Major Gifts

If Mark Twain was your major-gifts officer (MGO), he might amble into your office, lean his surprisingly slight frame against the doorway (he was just 5 feet 8 inches), brush a fleck of cigar ash from the collar of his rumpled white suit and drawl: "A round man cannot be expected to fit into a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

What's more important, a relationship with a donor or the money the donor can give? It's both. And here are the operating principles for major-gifts officers ...

Your major-gifts prospects are right in front of your nose. They are languishing inside your donor files — as small donors.

Are you qualifying the donors on your major-gifts caseload? If you aren't, you should be.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had an angel in your back pocket? An angel who stands ready to top off your fundraising so you meet your goal?

Just because you have a great cause and a good-hearted and even talented major-gifts officer does not mean your major-gifts program will be successful.

The reality is that if we are truly donor-focused and are building deep, genuine relationships, the ask really takes care of itself. It takes care of itself in terms of some people self-identifying and in terms of some people removing themselves from the process or from a timeline you had hoped for.

Do you keep track of each thing you do with major donors? If you’re like many major-gift officers, you probably don’t record much of what you do with each of your major donors. Well, sit back and watch this week’s video featuring Jeff Schreifels from the Veritus Group. He makes a good case as to why we need to be actively recording all of our moves with donors. And then he gives three tips on how we can make sure we record our major donor interactions.

More and more we are seeing donor files that have a great number of lower-dollar donors and quite a few midlevel donors (depending on the size of your organization, between $250-$9,999), but very few major-gift donors. It’s almost like once donors get in that middle range, they can’t move up. We’re seeing plenty of them moving down or going away entirely, but the funnel up to major gifts is clogged. Something is not happening, and they can’t get up and out.

If Mark Twain was your major-gifts officer (MGO), he might amble into your office, lean his surprisingly slight frame against the doorway (he was just 5 feet 8 inches), brush a fleck of cigar ash from the collar of his rumpled white suit and drawl: "A round man cannot be expected to fit into a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."