.				11.91		3.76
Others consider me the fund-raising expert.				11.36		4.51
I plan actions for fund-raising campaigns.				11.24		3.55
I make fund-raising policy decisions.					10.72		3.91
I diagnose fund-raising opportunities.				10.58		3.95
						Index Mean		11.34 (Alpha = .88)

Problem-Solving Process Facilitator
I encourage management participation in decisions.			10.92		3.40	
I encourage the organization to follow systematic procedures.	10.82		4.08
I keep management actively involved in all phases of fund raising.	10.32		3.4
I outline alternative fund-raising opportunities.			10.07		3.76
I operate as a catalyst in management's decisions.			9.43		4.20
I work with managers to increase their skills.				9.06		4.30
						Index Mean		10.12 (Alpha = .85)

Table 2:  Correlations of the Fund Raising Roles


						TE	        LI	 	EP              PSPF
Technician (TE)				1.00	        .48*	.22*	        .25*

Liaison	 (LI)						        1.00	.69*	        .75*

Expert Prescriber (EP)						1.00	        .86*

Problem-Solving Process Facilitator (PSPF)					        1.00

*All correlations significant at p <.01 (2-tailed).



Table 3:  Means of Fund-Raising Activities for the
Four Roles of Fund Raisers by Gender


Role								           Male		Female	

Technician
I write materials and present donor information.			9.73		9.44
I edit materials produced by others.					8.72		9.15
I produce brochures, pamphlets, etc.					8.21		9.20
I manage technical aspects of production.				8.22		8.64
I coordinate photography and graphics.				6.39		7.17
I maintain media contacts and place press releases.			6.55		6.49
						Index Mean		7.99		8.36

Liaison
I represent the organization at events and meetings.			12.4		11.68
I inform management of donor reactions.				10.5		10.2
I create opportunities to hear donor views.				9.62		8.63
I keep the organization informed about media reports.		8.27		7.95
I report donor opinion survey results to management.		8.07		6.51
I conduct research on problems with donors.				6.35		5.77
						Index Mean		9.22              	8.46
				
Expert Prescriber
I take responsibility for fund-raising success.				13.13		11.9	
I stand accountable for success to others.				12.54		11.58
Others consider me the fund-raising expert.				12.83		10.55
I plan actions for fund-raising campaigns.				11.83		10.9
I make fund-raising policy decisions.					11.28		10.4
I diagnose fund-raising opportunities.				11.43		10.07
						Index Mean		12.16              	10.87

Problem-Solving Process Facilitator
I encourage management participation in decisions.			10.9		10.92
I encourage the organization to follow systematic procedures.	11.8		10.24
I keep management actively involved in all phases of fund raising.	10.70		10.10
I outline alternative fund-raising opportunities.			10.6		9.73
I operate as a catalyst in management's decisions.			10.3		8.93
I work with managers to increase their skills.				9.81		8.66
						Index Mean		10.68		9.79




Table 4:  One-way ANOVA Testing of the
Differences of Mean Scores of Indices by Gender

								  Males		Females

Technician Index Mean					  7.99		8.36a

Liaison Index Mean						  9.22              	8.46b

Expert Prescriber Index Mean				  12.16             10.87c

Problem-Solving Process Facilitator Index Mean		  10.68		9.79d

Five-item Technician Index Mean				   7.60		8.13e

Five-item Problem Solving Process Facilitator Index Mean	   10.65	9.57f
a Analysis of Variance F Score: 0.664 (p = .416)
b Analysis of Variance F Score: 4.348 (p = .038)
c Analysis of Variance F Score: 10.083 (p = .002)
d Analysis of Variance F Score: 5.727 (p = .017)
e Analysis of Variance F Score: 1.271 (p = .261)
f Analysis of Variance F Score: 7.759 (p = .006)





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