Major Gifts

A major gift caseload is not just a bunch of donors who meet a certain giving or capacity criteria. Current giving and capacity play into the selection of a caseload pool. From this pool, you should qualify the donors who want to connect. Your caseload will have donors of different economic quality, which is why you should tier your caseload so you know where to spend your time.

Don’t get me started on what we’re seeing in donor and donor value attrition. Terrible. Big donors are disappearing faster than you can blink. Why? No fundraising vision.

“We need more money. That’s why we’re starting a major gifts program.” This is how many leaders think the economy of a major gifts program works. They decide to do it and — bam! — the money starts to flow in immediately. These leaders need a dose of economic reality as it relates to major gifts.

How does your donor like to be communicated with? It’s not about how do you or your organization like to communicate — but how does your donor want to be communicated with, that best suits them? Knowing how your donor wants to engage will unlock a new level of relationship with them.

Stop for a moment, and have a heart and behavior check. Are you really focused enough on the donor and what they need? Do you express gratitude at the level and frequency you need to?

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.

I believe there is a crisis amongst major gift officers all over the world. It’s a confidence crisis that is causing good people, like you, to struggle and lose faith in their skills as well as cause donors to question the mission of organizations they either support or want to support.

Relationships take time. You know that. Your boss knows it. But we ignore time because that is how we have set up things. There is a budget to manage. A forecast to make. So, we go for the fake relationship. One where we pretend to care, but only if we get the money.

There is a major nonprofit that — I know if you heard its name, you would, by all accounts, say, “Wow, what a great organization that is doing such amazing work.” But, internally, the nonprofit has a leadership mess and toxic environment.

Managers and authority figures do not understand that spending the money to give their MGO admin support is the best investment they can make. The fact is that the cost of providing admin support to an MGO actually increases the return on investment (ROI) of the major gift effort.