Major Gifts

Bruce Makous and Michael Rosen provided five steps to turn your direct-marketing program into a major- and planned-gift program.

The $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch from billionaire George Soros announced last week will extend the overseas presence of the influential American rights champion and ensure its financial health for years to come. But the goal of the gift is more ambitious still: to alter the way human rights are promoted in the 21st century, making rights advocacy less of an exclusively American and European cause.

C-level executives Angel Aloma, Danny McGregor and Atul Tandon, along with moderator Tom Harrison, discussed the biggest issues concerning fundraisers at the DMA Nonprofit Federation New York Nonprofit Conference.

Major donors are invaluable for any fundraiser, and retaining them during these tough economic times is more critical than ever. At the 2010 Bridge Conference held in National Harbor, Md., July 26-28, Martha Schumacher, president of Hazen Inc., and Katie Jett Walls, manager of individual giving at Capital City Public Charter School, provided 10 stewardship tips to live by in their presentation, "How to Keep Your Major Donors Happy."

The traditional (and frankly easy) way to evaluate a direct-mail fundraising program is to determine net revenue and the number of donors you keep, gain and lose. A mature and well-managed program invests in acquisition, ends the year with more donors and, if really good, achieves an overall higher average gift to boot.

But major college fundraisers know there have been fewer alumni willing to whip out their checkbooks these days. So they've been focusing almost exclusively on major donors for large gifts -- a strategy that paid off this week with news of some record-breaking increases in private contributions. "The number of million-dollar gifts are up dramatically," said Gene Tempel, president of the IU Foundation, "and we've been emphasizing those major gifts." The Bloomington-based foundation helped Indiana University raise $342.8 million in fiscal year 2010, a 38 percent increase from 2009 and the second-highest amount ever. Purdue and Notre Dame reported

LEOGANE, Haiti -- Bill Clinton returned to Haiti on a new mission Tuesday to invigorate recovery from January's devastating earthquake and help millions end lives of poverty and danger.

On his first visit since becoming co-chairman of the committee overseeing more than $5.3 billion in international reconstruction aid, the former U.S. president visited the seaside town of Leogane, next to the Jan. 12 epicenter. Less than a fifth of its buildings survived, and thousands of residents are at risk from floods and high winds.

The fast pace and apparent shallowness of sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, as well as blogs and other online communities, seem to be the antithesis of what major-donor fundraising is all about. Not so, according to fundraising consultant Carolyn Appleton, who presented her case at the Nonprofit Technology Conference held in Atlanta earlier this month. In her session, “Major Gift Fundraising and Social Media,” Appleton tackled the old-school perceptions of social media.

October 14, 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy — Wealthy people who give away 10 percent or more of their income to charity have built a higher net worth — and tend to be happier — than other wealthy individuals who give less, says Thomas J. Stanley in his new book, Stop Acting Rich … and Start Living Like a Real Millionaire.

September 9, 2009, Tufts Journal — Bernard Gordon, known as the father of analog-to-digital conversion and for breakthroughs such as the fetal heart monitor and portable CT scan, has committed $40 million to Tufts University’s School of Engineering to advance its engineering leadership education programs.