Fund raising 29
Overall, this study has further opened up communicative exploration of the
existence and impacts of corporate ideology in university fund raising. Our interview
transcripts provide clear evidence of the presence of corporate strategies and assumptions
in the discourses of fund raisers. The interviews also reveal questionable connections
between corporate practices, and friendships of utility. We recognize that the interviews
used in this study are extremely limited in number and representation. We hope that
future projects will have more participants and can further expand understanding of these
issues. Future research may also closely follow this transitional period in university fund
raising in order to determine the consequences of these anticipated changes on the
corporate colonization of fund raising. Finally, critical researchers may wish to influence
how fund raising is conceptualized and enacted in the future, aiming for a critically aware
and ethically based system of fund raising.