Major Gifts

My guess is that you or some of your colleagues in the field are thinking, "What the heck is Jeff talking about now? Spirituality and major gift fundraising? What’s this all about? OK, I get it. Today, when you hear the word "spirituality," all kinds of stuff comes bubbling up. Some of what comes up is pretty negative. There is no doubt about that...

Another summer, another hefty charitable donation from Warren Buffett. He once again beat his previous record, donating more than $2.86 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock to a handful of charities on Wednesday. The gifts top the $2.84 billion he gave last July, which had bested the $2.8 billion he gave in 2014. According to an…

Several times a year you need to revise your caseload. Two things happen when you do this. You remove donors who no longer meet your caseload criteria and you add new donors who do. This is important because, as a successful major gift officer (MGO), you need to be regularly renewing the donor mix on your caseload and bringing more and more valuable donors into relationship with you who want to relate in a more personal way...

Your organization is seeking major gift success, right? So let’s look for the actual major gift secrets that will bring you success. Most nonprofit leaders are confused and not sure where to focus in order to create major gift success. It’s a complex undertaking. But it’s clearly where the money is! Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, shared…

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy venture has made its first major investment, leading a funding round in a startup that trains and recruits software developers in Africa. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, created by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, led a $24 million Series B funding in Andela, the startup said on Thursday. Alphabet’s GV,…

Billionaire sister and brother Alice and Jim Walton have explained last week’s $250 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to aid in building charter school facilities as a salute to their parents’ emphasis on education. “My parents spent a lot of time with us growing up just enforcing the fact that education is what…

Good news for fundraisers everywhere. Giving is up! According to Giving USA’s 2016 report, which was recently released, giving is up across the board. Americans gave more than $373 billion dollars in 2015, breaking the record set in 2014. This might be hard to hear, but if your organization didn’t meet its goal, it might…

The Miami Dolphins donated more than $5 million to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center on Wednesday, the largest single amount ever given by an NFL team to a charity. The funds were raised through the Dolphins Cancer Challenge (DCC), which includes fundraising bike rides of varying lengths that end at the Dolphins' stadium. "I'm looking…

It isn’t necessarily your organization’s mission that matters most to ultra-wealthy donors. Some data sets are worth going over twice and making a video about them so that they sink in. This week’s Fast Facts video is one of those data sets. After all, what organization couldn’t benefit from better understanding what factors inform and…

We often are asked our opinions on the ideal relationship between the leader of the development department and the major gift officer (MGO). Here is what we think, organized by category of work on the left and the two roles to the right...