Major Gifts

A CEO who is actively interested and engaged in fundraising is critical to attracting transformative philanthropic investment. For CEOs who have a passion for building relationships with donors or who perhaps served as fundraisers earlier in their careers, rolling their sleeves up and jumping into the fundraising fray comes naturally...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the C-level donors on your portfolio lately. Why? Well, I was reviewing a mid-level program the other day and tracking all the donors that have moved from mid-level to major-gift portfolios… It was quite impressive...

The entire nonprofit community—in the U.S. at any rate—is obsessed with “major gifts.” You know the ones. Those gifts, which are of such size, that create big waves as they wash up on the beach of the nonprofit...

Let me assure you, no matter how much success you have had with your “free-flow” approach, you would have had double the success had you been working with a system that harnessed that energy and directed it towards high-value activity—believe me...

Through my experiences of fear and working to move past it, I also know what it’s like to live in freedom. Believe me, that freedom place is so much better. Today, I’m going to outline what it looks like when major-gift professionals allow fear to take over and then what it looks like when we can live in freedom. ..

Boston Medical Center has received a $25 million gift—the largest in its history—and plans to use the money to fight what it calls the “heartbreaking” public-health crisis caused by drug addiction and the opioid epidemic. The donation to BMC, which serves more low-income patients than any other medical facility in New England, will create the…

Chance the Rapper held a press conference at Westcott Elementary School in Chicago to announce that he is donating $1 million to Chicago Public Schools. “Our kids should not be held hostage because of political positions,” he said. He later revealed that he and Common will speak on the phone to discuss further funding. The…

Typically when Richard and I talk to MGOs about building a culture of philanthropy at their organization, there is a lot of finger pointing from the staff at management. I get that. It’s easier to look outside yourself to see what is wrong with a situation then to look inward...

All of us in major gifts know that there are different stages in the major-gift process. Many brilliant major-gift people have written about it. Words like identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship come to mind as descriptors of some big stages or phases of major gifts...

The MacArthur Foundation has chosen eight semi-finalists for 100&Change, a competition awarding a $100 million grant to the nonprofit or for-profit organization with the most distinguished, world-changing proposal. Submitted ideas include changing the way we care for orphans, treating blindness in Africa, providing virtual access to specialty medical care for the underprivileged and more...