Fundraising

How to spell fundraising

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fundraising

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fundraising mean?

1. nounThe activity of seeking and collecting money, usually for a charity, cause, or organisation.

Fundraising in a sentence

• The charity relies on fundraising to cover its annual running costs.

• The school launched a fundraising campaign to pay for new computers.

Where does fundraising come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern English compound, joining the noun 'fund' to the verb 'raise'. 'Fund' came into English in the 1600s from the Latin fundus, meaning 'the bottom' or 'a piece of land', the idea being a solid base or foundation on which value rests; the same root sits inside 'foundation' and 'profound'. 'Raise' arrived much earlier from Old Norse reisa, meaning 'to cause to rise', a cousin of the native English 'rear'. The two words were fused into the activity of gathering money for a cause, a usage that grew up in American charitable and political life in the late 1800s and spread quickly through the twentieth century. The spelling trap is that it is written solid as one word, with no hyphen and no space, and that 'raise' keeps its silent-feeling but essential first vowel pair 'ai'.

How the word is built

• fund (a stock of money)
• rais- (from raise: to gather or collect)
• -ing (noun/verb suffix)