Not Asking Donors? Don’t Blame the Major Gift Officer

If you are afraid to ask someone for money you should not be involved in major gift fundraising.  That sounds pretty logical, right?  Yet, when Richard and I get involved in helping non-profits with their major gift programs, we find so many MGOs who don’t ask their...

Events: What are they good for?

Several months ago I was on a Skype call with a friend of mine who is a priest living in the mountains of Bolivia.  He’s working with some of the poorest people in South America.  He wanted my advice on how to raise $250,000 over the next five years to support the...

Five Things You Must Do At The Beginning of This Calendar Year #5 – How Well Did You Thank & Report Back To Your Donors?

“Thank you”, according to the dictionary, “is a conventional expression of gratitude”.  I would suppose that if I do not feel thankful or say the words, “thank you”, that I am not really grateful. I have thought about this quite a bit. Is feeling thankful a learned...

Five Things You Must Do At The Beginning of This Calendar Year #4 – Review Your Use of Time

The waste or misuse of time is one of the key reasons an MGO fails at his or her job. Now, as soon as some MGOs read this statement many will say that their manager gave them some lousy donors and that’s the reason for the failure.  Or, the program people didn’t...

Five Things You Must Do At The Beginning of This Calendar Year #2 – Review The Performance Of Each Donor On Your Caseload

I will never forget the meeting I had with an MGO one day last year in late January. I had asked him to come to our meeting prepared to review how each of his donors had performed in the year that just ended. Our meeting was a disaster. To begin with, he waited until...

Five Things You Must Do at the Beginning of This Calendar Year

Don’t let one more minute of this new calendar year go by before you take steps to do the following five things as relates your major gift work: Review your caseload and make donor additions and deletions. Look at each donor on your caseload and review how he or she...