Careful With Corporations

Careful With Corporations

Feb. 14, 2006

By Abny Santicola, associate editor, FundRaising Success

Soliciting second gifts from corporations? Better put on your kid gloves, says Lou Fontek, director of corporate and foundation giving for the American Kidney Fund.

"Corporations don't like getting hit up every three weeks or every four weeks [getting] asked for another gift," Fontek says. "They have to put it in their budget, what they're going to give. So you need to make sure that you know what you want to ask for, [and] ask them one time a year."

If an urgent need comes up later in the year, you can go back to the corporation, Fontek adds, but for the most part, he recommends creating a "menu" of gift options for the corporation once, and then letting it decide what it'll give.

"We get thank-yous from our corporations for the fact that we're only talking to them a couple times a year versus every week," Fontek says.

If you're trying to get a second gift from a corporation, he adds, you should focus on the corporation's bottom line, not your own.

"When the company sees value in what you do and that value is also a value for them as well, then you'll build a relationship with them," he says.

Lou Fontek can be reached via http://www.americankidneyfund.org