Major Gifts

In my experience, major donors have a reputation for being untouchable. Communication with this group is often a delicate dance in which few risks are taken due to the high-dollar annual contributions that are at stake. Not surprisingly, there are a few issues with this ultra-sensitive approach to managing your major-donor relationships. The first is…

I was talking to a very talented major gifts officer who had a long track record of success prior to his current assignment. I could tell he was very frustrated. And he felt misunderstood. To put it plainly, he could not get management to understand that without program information he would not be successful....

Do you ever feel stuck in cultivation? Like you’re simply not sure it’s the right time to ask? How can you know when the donor is ready? Figuring out when it’s the right time to ask can be one of the most difficult challenges for fundraisers to overcome. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to coach…

Six years before he died, Himan Brown, the creator of the radio dramas “Dick Tracy” and “Inner Sanctum Mysteries,” signed papers ensuring the bulk of his $100 million estate would go to a charitable trust under the sole control of his longtime lawyer. Now a lawsuit alleges that the lawyer, Richard L. Kay, duped Brown,…

“If you want to milk a cow, sit by its side,” said veteran major gifts fundraiser Jerold Panas in his iconic book, "Asking." Did you know, according to Panas, you’re 85 percent on your way to securing a gift if you can get your prospect to agree to a visit? But how do you get…

Over the last couple weeks, I've listened to major gift officers on why they haven’t done what they said they were going to do with their caseloads. All of their reasons have to do with losing focus on what their primary jobs are: creating and building meaningful relationships with donors...

Three days before Christmas, Boston University was awarded a $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for brain-injury research. The funding was supposed to come from a $30 million unrestricted gift from the NFL, but when the study was announced, there was no mention of the league's involvment. Did the NFL back out of the deal? Or was it never involved to begin with? Here's what we know...

Donors have a desire to provide real healing through giving. There is a desire to give another opportunity, to give themselves to others. That is really what is going on. Donors are not giving gifts. They are giving something of far greater value. They are giving relationship. You just need to find those real reasons in every donor relationship. Here's how that applies to you and your donors...

We know multimillion-dollar gifts are never anything to sneeze at. But the sizable shift in major-gift amounts from some of the wealthiest donors and their foundations is worth watching. And, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual ranking of the year’s top 10 biggest, publicly announced, single gifts, deep pockets were significantly shallower in 2015. We’ve highlighted some of the list’s biggest takeaways...

Twenty-three Chicago nonprofits answered the phone this week to learn they were lucky recipients of basketball legend Michael Jordan’s winning lawsuit. Jordan wore jersey No. 23 during most of his career with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan’s court case began in 2009 when the now-defunct regional supermarket chain Dominick’s used Jordan’s name in an unauthorized advertisement.…