Major Gifts

As Alexander Graham Bell said, "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." His words ring true for any fundraiser today: Be prepared! Take steps now to ensure success when the time is right for a major campaign!

For donors and charities, there’s no place like home when it comes to very large gifts, according to a new study of publicly announced gifts of $1 million or more released by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The majority of such gifts (60 percent) come from donors who live in the same state or geographic region as the nonprofit or foundation that receives the gift, the report finds.

Major donors have changed a lot in what they want and expect from nonprofits. Ten years ago, you could raise good money with a “spray and pray”  appeal that was boring and generic. Now we have to work harder and smarter. The good news is that we can rely on plenty of research about major donors. What are they are thinking about their philanthropy and nonprofits? I’ve culled through the research — and here are my top 10 major-donor trends for 2013, along with a strategy to ride each trend productively.

How easy is it for charities to capitalize on major donor fundraising? And what are the skills and systems they need in place to be successful? Mary Glanville, managing director U.K. for the Institute for Philanthropy, says that charities should bear in mind that when major donors are thinking about making a gift they will often do careful research on the potential recipient organization.

Want to find out what’s on your donor’s mind? And what’s in her heart? Then try asking a very simple question. “What are your impressions of … ?” I can’t tell you how much money I’ve raised by using this question! This open-ended question gets pretty amazing results. It’s an easy, gentle opening to find out what a donor is thinking about my presentation, my cause, my event, my plans, and — my organization’s vision.

At last year's New York Nonprofit Conference by the DMA Nonprofit Federation, American Bible Society's Kim Carter and Stratmark's (now KerstenDirect) Max Bunch shared "4 Mistakes to Avoid and 3 Ideas for Uncovering Major Donors in Your File."

When it is your time to leave what happens with the relationship you have built up with your donors? Should you make plans to stay in touch? Give them your new coordinates?

Want to build a stronger major gifts program? What if you're new to an organization? What are the first steps you'd want to take in regards to Major Gifts?

Last year at the DMA Nonprofit Federation's 2012 New York Nonprofit, American Bible Society's Kim Carter and Stratmark's Max Bunch shared a case study on how the organization uncovered major donors in its mass marketing files. I attended the session and wrote about the findings in the feature "Case Study: Uncovering Major Donors in Your Mass Marketing Files."

If you know how to address your biggest donors, you will inspire continued and increasing support. If you don’t, however, you may lose a critical funding source. More tragically, you may turn off someone who wants to support your cause but who no longer wants to support your organization.

Below, we talk with CFRE Ruthellen Rubin, a nonprofit consultant and professor at NYU’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy & Fundraising, about the best ways for nonprofits to communicate with major donors.