Master Universitario in Fund Raising e Responsabilità Sociale: direttore Valerio Melandri

Discover the Master in Fundraising and download the notice to participate in the next edition

• Read and look at the written and video comments of former students
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• Check the elaboration of the didactics’ program, unique in Italy!!!
• And if you cannot attend the Master, but you want to work in the fundraising sector, read here.

Why the Master in Fundraising

We believe that the future of the nonprofit world is mainly linked to two factors:

1. management capabilities are more and more important (within a context of transparency, accountability, right valorisation of human resources and of professional governance)
2. knowledge and skills to apply principles as well as fundraising techniques and strategies.

The Master in Fundraising wants to meet the needs of the nonprofit world by training professional fundraisers and fundraising professionals with management skills, sensitivity and sector knowledge.
The Master is a year during which students prepare to the work world both from the point of view of the useful concepts learnt and from the point of view of the work method, mainly a team work.
Therefore, the Master method is based on an activity developing in rapid times, with short-dated terms, which underlines the importance of the problem solving and of the research on the applicability of the strategic solutions.

Why in Forlì

The Master in Fundraising is not only a university course
It is a true “school” created around the leadership of its founder and current director Valerio Melandri, which put together the competences of a first level University Master and those of research centres (Philanthropy centro studi), of centres dedicated to the placement within the nonprofit and the fundraising fields (Nonprofitlavoro.it), of centres dedicated to information and communications (www.valeriomelandri.it, www.fundraising.it) and of big networking events (www.festivaldelfundraising.it).
The Master in Fundraising is therefore the leader of a “school” of thought and action concerning fundraising in Italy which has understood, before than others, the need to focus the training programmes on work concepts and methods close to the real world, by involving fundraising and nonprofit operators.

The “professional fundraiser” and the “fundraising professional”

The professional fundraiser is the person who works within a nonprofit organization. He can be a volunteer or an employee with an open-ended contract. Anyway, he is a person who works inside the organization, who speaks for the organization and represents it outside. A person who convinces prospective donors because he is personally involved, he speaks about what he really believes in and expresses the cause in an enthusiastic way.

The fundraising professional helps the organization as far as technical aspects are concerned, for example with direct mailing or an event organization. He can be the professional who finds sponsors and is paid in relation to this. He can advise, help, address, propose ideas, act as intermediary in some circumstances, but he cannot concretely raise funds because he is not directly involved and it is neither credible nor ethically appropriate that prospective donors have contacts with an intermediary instead of directly with the nonprofit organization.

The Master in Fundraising trains both the professional figures (professional fundraisers and fundraising professionals), but also people who want to deal with development, communication, marketing, campaigning inside and outside nonprofit organizations and public bodies. The Master also aims at training nonprofit and public bodies operators, nonprofit professionals and employees or managers of profit public companies who want to acquire competences concerning the fundraising (press officers, nonprofit relations, ethic officers, corporate social responsibility officers). Furthermore, the Master trains communication and marketing directors and managers, profit and nonprofit companies external communications officers, nonprofit and profit (nonprofit area) public relations’ officers.
During the last few years we had students who came from the profit world and wanted to begin a “new life” working in another sector, more appropriate to their values. We had also many people searching for something which could put together their “passion for a cause” and a great “professionalism”.

The Master in Fundraising: a window on the future

A year in Forlì, attending the Master in Fundraising is a unique experience.
During the course ach participant is supported by a coordinator who works together with teachers, tutors, the university offices and the nonprofit companies involved in the internships’ activities. Our teachers and the staff have a mission: improve more and more the service offered.
But the Master does not end with the diploma delivery: it is a window on the future.
Life in Forlì at the Master is characterized by a living community composed by participants and teachers coming from different nations, professors who teach very different subjects, former students who continue to attend the Master in many occasions (for example during the Festival del Fundraising, an extraordinary event putting together all the former students and more than 400 people every year) and by nonprofit operators who share our passion for an ethical responsible fundraising.
This is why the participants in our Master constitute now an Alumni network which is active in the Master’s life and influential on the Italian fundraisers community.

Master’s subjects: the full competences

The Master in Fundraising is divided into six Subjects (S.1 to S.6), divided in turn in some Modules (M1.1; M1.2, etc.).
The Master in Fundraising includes 300 hours, divided in different lessons two times a month during the week end (Thursday afternoon, Friday and Saturday morning) in order to acquire the demanded competences. The programme aims at creating a complete fundraising course, providing all the possible competences areas for a fundraising operator.
In summary it is composed by:

• a reflection on the socio-cultural context of fundraising in Italy and abroad. (S.1)
• a reflection on the fundraising management observed and treated on a general level (S.2)
• a subject concerning fundraising strategic decisions (S.3)
• a subject referring to individual skills and instruments, among which different fundraising communication channels (S.4)
• a subject on “how to do” the different fundraising forms (S.5)
• last, but not least, the programme introduces legal and fiscal matters that would-be fundraising professionals have to know. (S.6).

Teachers: a wise mix of experience and method

Teachers of the Master in Fundraising belong to two categories.
Some subjects directly referring to the fundraising practise and theory are taught by an F teacher (F = fundraising professional or professional fundraiser). Other subjects providing supplementary competences are taught by experts (G teachers; G = generic), who are not always fundraisers or fundraising professionals (for example as for project management, fiscal issues, accountability, etc.)
Generally each subject is treated both by an expert and by a fundraising professional, except for subject nr. 5 (only fundraisers or fundraising professionals) and subject nr. 6 (only experts).

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