The Ins and Outs of Major Gift Fundraising

In the first quarter of 2024, major donors contributed just over a quarter of all dollars raised, per the Fundraising Effectiveness Project Report. Many nonprofits consider major donors as one of the most significant segments of their fundraising base due to their impact on revenue.

While every organization is different, there are some guiding practices that nonprofits should follow in order to attract and retain major donors. Here is some insight into what two nonprofits are doing to steward their major donors.

Who Are Your Major Donors?

The threshold for major gifts varies across organizations. For instance, at the ALS Association, the minimum gift amount to be considered a major donor is $5,000.

“The way I think about it is we're starting sort of our mid-level/annual fund gifts at that $5,000 level, but then our target for our major gifts is more in that five- and six-figure range,” Patrick Reedy, chief development officer at the ALS Association, told NonProfit PRO. According to Reedy, these gifts account for about 20% of the nonprofit’s funding.

Global Refuge also designates $5,000 gifts as major gifts, though it wasn’t always that way. In its 85-year history, the nonprofit has relied heavily on federal financial support, so it didn’t place much emphasis on individual donors. After funding for resettlement organizations like itself was cut in 2016, that’s changed — especially since Kabul, Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban in 2021.

“The generosity of people just expounded,” Beth Nelson Chase, director of major and planned giving at Global Refuge, told NonProfit PRO. “I would see daily gifts of $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 coming across virtually through our donor webpage, and then we also were receiving gifts of $50,000 up to $200,000 from family foundations and different sources that we never witnessed before.”

At that point, Global Refuge changed its threshold for major gifts — which makes up 10% to 15% of its funding — from $1,000 to $5,000.

The Major Donor Pipeline

Because major donors — by definition — give large sums of money to nonprofits, it may be easy to think of them as a “one-and-done” type of supporter. However, both Reedy and Nelson Chase said this is not the case.

“I'm proud to say that we have really good retention among our larger donors,” Reedy said. “Our biggest concern is really being able to retain donors at all levels so that a first gift to the organization really just represents that: a first gift.”

Of course, to get that first gift, you need to raise awareness for your cause. Reedy said that the viral Ice Bucket Challenge was a huge success in introducing the general public to ALS; the communities the organization has created across the country have further amplified this awareness.

Nelson Chase said Global Refuge’s president and CEO, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, has generated awareness of the nonprofit’s mission through interviews with various media outlets.

Once prospective major donors are aware of a nonprofit, retention is supported through the building and maintenance of these relationships.

“It's very, very important in major donor work that the relationship is built between a major gift officer and the donor,” Nelson Chase explained. “First in terms of thanking them for a gift, and then following up with impact statements and stories, opportunities to answer questions, to share some of the vision and mission of our organization. So, it's built on that relationship growing over time. Major donors are not the people that necessarily fall off once those relationships have been built.”

The Role of Major Gifts in Year-End Fundraising

With December once again rolling around, nonprofits are getting ready for their year-end campaigns and soliciting their donors — including their major givers. At Global Refuge, Nelson Chase said the team is already preparing for its visits with major donors, many of whom make their gifts within the last few days of the year.

Reedy said something that’s been a success for the ALS Association is gift-matching to drive donations during its year-end and GivingTuesday campaigns.

While major donors are an important part of year-end giving, Reedy emphasized the importance of year-round stewardship.

“Historically, we've had this reflexive response to year-end, which is: that's when people want to give, and that's when, of course, we want to close the year strong — and really trying to be more actively engaging our donors throughout the year,” he said. “Whenever it makes sense for a given donor to consider lending their support, we're giving them a chance to do that, rather than just assuming that year-end is that time.”

This can also help prevent you from overwhelming donors at a time they are likely being solicited by other organizations.

Keys to Major Gift Fundraising

According to Reedy, one of the cornerstones of major gift fundraising is to “find the intersection of hope and urgency.” For the ALS Association, he explained that the urgency is clearly evident.

“With a disease like ALS, which is so devastating and … it's such a challenging [thing] that families face, the urgency is there,” he said. “We can see that on a daily basis from the challenges that the disease presents, from the day of diagnosis until someone passes away.

“It's really our job to find those messages of hope to be able to interject while people are witnessing the devastation of the disease and how challenging it is in multiple different ways,” Reedy continued.

While major gifts are important to overall fundraising, don’t forget that major donors are not your only donors (i.e., don’t place too much pressure on their gifts).

“Probably something a lot of organizations are guilty of is really overly indexing those larger gifts,” Reedy said. “We all know those are the ones that are going to drive our success. So we all want to be always working on those seven- and eight-figure gifts that organizations are fortunate to find. The reality is we need to build a robust pipeline across all levels.”

When it comes down to it, as Nelson Chase shared, relationships are the foundation of major giving. Specifically, she said you need to understand each donor’s preferences and interests to build a solid foundation for a relationship.

“We think just because they have wealth capacity, that they're going to give to us,” she said. “... One of the things that I think for people that are early in the development world or in this area, they don't recognize that you have to earn that trust.”