Podcast: From $1,000 to $2.5 Million: How One Donor Stepped Up in a Big Way

Season 4, Episode 50

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt break down a true story about a $2.5 million gift — and how it started with a donor who originally gave just $1,000 a year.

This episode is packed with practical takeaways for campaign leaders who are wondering how to move donors from modest support to leadership-level giving. They reflect on the real work that happens behind the scenes, including building relationships over time, watching for leadership changes, and creating moments that spark genuine enthusiasm.

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Andrea Kihlstedt:
Can you move an annual donor up to a multi-million dollar gift? Listen to today’s session and find out how.

Amy Eisenstein:
Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and cofounder, Andrea Kihlstedt, and today we’ve got an incredible story for you. But it’s incredible and not unusual, because we see these transformative gifts happen every single day in the capital campaign world.

A True Story: From $1,000 to $2.5 Million

So Andrea, let’s get started with this story that you just heard from this organization that you’ve been working with for a long time. Tell us the story.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, so let me start the story by saying that my husband and I were at a movie theater the other afternoon, and I started getting texts from my friend whom I had been coaching and fundraising for a long time. And I got one text after another.

I said, “Listen, we’re out.” We kept getting texts. I finally said, “Are you okay?” Thinking maybe she was in the hospital. “Yes,” she said, “I’m okay. We just got a $2.5 million gift.”

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s exciting news! She couldn’t wait to share it with you.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
No matter how much I told her I was out, she couldn’t wait to share it with me. So next day I heard the story. So exciting. Here is the outline of the story. My friend had started working with the regional head of this company, asking him for an annual gift. She started asking him for $1,000. She was so persistent that finally she got an email that said:

“Listen, I’m going to give you some money. I’m going to give you $15,000 to get you to stop emailing me. Start the process, we’ll give you $15,000. We like what you do, but really, don’t harass me about this any more.”

So then he gave $15,000 that year, gave $15,000 the next year, gave $15,000 the year after that. For the organization it was a nice gift, not a leadership gift, nice gift. For the company, it was kind of a low-level gift, and my friend knew that.

So along comes the capital campaign, right? They start the capital campaign, science-based organization, and they have exhibits that can be sponsored. So my friend decided that it would be interesting to go to this company for a sponsorship and an exhibit. And she started paying closer attention to them and found out that the leadership of that region of the company had changed. And my friend set about getting to know the new leader.

So the guy who had said, “Don’t email me any more, I’ll give you money to stop emailing me,” was gone. This new person was now in. And my friend called and set up an appointment. Turned out that the guy was into science education and was happy to talk to her to learn more about her organization. At the end of their conversation, he said, “You know, my company has some money to invest in organizations that do this kind of thing. What do you suggest?”

She said, “Well,” in her mind she would ask for a sponsorship of a half a million dollar sponsorship. So she said, “Well, you can sponsor this particular project for a half a million dollars. Would that be interesting to you?” He said, “Yes, that would be terrific.” But before she hung up, she said:

“But if you want something that gives you more visibility, where your company name would be more broadly associated with this kind of work, we have a sponsorship project that is worth $2.5 million over five years, and here’s what you would get for it.”

She just did it almost as a throwaway before the end of her visit with this guy, just testing the water to see. Well, lo and behold, he said:

“You know, I’m interested in hearing more. Why don’t you meet with my marketing department?”

So my friend decided she was going to do a full court press. Now, what did that mean? Well, the marketing department had about eight people in it. She invited the marketing department into her organization and treated them as though they were a class of students. She did for them what she would do for a class of students coming into her science center. And she put together interactive things and had them do interactive things. And at the end of it, for the leaders of the organization, she gave a presentation of how they might support this particular project.

Well, she went back to her office and found out that the marketing department had been so excited by the presentation, by being in the classroom with her, that they had immediately been advocating for her organization with the new regional head, and that they were advocating for the larger gift.

So she had a follow-up conversation with the regional head, who said, “Yes, we will support your project to the tune of $2.5 million over five years, and you have to submit your proposal here.” So my friend, who happened to be going on vacation the next day, said, “When will we hear? If I submit, when will we hear?” He said, “Oh,” he said, “You’re going to get the money. I’ve decided, we’ve decided. You just have to fill out the paperwork.” Done.

So Was it Luck? Or Something Else?

Amy Eisenstein:
Listen, that is such a great story, but let’s pick it apart little bit. Because I think listeners are like, “Oh, that’s amazing. That’s lucky. But how can that happen for us?” To me, there’s a few important takeaways and magical lessons in there. One, of course, is persistence. It seems too good to be true, but this gift was years in the making. She had been cultivating this company. There was turnover. She kept cultivating, even being told to go away a little bit. She didn’t, she was persistent. And perhaps with the first guy maybe a little bit too persistent, but I’m not sure about that. I think just the right amount of persistence. So that’s one takeaway.

To me, the next really important thing she did was invite people into experience the organization. When we talk about engagement with donors, that’s one of the key things that we’re talking about. She could have gone to the company and sat in their board room and pitched the organization, but that wouldn’t have had nearly the same impact as inviting them in.

Now, was she sort of lucky that all eight from the marketing department took a field trip to her science center and were willing to sit through an hour class? That doesn’t happen every day. But that to me was really the difference between getting the gift and not getting the gift. Maybe, right? But going to a cold, sterile company conference room would not have had the same magic as bringing them in.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, or even worse, Amy, it would have been very easy for her to decide she was just going to write a proposal.

That she was going to sit down and send this guy a proposal for a half a million dollar gift or a $2.5 million gift or whatever it was, that she wasn’t going to do any of the other stuff, that she was just going to sit and put it on paper.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. Well, the third lesson here to me is courage, because he talked about half a million dollars, and she had the courage to say, “Well, what about $2.5 million?” And I think that very often we make assumptions that people won’t do more, that they can’t do more, that we shouldn’t ask for more. And so courage got her five times the number that he threw out and that they were originally talking about, but her vision was bigger than that. And you know what, the money was there.

So I think, will this happen for everybody? No, but it does happen every day. This is the kind of campaign fundraising that we see. And I think the other lesson is, she took a $10,000, $15,000 donor, or originally a $1,000 donor, and turned it into $2.5 million. That actually, maybe that’s the big lesson here, is those are the types of gifts that we see every day in capital campaigns.

I talk to organizations every day and they tell me, “Well, we don’t have any donors over $10,000 right now. How on earth could we ever get to a $1 million donor?” But my standard response is, “Well, you’ve never had a $1 million idea or a multi-million dollar idea, and you’ve never asked for a six or seven-figure gift, so why would anybody have ever considered giving you one before?” And I think to me, there’s so many good lessons and takeaways from this story, but really if you are sitting here listening, thinking, “We don’t have any donors over $10,000 or over $25,000, I can’t imagine anybody giving us $100,000, $1 million,” well, you haven’t made the case for it. And now with a capital campaign in the future or pending, you have this big vision, and if you’re able to be persistent and you’re able to demonstrate impact …

Now, you may not have a science center, you may not be able to do a science class. But my guess is that there is some way, sort of visceral way, to engage donors that’s much more impactful than a written proposal, as you suggest. How can you engage your donors? How can you involve them? How can you get them to feel, see, and have emotion about what you’re doing and the impact that you’re going to have? And then you can start to talk about bigger and bigger gifts.

Other Key Lessons

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You know, Amy, one of the other lessons that struck me about this story is that she started out with one contact in this organization and was persistent enough to get a gift, a recurring gift. So she had some relationship, her organization had some philanthropic relationship with this organization. And then she was paying close enough attention.

So she saw when the leadership changed and she was right on it. Not asking for a gift, but going and talking to the new person, telling them about her program, finding out what he wanted to do philanthropically in his position from his organization, what he had in mind. So she was paying close enough attention to not just make assumptions that the same old guy was still there, but when she saw a change, she went in to figure out if there was an opportunity. And lo and behold, there was a big opportunity.

You have to pay attention. You can’t just take money from people and not pay attention to who they are and not pay attention to who’s making the decisions and not pay attention to what’s going on from the philanthropist’s point of view. Maybe a person has changed, maybe a lifestyle has changed. Maybe someone has come into money that they didn’t have before. Maybe they’ve become more interested in your organization because their children have become engaged or involved.

This is not a static world where donors are just donors. It requires the organization, the development people, to really be aware and to stay in touch with their donors so that when there is an opportunity, they can move forward with it.

Amy Eisenstein:
Excellent. To me, it does sound like a one-off, but it’s such a good example, because we hear about these stories every single day. So if you’re planning a campaign and you want to talk to us about how we can help transform your annual donors into significant leadership level donors, that’s what we do with our clients. So I hope you’ll visit capitalcampaignpro.com and sign up to talk with us about how we can support you through a campaign.

If you like this story and this episode, please like, share, send it to somebody so that they can listen and learn from the lessons that we’ve shared today. We appreciate you, and we’ll see you next time.