Strong Relationships Build Major Donor Fundraising Success

As a profession, fundraisers constantly spend a great deal of money on training, education and consultants to learn various techniques to improve performance and results. One can never sit on their laurels. You are only as good as your next fiscal-year results. To keep things simple in fundraising — and to understand the fundraising cycle — there is one element that is vital to success throughout your pathway with a prospect you hope to turn into a donor — you must build a donor relationship based upon trust, ethics, honesty and passion for the mission.

Your prospects and donors will quickly size you up and determine if they want to create a relationship with you. It is all about the dating process, but it goes much deeper than that. Your job with a prospect is to have them establish a lifelong relationship with your institution — even long after you have left that organization. It takes a great deal of energy, motivation and commitment to keep positive behaviors with prospects and donors over a great deal of time.

Focusing on developing long-lasting relationships with donors will help you grow a dedicated base of support over time. When deciding what prospects and donors you want in your portfolio, look for affinity and capacity. Affinity is the level of dedication to your mission, and capacity is how much they can potentially give through use of research modeling. At the heart of a long and healthy relationship is a culture of authentic communication.

This is a process where, over time, you ask meaningful questions and receive answers that will help you decide on a strategy for long-term success. You might consider using a survey to keep you on track with asking specific questions you want answered. You should utilize prospect research and encourage your portfolio to volunteer for your organization. Develop a personalized stewardship plan for each prospect and donor. Understand their likes and dislikes, and adjust your relationship techniques accordingly. 

The Fundraising Authority shared a four-step process to build relationships with major donors. Larger donors want and need relationship building. As they feel they are making a large investment in your organization, they need to be comfortable that your organization is the right choice for them. Have a board member, donor or staff member introduce your nonprofit to the prospect.

If this is not possible, invite the prospect to an organizational special event and cultivate them! Once you get the donor's attention, take steps to make the major donor feel like they are part of your team. When you ask them for a gift, place the ask in terms of how your important investment would pay dividends for years to come. Strive to connect the donor to your fundraising priorities on an emotional level. 

When looking for potential major donors, strive for quality not quantity. Note that major donations represent less than 1% of all individual donations, yet major donors are responsible for over 70% of all donation revenue. Build your portfolio over time, ask for your supporter’s feedback, learn what motivates donors to give, track and review behavioral data, maintain an open line of communication, show donors the impact they are making, look at wealth indicators, and focus on donor stewardship. Always communicate with your donors through surveys and constant, face-to-face interactions. Retention is critical to expanding your portfolio base. 

The most important job of a fundraiser is to build donor relationships. A good donor relations management program ensures that your donors experience a cooperation between their contributions and the nonprofit’s efforts toward the cause. Stewardship is an internal organizational process of dealing with donors. Donor relations is how donors feel when connecting with a nonprofit. It is an external process.

Note that effective donor relationships require an introduction, trust, decision, commitment and nurturing over time. You need to identify prospects, segment donors, develop communication processes, encourage face-to-face interactions, show donor impact, thank donors, survey donors, act on donor feedback and monitor donor retention rates. It is important that you prioritize donor relationships over just asking for fundraising support. 

Organizations face pipeline challenges because of difficulty re-engaging lapsed donors and their inability to access new prospects. Your board plays a pivotal role in prospect development. Encourage your board to help research your prospects, create a board task force and encourage board viable connections. Strive to have each board member open doors with prospects and build relationships by cultivating them. Your board must assume ownership — along with staff and internal organizational leadership — for the development of the prospect and donor development process. 

Nonprofits must start relationship-building before they begin true major gift fundraising. Relationship-building is the essence of fundraising. Donors create first impressions with your organization through touches, such as phone calls, greeting someone in your office, meeting donors at dedicated events, interacting with volunteers and on social media.

Strong relationships lead to happy donors, stewardship of others, excitement about meetings, extended periods of consecutive giving, interest in volunteering, legacy giving, and improved communications. Relationship-building also leads to increased retention and major gifts’ success. Over time, with a positive relationship with a donor, you will see greater trust and passion. You will also note involvement, knowledge, and engagement. The deeper the relationship, the greater the willingness by your donors for them to gladly open their doors to their friends and associates. 

Fundraising at its basic form is transactional. At fundraising’s deepest form, this interaction becomes transformational. Strong relationships build major donor fundraising success. You develop a unique responsibility to each of your donors that ensures greater connectivity. This will lead to long-term and increased giving.

Learn from your development team, colleagues and leaders how to perfect the art of relationship-building over time. This important ability will lead to greater career success, increased job performance, amazing financial returns plus true happiness with your job.

Strive to make strong donor relationship building a top 2022 priority.