Podcast: Prioritizing Major Gift Fundraising: Strategies for Development Directors
Season 3, Episode 61
In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt dive into the essentials of prioritizing major gift fundraising. If you are a development director feeling overwhelmed by urgent tasks, this episode is for you. Amy and Andrea discuss how to shift your focus to the important work of cultivating and soliciting major gifts, which are crucial for successful fundraising and capital campaigns.
Tune in to learn how to balance your urgent tasks with the crucial work of engaging major donors, and discover the steps you can take to double your fundraising revenue by prioritizing the right activities.
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Amy Eisenstein:
If you are like most development directors, you are probably swamped and overwhelmed by the urgent, but have no time to get to the important.
Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein, I’m here with my colleague and co-founder and co-conspirator, Andrea Kihlstedt, and today, we are going to talk about how to help you prioritize and find the time to work on your most important tasks in fundraising. Andrea, let’s get started.
The Importance of Meeting with Donors to Raise Major Gifts
Andrea Kihlstedt:
I realize that what we really are talking about here is not any old kind of fundraising. We’re not talking about direct mail fundraising, we’re not talking about social media fundraising. We’re really talking about major gifts fundraising, which really is what moves the needle on fundraising for everybody.
And if you’re thinking about what you can do to move the needle to raise more money for major gifts fundraising, there is only one thing you should be doing. And it is, Amy?
Amy Eisenstein:
Meeting with donors.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yes, yes.
Amy Eisenstein:
And of course, it’s funny for us to have a topic where we don’t really lead with capital campaigns, but obviously this makes or breaks capital campaigns, but you should be doing major gift fundraising all year, every year, whether you’re in a campaign or not, and it becomes even more important during a campaign.
So if you’re not in a campaign yet or you’re wrapping up a campaign, you still should be prioritizing your biggest potential donors, which is why this topic is so important. And what we find over and over is that nonprofit leaders, executive directors, development directors are really so, so swamped by things that seem urgent, but in the long run aren’t nearly as important.
And I always like to talk about fundraising, looking at, what are the aspects of fundraising you’re doing that have deadlines? So grant writing has deadlines and direct mail, whether it’s for Giving Tuesday or the end of the year. Your fundraising events have deadlines, they’re coming up, but major gifts don’t have deadlines necessarily, except for when you’re in a campaign, which is a nice aspect of campaigns that creates some urgency. But you should be doing major gift fundraising all the time.
So Andrea, how are people going to find the time and how can people prioritize this most important part of fundraising?
3 Things You Should Do with Major Donors
Andrea Kihlstedt:
It’s so important. Before we dive into that, Amy, let’s just remind our listeners that there are three things you can be doing with your major donors.
- You can be cultivating them — introducing them to your organization, bringing them closer to your organization, connecting them to your organization and to your mission, getting to know them, inviting them to give advice about something, right? That’s all cultivation.
- You can be asking them for gifts.
- And you can be stewarding them. That’s what it is you do after someone makes a gift, and then it blends, that blends back into cultivation at a deeper level.
So we’re not suggesting that the only thing you should be doing is asking, not at all, but we’re suggesting that you should be spending a lot of your time, a significant amount of your time, building relationships with major donors, asking them, stewarding them, getting to know them, having them get to know your organization and moving them and their relationship to your organization forward. And over time, that really will pay off.
Finding the Time to Cultivate Major Donors
Now, as Amy says, there is no artificial deadline to doing this. So, how do you do it? Well, the first thing we recommend is that you find a way to free up some time in your schedule, that you actually look carefully at all the things you do, and figure out how you can get rid of some of them. Because as we began by saying, I’m sure you’re busy, it’s not that we think you’re sitting there doing nothing. We know you’re busy. So if you’re going to spend more time with major donors, you’ve got to find a way to free up time.
And what we recommend is that you take a week, maybe even two weeks, and write down everything you do, make a list, a little not fancy list of everything you do for as long as you can tolerate making that list and until it becomes repetitive. When you have that list, go through with a red pen and circle everything that only you could do, right? Only you.
Now as Amy likes to say, if you’ve circled everything, that labels you as a control freak and that’s not good, that’s not a good leader, you’re not a good leader if you’re doing that. Probably, only about a quarter of the things on your list will be things that only you can do, and the rest of them, you can find a way to get off your plate. Now, Amy, how would someone think about doing that?
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, I mean, I think that of course it’s challenging, but if you’re going to be raising more money, then you might use this opportunity to think about hiring additional staff for your team, right?
So we would love to see you all be able to hire an additional administrative person if you’re doing data entry or if you’re doing something with the database. Who else at your organization? Maybe at the beginning, it’s a really trusted volunteer, but as you get bigger, it’s another staff person. To me, it’s about delegation, right? Who else on your team, your existing team, your new potential team, volunteers, can you delegate some of this stuff to?
But also, what should be eliminated? What are you doing that shouldn’t be happening? I encourage you to look at your fundraising for the year and look at grants that are only bringing in $1,000 or $5,000 or events when you net, after you take out expenses are only netting $10,000 or $20,000. This is one major gift, and so if you can eliminate two or three of the fundraising activities or events or grants that you’re doing, that also is, some of it’s delegating and some of it’s eliminating.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right, I think that’s a great point, Amy, and really someone creative with colored pens, they could sit with their list and they could maybe use one color to circle the things that they absolutely have to do. They could use another color to get, rid the things they might be able to eliminate, and the third color for the things that they can delegate and they can even sit with some of their staff members and get help figuring that out. I mean, right there, everybody would start thinking more constructively about, how do we do more, to have time where our leaders get to go out and talk to major donors, because that’s where the money is.
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, as we were getting ready for this Andrea, I was thinking, for every event that you get rid of, let’s say you have a whatever event it is and it raises, it nets 10,000 or 50,000, it doesn’t matter. And then you make a plan to raise double that in major gifts in individual donors. So, if you’re eliminating a grant that generates 5,000, then strategize, how can you raise $10,000 from an individual or two individuals, and how would you spend your time differently? You’re going to be so happy you did and hopefully double your fundraising revenue.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right, and it may be that people say, oh, well, I don’t know anybody who would give us that $10,000 or that $5,000. And you have to remember that you may not know anybody yet, or you may well have people in your donor files that you just haven’t asked specifically or you haven’t cultivated or you haven’t brought along, so that they will be happy to give you that money. I mean, that’s the work that you have to do and if you’re not doing that work, you’re never going to know somebody who could give you that money. And if you are doing that work, guess what? Those people are going to show up.
Amy’s Rule of Thumb
Amy Eisenstein:
Here’s my rule of thumb — there’s two things:
- One is you need to work on your case for support so that donors would be excited and happy to give those kinds of donations. So, do you have a compelling case around a gift of that size?
- And second, I want you to look at all the people on your list who are giving to your annual fund, maybe giving through direct mail or online, who are giving one 10th of the gift you’re looking for.
So if you’re looking for $10,000 gifts, collect the 10 names of people that are giving 1,000 right now. If you cultivated them and engaged them and asked them for a gift of $10,000, they may well do that. They’re highly likely to do that, if they’ve been giving $1,000 through the mail where they haven’t been cultivated, they haven’t been solicited in person, there’s a good chance, a reasonable chance that they would give $10,000, 10 times whatever they’re giving, if you took the time to cultivate them and ask them for something specific that was important to them and to your organization.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
In the capital campaign business, we get to see that all the time, that people always start thinking about a capital campaign and they say:
“Well, we don’t have anybody who has given us $1 million. We don’t have anybody who’s given us even $100,000.”
And we often ask the question, well, have you given them something worth asking them $100,000 for? Have you given them something to consider that size of a gift for?
Chances are they’ve never asked anybody for a bigger gift and they haven’t built their relationship to support that. It doesn’t mean the people couldn’t do it, it means that the donors haven’t been treated and cultivated in a way that they will consider bigger gifts. And that as a leader of your organization is where you should be focusing your time.
Amy Eisenstein:
Right, it’s very concrete and tangible. Run a list of everybody who gives your organization $1,000 or more. My guess is that there’s at least a dozen of them, and those are the people that you should be cultivating this year for major gifts, and you should be sitting down and asking them for gifts in person and you will have 10Xed your fundraising.
And then it’ll be so easy to say, we don’t need to do this event. We don’t need to do this a grant. We don’t need to do these little things that are taking so much time and energy and burning out our staff members. So as much as delegating, then you’ll be able to hire more staff. This is how you’re going to grow.
What Good Cultivation Looks Like
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Let’s give people a little example of how we might do that. Let’s assume, Amy, that you are a $1,000 donor to an organization, and that’s a nice annual gift for you, right?
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
So you know the organization, it’s not like you’re just shutting your eyes and throwing money at them, you actually think about that gift, right, if you’re going to give them a gift?
Amy Eisenstein:
Yep.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Let’s say I’m the executive director and I know that you’ve been giving $1,000 a year for the past few years. So I might call you up and say:
“Hey, Amy, your last gift just came in and I’m so pleased with it. I would love to have you come over and actually see what we’re doing here. You haven’t been over in quite a while. It’s so exciting and so heartwarming to see the kids. Can we make a date for you to come and have a brown bag lunch? I’ll get the lunch, we’ll eat lunch in my office, and then we can actually go and see the program. Would that be okay?”
Amy Eisenstein:
That would be great, and I would reverse it. I’d see the program first and then have lunch or even have coffee. It’s hard to eat and talk at the same time, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Whatever, whatever suits.
Amy Eisenstein:
It doesn’t matter.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Whatever fits, but it doesn’t matter. The point is —
Amy Eisenstein:
See the program and then sit down and talk about how amazing it is, right?
Andrea Kihlstedt:
The point is that I’m not calling Amy and saying, “Thank you for your gift, goodbye.” I’m calling Amy and say, “Hey, would you come over? I’m so happy that you’re a donor and I want to get to know you better, and I want you to get to see our program in action. Can we get together next week?” Right?
Amy Eisenstein:
Right. And you’re not asking me for the gift at that meeting either.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
That right, that’s right, yes.
Amy Eisenstein:
You might invite me to volunteer or you might invite me to serve on a committee.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s right.
Amy Eisenstein:
You might invite me to come do direct service, see what my interests are, and learn why have I given the $1,000 donation every year, right?
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, and imagine if you have, let’s say 10 Amy’s, and every week you say, well, who am I going to call this week? Who am I going to call and invite over? And you can change what it is you’re going to do depending on the person, depending on how comfortable you’re feeling, depending on what you want to do.
But if every week you make an actual in-person advance to someone to do something more personal where you get to know them and they get to know your organization, that will lead to a whole bunch of things that you’re not thinking about yet, and that will make you a better fundraiser and it will raise significantly more money for your organization.
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, I want to remind listeners that the podcast is just one of the ways that we share tools and tips to help with your fundraising, and specifically if you’re thinking about heading into a campaign or you are into a campaign. So head on over to the Capital Campaign Pro website for all sorts of free [campaign] resources, including webinars and blog posts, but if you’re getting ready for a campaign, we’d love to talk to you.
You can sign up to talk to us for free for a free strategy session so that we can… This is how we coach our clients every week and we advise our clients on making sure that they’re talking to the right donors, identifying the right donors, having those strategic conversations, engaging them, and then ultimately, asking for a campaign gift.
Summing Up the Discussion
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, let’s do a little bit of summary here. What we’re telling you to do is to look carefully at your schedule and realize that real fundraising is all about having the time and intention and energy to be talking to and building relationships with your major donors or the people who might be your major donors.
1. Eliminate tasks you can afford to eliminate.
And what to do to begin that is to look carefully at your schedule, eliminate what can be eliminated, delegate what can be delegated, and free up enough time so that every week you can be spending time doing major donor work, right? So that’s the first piece. Actually correcting how you spend your time so that a pretty significant part of your time is spent on major donor work. That’s number one.
2. Always be working toward drawing your major donors closer.
Number two, you need then to be reaching out to your major donors, and if you’re reaching out to them, you’re either engaging them or cultivating them, asking them or stewarding them. In any case, you’re always drawing them closer, and you can do that in a wide variety of ways. It tends to be about building relationships.
This is not about writing formal thank you letters — it’s about figuring out how to draw those people closer to you and to your organization. And the people that you should be prioritizing are the people who, at some level of organization, are the people who are already giving you $1,000.
You’re not looking for people who are outside someplace. You’re looking for the people who are already identified as being interested in your organization, and you’re looking to get to know them better and to move them up in your organization’s community so that they will want to give you more. And when you’re ready, you’re going to ask them for more. What have I left out, Amy?
Amy Eisenstein:
I think that was a perfect summary. Excellent topic today. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
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