Leaders, Are You Standing in the Way of Bigger Gifts?
Leaders, I know that it can feel like a tricky balancing act. How do you push for your fundraisers to make bigger asks without pressuring them into a transactional approach with donors? Let’s say you just heard that a donor gave half a million dollars to the...
Question of the Month: How do you plan for a transformational gift?
First, it’s important to start with the basics. Before you can ask for a transformational gift, you need to have a major gifts caseload of no more than 150 qualified donors, tiered A to C, with an individual communication plan for each donor. Then, of your Tier...
Stop Using Donor Wealth Ratings to Build a Portfolio
I can’t believe I’m still writing about this, but in talking to many MGOs recently, we’re still returning to this issue: using donor capacity rankings (or wealth ratings) as the first criteria when building a major gifts portfolio. Just recently I heard of a large...
Mid-Year Check Up #3: Are You Upgrading Your Donors?
Part 3 of a 5-part series: The Mid-Year Major Gift Check Up List Do a little exercise right now. Take your list of donors and look at their giving record in the 2017 calendar year. Yes, 2017 – not 2018. We’ll get to that. And forget about your fiscal year – it has no...
The 30 Million Dollar Donor
Several weeks ago we received some not-so-surprising news from a client in the western U.S. I say “not so surprising” because we see the very same thing with other clients all the time. But it was surprising to this client. Here’s what happened....TOP RATED PODCAST
Twice monthly, Richard and Jeff address current topics and classic problems in major gift fundraising.
