Podcast: Finding and Securing Lead Donors for a Successful Capital Campaign

Season 5, Episode 17

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt explore how organizations can identify and engage the select group of donors who provide the earliest and most significant gifts in a campaign. Their conversation offers clear, practical guidance for anyone preparing to launch a major fundraising effort or reassessing their current prospect pool.

This episode closes with a welcome reminder: campaign fundraising is energizing when it is rooted in mission and authentic relationships. Following curiosity, learning about people, and building meaningful connections brings a sense of purpose to the work. That spirit is what leads to transformational support and lasting community impact.

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Andrea Kihlstedt:
I’ll bet you just have a couple of really big lead donors on your list, and you wonder how you’re going to find more for your capital campaign.

Amy Eisenstein:
Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt, and today we are going to be talking about lead donors, because as you know, lead donors to a campaign are critical for your success.

The Importance of Lead Donors for Your Capital Campaign

Andrea, why is this such an important topic for people to think about as they head into a campaign?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
When you head into a campaign, you have to realize — and this is hard for many people to understand — but that the majority of your campaign, well over 50% of your campaign, is going to come from a very few donors, from probably 20 or fewer donors. Now, think about that for a minute. Twenty donors to raise more than half of the money for your $10 million campaign? That sounds outrageous, because you probably only have two or three or four people who you can point to with a history of giving significant gifts to you. How do you fill in the gap?

People come to us all the time. They say:

“Well, we have a problem going into a campaign. We don’t have very many people who have given us big gifts.”

We hear that all the time. The reality is almost every organization that hasn’t done a capital campaign hasn’t yet mined what they might do, haven’t yet explored what they might do to, first of all, figure out who is already in their constituency who could give big gifts but hasn’t been asked, and then who is in their larger community who have the potential to give large gifts, but you haven’t built relationships with them yet.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. Let me just make a quick clarifying point. I think, when you say you have a few people who have made larger gifts, I mean, you may have a handful of donors who give more than $10,000 or even $25,000, but maybe not 100,000 or certainly not a million dollars. We understand that, and we’re not talking about a handful of donors who have already made six- or seven-figure gifts, because the truth is you’ve never asked them for gifts of that size. You’ve never had a big project or a big vision, so they’ve had no reason or inspiration or motivation to give at bigger levels.

Your biggest donors … at whatever size, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 … are probably going to be the prospects, those initial few lead donor prospects. At this point, of course they haven’t given big gifts to your organization yet, but you have a handful of lead donors, a few, at least few.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, a few.

Expanding Lead Donors for Your Capital Campaign

What are the things you might do to actually begin the work to expand that group of people? Well, let’s put some numbers on the table. Let’s say your campaign is a $10 million campaign, right? We’re going to give easy numbers here. If you have a $10 million campaign, the top gift to your campaign is probably going to be two and a half million dollars. You need one donor to give two and a half million dollars, and then you probably need a couple more donors to give a million dollars.

Now, those are the people you’re looking for, and chances are they already have some kind of a relationship with your organization, but you may well not have picked them out as people who have the capacity or the habit of giving that kind of money yet. Where do you go, Amy? How would we tell people to start this process?

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. Well, I mean, what you want to do, of course, at the beginning when thinking about a campaign, is who are the people that could or might give those leadership-level, million dollar-plus gifts? As Andrea said, you’re going to need a handful of people to give… at least three people, maybe four people… to give in the million-dollar category, so you need to come up with a list of maybe 10 people who could and might give those kind of gifts.

You’re going to of course start with your most loyal and your largest donors, people who have given to you in the past and recently who give your largest gifts, and maybe they only give your organization $5,000, but maybe they’ve given the hospital half a million dollars or they’ve given their university a larger gift. They haven’t been big donors to you yet, but there are indicators that you’re aware of that point to the idea that they could give a significantly larger gift to your organization as well. That’s what you’re looking for.

You’re going to look through your data, pick out your largest and most loyal donors, your recent donors, donors from the past. You’re going to do wealth screening. You’re going to talk to people in your community, board members, others who know them, and you’re going to come up with the best list you can. What do you want to add to that?

Finding Lead Donors Your Community

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, so I want to add a couple of things. You’re also going to be looking at your community. Now, if you’re in a city like New York, it gets much more complicated, but if you’re in a community that has 100,000 people or 250,000 people, sort of a city that you can wrap your arms around, then you should be looking to see who are the major donors in your community. Most communities have a cluster of people who give again and again at significant levels to organizations in their community, and sometimes they will give significantly to a capital campaign for an organization in their community, even though they aren’t important regular donors to that organization.

They want to see their community do well. They understand the importance of what you’re doing, so they’ll help you get to the next level, even though they’re not one of your major donors. You’re going to want to become Sherlock Holmes in your community, and really do some looking and see who are those people. Who are the major donors in your community who step up again and again?

Amy Eisenstein:
You can literally go on a half-day tour. Go look at donor walls. Go to the hospital, go to the theater, go to the library, go to the local museum if you have one, and take pictures of the donor walls and see what names appear again and again, and hopefully they give you… whether it’s small gifts or some board member knows them well, so what are the connections? Have they ever given you a gift, and who appear on those top 30 names of donor walls again and again? You’ll start to see patterns.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That turns out to be so interesting, actually. Once you get curious about it, you never walk by a donor wall quite in the same way, right? You’re always looking. I always look at donor lists when I go to the theater, for example. I always look. I always like to see who’s at the top. Even here in New York where, as you know, it’s a huge, big city, some of the same names come up again and again.

All right, let’s say you put together a list of five or six people in your community whose names come up again and again, but you find that maybe you only know one of them. What do you do with that? How can you move that forward? Well, chances are, the one person on that list is going to know all the rest, or at least some significant number of the rest. What you might do is to call up that person who’s a donor to you and say:

“Hey, Ben, I’m working on expanding the group of people who support us, and I wonder if I can come by and talk to you about this list of people that I have and get your suggestions about them.”

You go and sit down with Ben, who is on the list. You say:

“Ben, here are these five other people. Do you know any of them? Would you be willing to help me make introductions? What can you tell me about them? Are these people that I should be getting to come to our organization?”

Ben’s going to help you get to the rest of them because Ben’s going to know, because his name is with those people again and again. Ben will have gone to the same galas. He’s probably a member of the same country club. He probably plays golf with them. He’s going to know these people.

Amy Eisenstein:
They sit on boards. They sit on multiple boards.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
He sits on boards with them. If you know one of these people in your community, you can get to the other people in your community, and that’s a great starting place.

Another Way to Find Lead Donors

Now, sometimes you can dig back farther into history. I have a little story to tell, a quick story. I worked for a private school. It was a very old private school, actually one of the oldest private schools in the country, in fact, and the school had fallen on hard times. We worked to get a campaign going, and because the school was on hard times, they hadn’t done a good job of keeping up donor relations.

What we did for about a couple of hours one day was we went around with a clipboard. We decided that we were going to make a list of everyone whose name appeared on a plaque in that school anywhere. Now, it was a school with a campus, so benches had plaques, gardens had plaques, trees had plaques, walls. There were plaques on walls. There were pictures of people with names on walls.

Amy Eisenstein:
I bet there were bricks.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
There were bricks. I mean, it was unbelievable. Most of them were ill-kempt, weren’t polished. I mean, it was really embarrassing to see how badly these names had been kept. By the time we finished, we had a couple pages of people whose names had been memorialized in some way with the school, then we did some homework. We said:

“All right, how many of these names are current? What do we know about these names? Do they have any current relationship with the school?”

Lo and behold if we didn’t find some really interesting relationships, the biggest of which was that one of the people from generations past, the grandson served on a board, on a local foundation board, that gave away a significant amount of money. Right? Now, the school hadn’t connected those two, but lo and behold, the school built a relationship with the grandson, could talk about the grandparents who had been honored by the school. The relationship built, and there was a significant gift.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yep. You never know, I think.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You never know. That’s the point.

A Word of Caution

Amy Eisenstein:
On the one hand, I don’t want anybody to go away thinking we’re sending you on a fishing expedition. That’s not a good, productive use of your time, but getting curious, exploring relationships, talking to people, being thoughtful, making the connections, it is a good use of your time. It’s important.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
These are intentional fishing trips.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes, okay.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Nothing wrong with fishing trips, like when they go to talk to Ben, right?

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, that’s very strategic.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
“How was your fishing trip?” Right?

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, it’s very intentional and strategic.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Oh, it has to be intentional and strategic, right? It’s not just, “Tell me the name of a rich person.”

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. Yes.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s the difference.

Amy Eisenstein:
Not just a list of here are all the rich people, but, “Here’s why I think they might be interested in our mission. Here’s why they might be connected.” We know they have a granddaughter who does X, Y and Z with animals, or has cancer or went to the school, or whatever the case may be.

With Regards to Your Feasibility Study

One of the things that I wanted to think through, a lot of people, when I’m talking to them and they’re considering starting to work with us as they approach their campaign, they ask, “How long does a feasibility study take, or how long to prepare for a feasibility study?”

Part of the process of getting ready for a really good feasibility study is making sure that you’re identifying and including the right people to talk to in your study. I always say, “Well, how big of a list can you generate? Do you have 20, 30, 40 names of people who can give $100,000-plus gifts? If not, how are we going to go through a process like this, and how long is it going to take? If you can print out a list for me in 15 minutes, it’s much quicker.”

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right, but if we need to do some exploring and research and conversations, then it’s a little bit longer. Now, some of this happens, of course, post feasibility study in the quiet phase. You have your top, top donors, but maybe you’re going to the next level and you’re reaching out to people. It happens throughout your campaign, but really, finding some of these people to talk to in the feasibility study is a smart thing to do.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, I want to encourage everyone to make this phrase a part of their language that they use when they talk to people about their organization. The phrase should be, “Who else should I be talking to?”

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes.

Networking Opportunities

Andrea Kihlstedt:
“Who else should I be talking to?” Because one person is going to lead you to another person. If you make a habit of asking that, particularly of people who have the capacity to give, they will lead you to other people who have the capacity to give. If you’re in a habit of doing that over years, you will build your organization in ways you never imagined, just by asking that kind of question and then following through with it. Right?

Let me just take that one step farther. Let’s say, Amy, I’ve come to talk to you about the organization, about what we’re doing, and get your opinions about some things. I say to you at the end, “You know, Amy, who else? Who should I be talking to?” Well, you tell me, “Go to Sally Smith.” I go talk to Sally Smith. Well, lo and behold, I then have a great reason to get back to Amy. “Amy, I had this fantastic conversation with Sally Smith. Sally actually is going to come and have a visit to our organization. Thank you so very much.” That’s a twofer, right?

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes. I love that. Right. Make sure that when you’re asking that question, it really is from a place of curiosity, of authenticity. It’s not, “Who should I be going to talk to about money?”

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right.

Amy Eisenstein:
It’s, “Who might be interested in our project? Who else should I be talking to who might care about our mission, who might want to learn about what we’re doing?” Try and take money out of the picture for just a minute when you’re talking to these people. I would modify your sentence a little bit, Andrea … and I guess, of course, it depends on the circumstance and who you’re talking to … but, “Who else might we talk to,” right?

We’re the organization. It’s not just about me, not just who else should I talk to, but, “Who else should we as an institution talk to? Who could you introduce us to?” That spirit of I’m here on behalf of an organization. It’s bigger than me. It’s about the project. Anyways, just other ways to think about it. Play with it. Use your language. Find the language that works for you. We’re giving you examples, but the idea is this spiderweb of network.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
To build, always expanding on this network, on this spiderweb. Indeed, it’s one of these curious things about fundraising, and that is that mainly, it’s not about money. Really good fundraising is about mission, not about money. If you’re looking for money, people with money, you’re not likely to succeed in this. If you’re looking for people who are passionate about your mission, who really care for some reason about what it is you do and the change you make in the world, then doors will open for you, just as Amy said. I’m so glad you brought that up, Amy.

Amy Eisenstein:
Excellent. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times actually when I’m talking to prospective clients, they’ll say, “Oh, well, we’re having conversations before the feasibility study.” Great. These are the conversations you can set. “We’re thinking about a big expansion. We’re thinking about this exciting project. Who else should we be talking to about it as we start to develop our plans?” Those are good conversations to have. Start building your list. Start making introductions. Start meeting people, even if you’re very early in the planning process,

Building Relationships Can Be Fun When You’re Curious

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, sometimes people look at me like I’m crazy when I say this fundraising business really is fun. It really is exciting and it’s fun. They look at me like I’m nuts. “Fundraising, fun?” It’s fun because of what we’ve been talking about, because you get to build relationships. You get to understand people. You get to know people. You get to reach out to people you don’t yet know. You get to take your curiosity and understand things about people that you didn’t know before. That’s what leads to really good fundraising. That’s what’s fun.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that. Let’s end right there. Andrea, thanks for sharing your wisdom and your brilliance, as always. Listeners, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.