The last 15 months have been a challenging time to be a fundraiser. I’m mindful of the challenges and am fortunate to largely be unaffected. I have been challenged, though, by questions about fundraising, philanthropy, and if what we are doing is having any effect at all?

Overwhelmingly, the donors I meet with are university graduates who have achieved enough personal and professional success to be philanthropic. Since being sent home from work last March, I have met with 236 of these donors. While all of these donors shared that they have been inconvenienced by working from home, the isolation, and the restrictions, not a single one had been affected by the pandemic either health wise or financially. In fact, most of the donors shared that they actually are in a better financial position than they were pre-pandemic. So who are the people who are being affected and what did their lives look like before the pandemic?

Last year, on New Year’s Eve, my wife and I welcomed our first child, a daughter. We left the hospital with her on a cold January morning and outside the doors to the hospital was a man sleeping in a tent over a heated exhaust vent. As I cautiously drove home from the hospital, I noticed a tent city in Moss Park and a line up of several hundred people looking for a meal and bed at Dixon Hall. I was aware of the privilege our daughter will hold simply because of the circumstances she was born into. Is the work I’m doing helping to address this inequity?

My feelings about fundraising and philanthropy have continued to be challenged by a series of mega-donations. As these gifts of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are announced and celebrated, I have felt uncomfortable that anyone has enough wealth to give a small part of it away in these amounts. Previously, I would tell myself that many people have this amount of wealth and at least some of them choose to give it away. Now, I’m asking more questions about how that wealth was accumulated, why donors get to decide which causes get supported (and which causes don’t), and if voluntary philanthropy from a few is more effective than higher taxes from everyone?

By far the most challenging question I’ve asked is what action can I take as an individual? The problems our society faces (and as fundraisers we are attempting to address) are systemic and broader than fundraising and philanthropy. What role can I play in addressing the broad systemic inequities that are rooted far outside of fundraising and philanthropy?

While I haven’t answered any of these questions, I have been encouraged by how many of my colleagues and peers are having similar conversations and asking the same questions. And, for the moment, that is the action I can take. I can continue to ask myself these questions, as well as my colleagues, my organization and leaders, with donors, and with the fundraising community.

Eli Clarke is a fundraiser passionate about providing access to education. Eli is Manager, Estate Giving and Legacy Planning at McMaster University and previously worked at the University of Toronto, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, and Toronto Summer Music after a career as a professional tuba player.

Cover photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash