Lack Donor Chemistry? 10 Tips to Strengthen Donor Relationships

Capital campaigns rely extensively on large gifts. It’s common for 70% or more of the campaign goal to come from the top 20 gifts. So the success of your campaign will hinge your ability to build strong relationships with the people who might make those gifts.

Sounds simple, and we often talk about it as though it were. But relationships — whether with donors, partners, friends or colleagues — are never simple.

Is Personal Chemistry Necessary for Donor Relationships?

This question, recently sent to me from Sara, a very capable executive director, caught my attention:

Dear Andrea,

I know I should be having fun, informative and challenging conversations with my top donors. But what should I do about the donors I don’t really have a strong connection with? The ones where the personal chemistry just isn’t there?

Should I have someone else in my organization meet with them? Should I just suck it up and pretend we are on the same page?

My immediate response to her question was this:

Chemistry matters, Sara. You can’t fake it.

That said, your relationships with donors are not primarily personal — they are professional. It’s wonderful and fun when you “connect” with a donor, but that’s not always the case. Whether donors like you or not matters less than whether they trust you and are behind your vision for the organization.

The more I thought about Sara’s question, the more complex and important it seemed to me. So I asked five of my colleagues — all leaders in the field — for their thoughts.

Advice from Fundraising Thought Leaders Across the Nonprofit Sector

How can a leader be expected to build strong, authentic relationships with all sorts of people — some who agree with her vision and others who don’t? Some with whom she has chemistry and others with whom she doesn’t?

10 Nuggets of Wisdom to Build Strong Donor Relationships

Here are ten simple tips I pulled from the responses of experts in our sector. I think you’ll find them most helpful.

1. You’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay.
2. You are the leader of the organization and you can’t delegate or subcontract the relationships with your top donors to someone else.
3. While you may not ‘connect’ with some of your top donors, you can show genuine appreciation and gratitude for their investment in the work of your organization.
4. You should prioritize your donor work NOT according to personal preference, but based on the donor’s capacity and inclination to give. Learn their interests and passions and serve them outrageously.
5. You have a responsibility to your top donors, not to be their friend, but to be the steward of their resources and the leader of your team.
6. Don’t pretend to agree or connect with a donor personally. That can’t be faked. But you should be able to find common ground in your shared passion for your organization.
7. Wildly differing personalities can peacefully coexist when everyone focuses on what really matters — the work!
8. Understanding your personality and patterns will broaden your range of responses to donors of many different types.
9. The worst thing you can do is to avoid the issues and hope they go away. Unless you deal with them, they never will.
10. Discuss the differences you have with a donor and, if possible, resolve them. If you can’t, then agree to disagree or part ways professionally.

A Special Thanks to My Colleagues for their Wisdom

As I read through their responses, I was struck by how consistent the advice was. Strong donor relationships don’t require you to be friends with every donor or to manufacture chemistry that simply isn’t there. They do, however, require honesty, curiosity, respect and a willingness to stay engaged — even when the relationship feels uncomfortable.

In the end, the work you share and the vision you hold for your organization can provide a strong framework for relationships that might never become personal, but can still be powerful and productive.

My special thanks to Amy Eisenstein, Mazarine Treyz, Jon Yarian, Richard Perry of Veritus, and Marc Pitman for their insightful responses.