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ICIC
Corpus of Philanthropic Fundraising Discourse
The
ICIC Fundraising Corpus project started in 1999 and has been funded
by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. It is an ongoing
project to build a corpus of fundraising texts and to study the
persuasive use of language in case statements, annual reports grant
proposals, and direct mail letters.
Background
The practice of fundraising has received little attention from researchers.
Several disciplines have looked at other areas of philanthropy.
However, no academic discipline has carefully examined the practice
of fundraising, and the research in this area has been left for
fundraising practitioners. In order to pursue a better understanding
of philanthropic discourse, the Indiana Center for Intercultural
Communication (ICIC) has initiated an effort to carefully study
the language of fundraising by collecting a large corpus of fundraising
material from over 200 non-profit organizations. The collected data
forms the ICIC Fundraising Corpus. See details of collected data
here.
Aims
The aims of the project are:
•To map a multi-disciplinary, comprehensive theory of fundraising
communication
•To produce theory based prototypes of successful fundraising
materials that can be used by fundraisers and in fundraising courses.
Corpus Description
The ICIC Fundraising Corpus includes over 900 fundraising documents
from 236 organizations and totals over 1 million words. The documents
in the corpus include not only direct mail letters, but also newsletters,
case statements, grant proposals, and annual reports. The corpus
is gathered from five separate fields in the nonprofit sector (education,
health, human services, arts/culture, and conservation/environment).
The data used for the project includes 316 direct mail letters from
108 organizations in five fields. The total number of words analyzed
is 191,540.
Data Collection
Data collection for the ICIC Fundraising Corpus started when two
international conferences were organized at IUPUI by ICIC and the
IU Center on Philanthropy (October 1997, August 1998). An important
aspect of the conference was the collaboration between scholars
and practicing fundraisers. This collaboration resulted in the collection
of a three-million word computerized databank of fundraising texts
consisting of the most important fundraising genres - direct letters,
case statements, grant proposals and annual reports. The data used
for research, drawn from the above corpus, included 316 direct mail
letters from 108 organizations. Each letter was scanned into a computer
and double-checked for accuracy. Each letter was coded to indicate
non-profit field, organization, and organization size (based on
income). This information was obtained through questionnaires and
interviews conducted with most of the agencies represented in the
corpus.
Analyses Conducted Using
the Corpus
Research on the fundraising corpus has taken place using an interdisciplinary
linguistics/rhetorical approach involving the following IU system
professors: Ulla Connor (English linguistics, IUPUI), Avon Crismore
(English linguistics, IPFW), Beth Goering (Communication Studies,
IUPUI), and Thomas Upton (English linguistics, IUPUI). Presentations
at national and international conferences and published articles
have focused on the analyses of fundraising letters in the ICIC
corpus.
The model of fundraising discourse that has been developed
is based on work with one genre in the corpus - direct mail letters
- how both the rhetorical and linguistic aspects of fundraising
texts contribute to the persuasive appeal of the content being presented.
In this model, the rhetorical analyses examine the effect of the
text on the audience, while the linguistic analyses are concerned
with the realizations of these intentions in explicit linguistic
features (words, sentences, and discourse patterns).
Future Research
Directions
This research project is significant in that it strives to highlight
the links between rhetorical and linguistic analysis, and ways in
which these analyses work together to persuade potential donors.
In other words, although rhetorical analysis is considered of utmost
importance for understanding persuasive discourse, the project will
also attempt to identify the explicit linguistic features that go
along with the rhetorical features, and ways in which these together
strengthen the persuasive effect of the content. For example, a
lot of interest is paid to exploration of how the linguistic dimensions
(Connor & Upton, 2001) of fundraising text and the rhetorical
moves (Connor, 2001; Upton 2000) are used to try to persuade readers.
Both discourse and linguistic analyses are being done to understand
how fundraising texts work and how they can be taught to novice
fundraisers working within a specific context.
*If you are interested in receiving a copy of the
ICIC Fundraising Corpus please contact icic@iupui.edu
(requires a $10 shipping & handling charge).
Project Members
Dr. Ulla Connor (uconnor@iupui.edu)
Director of ICIC
Dr. Thomas Upton (tupton@iupui.edu)
2001 Scholar in Residence
Dr. Avon Crismore (crismore@ipfw.edu)
Professor at IUPFW
Articles by the Project Members
to Download:
Understanding
Direct Mail Letters as a Genre
by Dr. Thomas Upton
Linguistic
Dimensions of Direct Mail Letters
by Drs. Ulla Connor and Thomas Upton
Access
a complete list of research articles and presentations concerning
the ICIC Corpus.
Other
Corpus Research: Fundraising Internationally & Indianapolis
Business Learner Corpus
Current
Research
Publications
Archives
up to
2005
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