Major Gifts: How Does Your Nonprofit Stack Up to Others?

Major gifts is a topic in fundraising that will never dwindle. These kinds of gifts are significant to all nonprofits, but cultivating these donors takes a lot of investment in time and energy. That’s why we have major gift officers. They specialize in building—and maintaining —these strong donor relationships and securing the gift. So, how does your organization stack up to to others, in terms of major gifts?

The “2017 Major Gift Benchmark Study: How Does Your Organization Compare?” reported that 26 percent of respondents said their organization receives an average major gift of $1,000 to $2,499, followed by $5,000 to $9,999 (19 percent), $10,000 to $19,999 (16 percent) and $20,000 to $49,000 (12 percent).

When it came to challenges in major gift fundraising, 54 percent said not having enough staff to time in their own day, 47 percent said board member involvement and 41 percent said identifying gift opportunities to match with donor interests.

What are your information collection methods? The top five methods via the study:

• Knowledge of staff (90 percent)
• Donor record/CRM analysis (78 percent)
• Prospect research (76 percent)
• Referrals from donors/board (72 percent)
• Knowledge of board members and volunteers (66 percent)

Respondents were also asked to pick prospect identification methods that were most closely associated with meeting goals, which were:

• Digital tracking (89 percent met goal)
• Prospect research (85 percent met goal)
• Database analysis (84 percent met goal)
• Prospect research (84 percent met goal)

Click here to read the full study.