Are Your Major Donors Qualified?

Now remember that what you're going to find is that roughly 1/3 of the donors, maybe more, who you contact are going to want more personal relationships with your organization. But there is nuance at play here. Many donors you are cultivating you already have relationships with. You know they will be on your caseload, so you don't need to go through this whole process. However, sending them a survey or phoning them to thank them and follow up with good questions is a good thing.

Unfortunately, I've seen caseloads with 450-500 people on them. That's a disaster waiting to happen! This process is perfect to get you down to the 150 you can actually manage and serve well. And this process works great for the small nonprofit where only the executive director is cultivating major donors.

In fact, I just helped a small nonprofit take a list of 150 potential major donors and got his caseload down to 45 (a number he can handle with all his other work). Just this process alone helped raise over $40,000 in new revenue because the executive director took the extra time to get in touch with donors.

That is another added benefit of this qualifying process: donations and a ton more information about your donor. There are only positives that come out of this process. You get donors who want to be cultivated in a personal way, you obtain revenue you didn't expect and you find out what your donors are most passionate about.

Awesome, right? Now, it's time to start qualifying!

—Jeff