UNEARTHING MAJOR GIFT DONORS

When I got off the phone with a certain special someone yesterday I thought about how major gift fundraising, the topic for most of my day, is rather like courtship – there has to be attraction, affection and ability – or the relationship won’t happen. Like dating and moving a relationship forward, a gift solicitation can go a few ways. The rejection, “I just want to be friends.” A simple date, nothing more. Or, yes, the commitment, signaling the beginning of a deeper extended bond.

Individuals are the more reliable source of charitable gifts and typically give the greater portion of nonprofit income. Securing a major gift is the result of a cultivation process. But who to cultivate is the million dollar question!

Your current donors are your best prospects to make future major gifts. Hank Rosso, founder of the Fund Raising School, said that every donor at one level is a prospect for a gift at a higher level. All too often prospect identification focuses exclusively on wealth, creating the false expectation that someone can be converted from a low level of support to a major gift only because they have the resources.

In the perpetual search for vital information to identify prospects, individuals should be qualified by three criteria – and they must meet these three criteria before a solicitation can be made:

Linkage to the organization or organizational leaders,
Interest in the organization’s work and
Ability to give gifts at significant levels.

Combine off-line and web-based techniques to gather data on a person’s current relationship with your organization. Donations to other organizations and service on non-profit boards indicate an active giver. When reviewing donor contribution records, consider recency and frequency of gifts, as well as the largest gift and total gifts. In determining an individual’s ability to give, consider discretionary assets and income, not gross income; consider liquid assets, not fixed, as in real estate.

With this information you can identify those people who require a more personal approach to make a dramatic move up your gift range chart. This information will help you prioritize your fundraising plan and initiate a measured cultivation program. Put all of this together and you will be able to develop personalized strategies for those people most likely to give a gift, give that gift to your organization, and give the size of gift you need to support your organization.