Major Gifts

Let’s be really honest — every organization has challenges. However, for every organization that says, “I can’t raise money because … (fill in your excuse),” I can tell you about one in the same situation who is raising money. So what’s the difference? The answer is relationships.

Here are five important things you can do that will build relationships and increase your major-gift efforts.

Major gifts are a major boon for any fundraising program. And while that doesn't mean smaller donations have a smaller impact — far from it — every fundraiser dreams of securing that transformative major gift.

John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, vividly remembers nearly 40 years ago when he was a student at the university and he met Frank McCourt, then a newly minted Georgetown graduate visiting his younger brother on campus. “We were introduced on Healy Circle,” near Georgetown’s front gates, DeGioia recalls.

DeGioia and McCourt, now a billion-dollar businessman and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, struck up a friendship. Last fall they met for the announcement of the university’s new McCourt School of Public Policy, made possible by a $100 million gift from McCourt.

While we focus on the main prospects, we tend to forget or disregard the importance of others in the prospect's life that could influence a gift or possibly the size of a gift to your organization. You never know the impact others have on your potential donors.

After the gift is received, announced and celebrated, where does a nonprofit board and its management go from there? And whose job is it to see that the donor remains engaged and involved in the organization? These are questions that I have been thinking about after a friend brought facts of his donor experience to my attention.

My friend, a business consultant, was suffering from donor's remorse, more formally known as cognitive dissonance. He has not remained in touch with the nonprofit and knows little about any innovative activities.

The $1 billion major gift to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, is the capstone of a long-term strategy to reinvent the foundation in a way that makes it as cutting-edge as the ventures of Silicon Valley’s high-tech donors. Similar calls for modernization are being made across the country by community funds.

In the January 2013 issue of FundRaising Success, Jeff Schreifels, senior partner at Veritus Group, asked the question: "Major Gifts — Just a Tweet Away?" And while he admitted that, no, simply sending a tweet or two more than likely will not lead to a major gift, social media can be an important part of a fundraiser's major-gift strategy.

Here are five common fundraising mistakes. If you are making any of these, correct them today! 1. Thinking your major donors want to hear less from you. 2. Not calling foundations to find if there's a match before submitting your proposal or letter of intent. 3. Putting off your e-newsletter because no one is making you get it out every month. 4. Not starting your spring appeal in February because, hey, you have two months, right? 5. Being afraid to ask questions.

Major giving may be the pinnacle of professional fundraising. Cultivating and closing a major gift is both an art and a science, and those fundraisers who are good at it become valuable in the charitable sector. But it’s not easy, especially when your time cycle is a mere 365 days long, when we fail or succeed at achieving our targets based on an arbitrary line in time called “the year-end.”

The bottom line is you must develop a major-gift program to increase fundraising revenue, reduce expenses and increase your ROI.