Joint Fund Raising

Report Outline
New Developments in Combined Solicitation
Big Business Methods in Fund Raising
Independent Vs. Joint Fund Raising

New Developments in Combined Solicitation

Unification of fund-raising will free millions of Americans this year from repeated appeals for donations to the host of philanthropic activities supported by voluntary contributions. Approximately 700 communities are now staging some form of united fund campaign to create single pools of money from which all participating agencies will receive previously determined shares.

The present united fund movement represents the nation's second major effort to consolidate community money-raising. It is a direct result of the failure of the older community chests to fulfill their original promise of reducing charity drives in each locality to one a year.

Postwar Decline in Community Chest Support

The community chest is described in the 1954 Social Work Year Book as “a cooperative undertaking in which the citizens of a community and the voluntary health, social welfare, and recreational agencies join to provide a federated financing, budgeting, and planning program.” The chests are characterized by “broad representation of all segments of the population; by agreement on the part of the…agencies which participate to maintain certain standards of budgeting, program, and administration; and by a pledge to the contributing public that only one annual solicitation will be made for the support of the chests' member agencies,”