Meet Rick Dunham. He’s the founder of Dunham+Company, a Plano, Texas-based organization that is a global leader in providing fully integrated marketing and fundraising strategies for nonprofit organizations. It has served more than 100 organizations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Dunham holds a bachelor’s degree from Biola University in Los Angeles and a master’s in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He’s on the board of The Giving Institute and is the immediate past chair of the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes the most widely respected annual report on giving in the U.S.
Dunham also is a member of The Giving Coalition, the national voice for American charitable organizations. To him, success isn’t about how much money you have or can generate. It’s all about the heart.
“If you look at the whole teaching of Scripture around money, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the one consistent thing is the heart,” Dunham says. “Go back into Exodus and you’ll see where God ordained the first fundraiser in Exodus 25. He says you need to command the people to come and you need to take up an offering and [accept from] everyone whose heart moves them to give. So God established back in Exodus that it’s really about the heart. … What giving is is really the exercise of demonstrating that we are not owned by what we have, but that we’re owned by God. … God doesn’t want His people on a guilt trip about giving. What He wants is a heart that’s wholly His.”
Dunham has channeled his heart into a pair of books - Secure: Discovering True Financial Freedom and If God Will Provide, Why Do We Have to Ask for Money? He has also been published and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, USA Today, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, among others. He has served as a commentator on Fox Business News and is a frequent guest on numerous regional and national radio programs.
Dunham is married and has three children and nine grandchildren.