Major Gifts

The only way to achieve a successful major-gifts program is to work on it consistently, every week, 52 weeks a year (minus your vacation time, of course!). In other words, you have to stay the course in order to boost your nonprofit's bottom line with major gifts.

But don't despair! You don't have to hire extra staff or add 20 hours to your already-overworked week to make major gifts happen. In fact, you — yes, you — can raise major gifts in only five hours a week.

How do you work a caseload of donors when you can’t immediately hire a full-time major-gift officer? There are a few options. None of them is great, but these ideas will help you in the short term until leadership understands that your organization needs to invest in a full-time position or until the caseload is producing enough revenue where you can justify it. Here are three options: the development director works a caseload, the executive director or CEO works a caseload, and board members or other staff work a caseload.

What constitutes a major gift varies by nonprofit and depends on its size and depth of its donor base. A major gift could be as little as $100 for a small, grassroots organization and as large as $1 million or more for a large, established organization.

The first step in your major-donor campaign is to determine how much you think you can raise from major donors. To do that you need to define a major-gift level, analyze your major-gift activity and determine what investments in fundraising infrastructure you're going to make.

Every fundraiser would love to land a transformational major gift. But before you can nail down a major gift, you have to make a proper ask. In the August 2008 issue of FundRaising Success, F. Duke Haddad, executive director of development at the Salvation Army, Indiana Division, and senior principal consultant at G. J. Mongon & Co., broke down "The Anatomy of a Major-Gifts Ask."

A friend of mine recently told me that he wondered why each TED Talk presentation was so good. So he researched the subject and discovered that TED talk organizers actually have specific guidelines for each of their speakers. He sent me the list, and as I looked at it I realized that this list is exactly how a major-gift officer should approach a presentation to a major donor.

Here are 12 things TED speakers are asked to do.

Marketers use stories to draw the attention of a wider audience and to generate interest in your organization. In fundraising, including major-gift fundraising, stories motivate donors to provide financial support. Here are three tips for using stories to boost your organization’s bottom line through major gifts: 1. Facts are important, but emotions motivate. 2. Our stories aren't just for an audience of donors and prospects. 3. Ask your prospects and donors to tell you their stories.

One of the keys to a successful major-gifts program is having passion in your nonprofit organization, which in turn translates to passion in major donors. This past August, Veritus Group's Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels provided 10 steps to getting passion back into your organization in their feature, "Getting to the Heart of Major-Gifts Giving."

Let’s be really honest — every organization has challenges. However, for every organization that says, “I can’t raise money because … (fill in your excuse),” I can tell you about one in the same situation who is raising money. So what’s the difference? The answer is relationships.

Here are five important things you can do that will build relationships and increase your major-gift efforts.

Major gifts are a major boon for any fundraising program. And while that doesn't mean smaller donations have a smaller impact — far from it — every fundraiser dreams of securing that transformative major gift.

John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, vividly remembers nearly 40 years ago when he was a student at the university and he met Frank McCourt, then a newly minted Georgetown graduate visiting his younger brother on campus. “We were introduced on Healy Circle,” near Georgetown’s front gates, DeGioia recalls.

DeGioia and McCourt, now a billion-dollar businessman and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, struck up a friendship. Last fall they met for the announcement of the university’s new McCourt School of Public Policy, made possible by a $100 million gift from McCourt.