Donor assets are like pure gold for an organization. If you were to place a value on each one, the resulting number would shock you.
Richard Perry
A major gift officer’s journey is never a straight and narrow line.
The African proverb speaks to the need for nonprofit managers to be aware of how their actions affect those they manage.
Resistance to change is a regular occurrence in our work with major gift officers. Most often, it is the director of development or the major gift officer who, on the front end, has difficulty with our work.
You’ve landed the job. You are the new major gift officer. Hopefully someone gave you a different title to use externally, because you should not use MGO as your title.
The other fundraising programs are not doing too well. Finance is going nuts, wondering how the bills will be paid. The executive director has a brilliant solution: launch a major gift program, and sit back and watch the money pour in.
I titled this post “Robots and Major Gift Officers” to get your attention and to make the point that it would be ridiculous to even consider that a robot could be a major gift officer. But I also want to make the point that in your daily major gift work, you have to guard that you don’t do robot-like work.
Purpose to examine all of your asks and proposals in the next week or so. And look at the “because” in each of them. Does your “because” have something to do with solving a societal problem? If not, you are on the wrong track.
You’ve done everything right. You’ve accepted the major gift principle that not all donors, who meet a financial metric, want to relate to you. You’ve laboriously gone through a larger list of donors who meet your major gift criteria.
It is an amazing thing to watch—truly amazing. Some authority figure casually deciding to hire a major gift officer to chase what Jeff and I would call ghosts and rabbits. It’s wishful thinking at its best...
Let me talk to you about technical communication. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who is blathering away, and you can barely understand what they are saying? It happens quite frequently in major gift communication. It’s called “talking over the person’s head.”...
The three elements of a successful major gift program are a good program to present to donors, good donors and a good major gift staff. Jeff and I have seen many major gift situations where one of these elements was missing, and it was impossible for a major gift program to really get traction...
You can tell what a person really thinks by the language they use or the behavior they engage in when the customer or donor is not looking. I was reminded of this truth at a Veritus Group retreat when one of our associates looked me in the eye and said: “Richard, the words you just used prove that you do not respect one of my important values.”...
There is something about social media and online communications that twists many people’s heads around to conclude that the up-and-coming Millennial cohort is where the money is. Couple this conclusion with a “direct mail is dead” view, and you have a deadly combination...
If you have attended a training program with a major-gift guru, you have likely learned many techniques and strategies on how to approach major donors. Much of this material is very good. But some of those trainings, a great deal of effort is made to manipulate the donor into giving. Major gift manipulation never works...
