4 Steps to Raising Major Gifts: Tried-and-True for Over a Decade

Recently, I went back and revisited this old post from a decade ago to see if my thoughts had changed. This 2011 post about how to raise money from individual donors is something I’ve been teaching, writing, and speaking about for more than 10 years since its original publication date.

The original post began with a statistic from Giving USA:

2010: Did you know that Giving USA 2010 reports that that 83% of contributions came from individuals last year?

So, in 2010, 75% of contributions came from individuals during their lifetime and 8% came via bequest (for a total of 83%). That meant that 17% of contributions to charities came from corporations and foundations, combined.

In 2020 (the most recent statistics available) that statistic has changed somewhat:

2020: Last year, 78% came from individuals, down a whopping 5% in the last decade. Of course, foundation giving was up significantly in 2020, likely due to the Pandemic, social unrest, Black Lives Matter, and more, which may have slightly skewed the numbers.

The fact is, individual donors outgive corporations and foundations in very significant and meaningful ways. And yet, many organizations still focus their fundraising efforts on corporations and foundations.

The good news is that many more nonprofit leaders and fundraisers are taking individual giving and major gift fundraising more seriously than they did a decade ago. In other words, there is a much greater focus on raising money from individual donors today than there was in the past.

We’ve come a long way in terms of the resources, courses, books, and training available on how to raise major gifts. The field uses technology, data, statistics, and research that wasn’t available a decade ago. However, the basics have remained largely the same.

4 Steps to Create an Individual Giving Program and Raise Major Gifts

These tried-and-true steps still ring true more than a decade later. Are you putting your time and energy into all four?

Step 1: Identify Donors

The first official step in the fundraising cycle is to identify prospective donors. The best place to find prospective donors is from your current donor pool. You can use your database to identify your best donors. If you’re just getting started, and don’t have any current donors to pull from, you’ll want to use your board and staff members as a resource. Ask them for names of friends and colleagues who might be interested in the mission of your organization.

Once you’ve identified some prospective donors – I recommend starting with a list of about twenty – it’s time to start cultivating them.

Step 2: Cultivate Donors

Cultivation is the next step in the fundraising cycle. Fundraising is ultimately about relationship building, and cultivating is about building relationships, which makes this a very important step. Cultivation is the opportunity for prospects to learn more about your organization, and it’s also a time for you to get to know the individual you’re cultivating.

Some examples of cultivation activities might include taking them on a tour of your program and meeting with them at their home or office.

It’s important to educate the prospect about your programs, services and needs (gap in services) and it is equally important to learn about the individual.

Ask questions such as:

• Why is our organization / mission important to you?
• What do you love most about our organization?
• Would you like to get involved (volunteer) at our organization and how?

Step 3: Solicit Donors

Once you’ve gotten to know your prospect and educated them about your organization, it’s time to ask for a gift. Try not to worry too much, because you’re not asking for a the “ultimate” gift, but an annual one. So relax – you don’t need to have researched their entire background, become their best friend, learned about all of their assets, or anything close to that.

In order to be properly prepared to ask for a major gift, all you need to know is that the person is interested in supporting your organization or cause, and that they have some financial capacity.

One of the keys to good solicitation is to ask for a specific amount for a specific thing. For example:

I would like you to consider a gift in the range of $500 for snacks for our after school program.

Or you might try:

I would like you to consider a gift in the range of $1,000 to support our ongoing operations – to make sure we are able to continue our afterschool program, which enrolls over 100 children each year.

Be quiet and wait…

Most importantly, once you’ve make the ask, be quiet! As they say, the next one to talk, loses. Once you’ve made an ask, you need to give the person a few seconds (or minutes if necessary) to think about it and answer. If you talk first, you’ll probably sabotage your efforts by saying something like, “I know that’s a lot — how about less?”

If you get a YES…

If you get a “yes,” congratulations! Find out how you should follow up and collect the gift.

If you get a NO…

If you get a “no,” find out whether it’s:

• A “hard” no — not now, not ever.
• A “soft” no — a no when there is room to continue the conversation. Find out what’s wrong and what it would take to turn the “no” into a “yes.”

If you get a soft no, maybe you asked for the wrong project or the wrong amount. Ask the donor what they had in mind instead.

Step 4: Steward Donors

Stewardship, or the thank you process, is one of the most important aspects of fundraising and often the most overlooked. Be sure to thank your donors multiple times and in various ways.

For example, a donor can receive:

1. a thank you call from a board member
2. a thank you letter from the executive director
3. a thank you email from the development director
4. a quick personal video
5. and public acknowledgment in a newsletter

The list goes on and on. In fact, there are dozens of ways to thank your donors — be creative!

Proper stewardship can lead to lifelong donors with increasingly larger gifts, in addition to high donor retention rates. Be sure to thank and appreciate your current donors.

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There’s nothing in these four steps I would change. In fact, they are still as true today as they ever were.

If you’re not yet soliciting individuals for donations to your organizations, why not? What are your obstacles? Leave a comment and let me know.