Getting to the Heart of Major-Gifts Giving
7. Bring a person served by your organization into your work environment. There’s nothing like looking into the eyes of a person you’re helping. Bring her into, if possible, the very working heart of your organization. Let her interrupt the process of the daily routine. Gather people around her to focus back on what you’re really doing together. Find out what her life is like now and what it was like before your organization stepped in. What is her reaction to your involvement?
8. Keep talking — always — about your donors and the people you serve. It needs to happen continually, not just once. It’s important to keep this focus.
9. Get away from your desk and talk with others regularly about your donors and the people and causes you serve. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the work and be stuck at your desk or in meetings all day. Plan to be absent from your desk. Put it on your calendar. Get out of your office, and be with donors and the people you serve — for no reason other than to talk.
Spread around the joy you feel. Talk about why you’re there. Share a story of how a person your organization helped really touched you. Talk about specific donors and how encouraged you are about their help. Just get away from your desk.
10. Get emotional about things. This isn’t just about plans, charts, grids, logic and the mind. It’s about people. Allow your heart to be broken by the tragedies of life. Celebrate the victories. Get excited. Jump up and down. Be human. When your employees sense that you do have blood running through your veins, that you can cry and laugh, that you’re real — you’re on your way to getting passion back into the workplace.
If you’re hanging with Richard it won’t be long before you’ll be laughing.
He always finds something funny in everything. But when the conversation is about people, their money and giving, you’ll find a deeply caring counselor who helps donors fulfill their passions and interests. Richard believes that successful major-gift fundraising is not fundamentally about securing revenue for good causes. Instead it is about helping donors express who they are through their giving. The Connections blog will provide practical information on how to do this successfully. Richard has more than 30 years of nonprofit leadership and fundraising experience, and is founding partner of the Veritus Group.
Jeff Schreifels is the principal owner of Veritus Group — an agency that partners with nonprofits to create, build and manage mid-level fundraising, major gifts and planned giving programs. In his 32-plus year career, Jeff has worked with hundreds of nonprofits, helping to raise more than $400 million in revenue.
