I’ve been thinking a lot about major gifts this week preparing for my July 29 webinar: 10 Mistake-Proof Steps to Prepare NOW for Your Next Capital Campaign. (join me at 1pm eastern for a lively discussion about raising BIG money.)

I see so very many nonprofits limping along in the major gifts category until they want to embark on a capital campaign. Then they stall because they don’t have any major donors or influential leaders ready to step up.

Here’s what you have to do right now if you ever want to raise big money.

And it’s not rocket science. It just takes commitment and focus:

• Identify 10 major potential donors. They may be foundations, corporations, individuals, organizations, government agencies, or current donors.

• Get in front of them.

• Make friends with them. Ask their advice.

• Bring them on tours. Ask them for help.

• Listen, listen, listen to them.  Ask them why they care about your cause.

• Build trust by following up and doing what you say you will do when you said you would do it.

• Keep in contact with them MONTHLY – at the very minimum.

What are your roadblocks?

But, you might say, “I am too busy! My other responsibilities are vacuuming up all my time!  I am running around going to meetings, creating reports, planning events, writing letters, filling out grant applications, selling tickets.”

Or you might say, “My boss expects me to be in the office all the time. She doesn’t understand that I need to be out of the office making calls.”

Yes, there are always plenty of roadblocks: time traps, deadly meetings, unenlightened bosses.  We all have plenty of excuses and distractions.

But I’m telling you plain and simple, unless you commit to getting in front of these donors, you’ll NEVER raise the big money your cause needs.

This type of relationship building takes time. And it takes face time. Person to person time.

Major gift and capital campaign fundraising is a BODY CONTACT SPORT.

Here’s how you make this happen:

1. Set a goal of at least three donor visits a week, no matter what is happening in the office, with your board, with your staff, in your life.

2. Get your boss and peers to buy in and support you in this. Help them understand why it’s so very important.

3. Commit to your boss in your work goals that you’ll be making 12 calls a month.  (This is a scary one because you are accountable.)

4. Hold a monthly meeting with your boss to review progress on your top 1o donors and discuss next step strategies.

(This is the most important because it sets up a support and reporting mechanism. If you know you’ll be meeting with your boss monthly to review the calls you’ve made, then you will MAKE the priority!)

Implement this plan and you’ll be rewarded with close donor relationships.

You’ll have people who really care about your cause: new volunteers, new leaders, new connections, new support, and new investments. You’ll raise more money. You’ll also have warm personal friendships with some wonderful people.

Fundraising can be so very, very rewarding – and fun – when it becomes all about people and not about their money.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think! And forward this to a friend who needs more money for an important cause.

Major gifts are the holy grail of fundraising. These are the gifts that can fund important programs, solidify your financial base and even catapult your organization to new heights.

The return on your investment of time and energy is much higher in major gifts than special events and mailings.

Then why don’t all organizations press forward with a major gifts program? It’s because the time and effort to develop a major gifts effort is more than many organizations can spare.

Our Triangle AFP meeting last week focused on major gifts. We were fortunate to have Martin Novom CFRE of Skystone Ryan share his ideas as our terrific speaker.

Here’s a great step-by-step guide to create and implement a successful major gifts program for your organization based on Martin’s presentation, with some ideas of my own added in.  He also credits Laura Fredricks’ excellent resource “Developing Major Gifts: Turning Small Donors into Big Contributors.” (You may know that Laura is also author of “The Ask” which is always on the top of my list!

Step One: Develop a Major Gifts Team

Major gifts is a team sport, not a solo sport. If you are trying to do this all by yourself, you’re making it much harder than it needs to be.

A team helps expand your contacts and bring in new information to the process.

•    Enlist your CEO and your board leaders
•    Show them the upside and potential
•    Create clear jobs: identifying, strategizing, opening doors, hosting cultivation events, soliciting
•    Set clear goals
•    Meet with them often to maintain momentum

Step Two: Create and Maintain a Pool of Major Gift Prospects

Your prospect list is your fundamental tool for your major gifts program.

Choose a smaller number of potential donors and work them thoroughly. Rate them on their affinity for your cause and their financial capability.

•    Start with the donors you have
•    Organize what you know
•    Highlight what you don’t know
•    Create group opportunities for you to learn more about them
•    Create a gift tracking system to aid you
•    Prioritize them

Step Three: Work With Major Donor Prospects One at a Time

Don’t rush the relationship, you are exploring and getting to know your prospects.

Make them close friends of the organization through frequent contact. Spend the face time needed to develop your relationship.

•    Create an individualized plan for each person
•    Create trust
•    Do what you say you’ll do
•    Listen deeply
•    Develop each relationship with the long term in mind
•    Track and measure each step

Step Four: Craft the Approach and the Presentation

Don’t rush to the ask – only ask when the donor is ready. If you spend the time here, then the ask will take care of itself. How does your opportunity match the donor’s vision?

•    Get ready carefully
•    Create a clear, concise, compelling case
•    Be able to SELL your case
•    Match donor interest with the opportunity
•    Know when your donor is ready
•    Organize your call and rehearse

Step Five: Make the Ask

Let it take care of itself by doing a super job with the approach and presentation. It is just a continuation of the process, and your donor will say to you “how can I help you?”

•    Be passionate and enthusiastic
•    Listen deeply!
•    Don’t low ball your donor – ask for the stretch gift if they are ready
•    Know exactly what you are asking for
•    Explain why the donor should give to your cause
•    Explain why the donor should give now
•    Follow up! An ask is not an ask without followup!

What are your biggest challenges organizing a successful major gifts program? Share them with a comment below.

Here you are, with a challenge gift from a major funder.

Phone calls don't have to be cold calls

What fun!  What work!

You have only $5,000 left to reach your goal, which you must reach in order to get the larger gift from your funder.

And here you sit, picking up the phone to call someone on your donor list.

Your goal is to find some wonderful folks who might be interested in helping with the challenge.

(Note, I didn’t say that you were looking for money!  No – you are qualifying these folks to find out if they might be potential donors.)

You are looking for some prospects.

As you sit there with the phone in your hand, wondering what on earth will you say – remember this:

You are calling people who have some affiliation with you.

They may be lost donors, lapsed donors, former clients of your services – they have all done something with you in the past.

So as you call them, remember they are your friends.

Try saying, “we’d love to see you at an event.”

Or say, ” We’d love to talk to you some time.”

Or say, “I’d love to hear your story.”

What you are doing is finding out their story, their motivations and why they like your organization.

Then and only then can you decide if they are really a prospect for your matching gift challenge.

What do you think? Leave me a comment and tell me about your experiences when you pick up the phone.

I’m teaching a webinar tomorrow on NO ASK Fundraising Strategies for Board Members.

And one of the things we are going to discuss is how to followup friendmaking events that your board members will host.

I’m going to talk tomorrow about my major rule on holding these types of events:

Plan your followup ahead of time, or DON’T DO THE EVENT!

I believe in two types of followup:

First, the personal phone call followup.  Yes, call each person (or at least the VIP folks) and ask them my golden question: “What were your impressions?”

Then you shut up and let the wonderful person chat on and on about what they saw, what they felt and what they heard. Let them talk!

And then find out what the next step should be for that person. What are they interested in?

Would they like more in-depth information about a certain aspect of your organization? Are they a potential donor or board member? What’s next for this person?

Tomorrow’s webinar will also hit hard on my second favorite tool:

ALL IMPORTANT FOLLOW UP CARD.

Remember to hand out Follow-up Cards for every gathering you hold. This lets the attendees self-select whether they want any follow-up communication or not.

Follow-up cards are important because they help you get the prospect’s permission to communicate with him or her personally.

Follow-Up Cards should:

• Capture the person’s contact information, including phone and e-mail address.

• Ask what most interested him personally about your organization and its mission.

• Ask who else he knows who would be interested in your organization, and would he be willing to help make an introduction to this person?

• Give him some boxes to check off. Would you like to:

1. Join our mailing list?
2. Hold a Small Social of your own?
3. Make a contribution for $_________ to help us accomplish X, Y or Z (you fill it in)?
4. Volunteer?
5. Host a tour?
6. Other___________________________?

This way the prospect can self-select whether they want to get more involved or not.

Your volunteer hosts will love this because that means only their friends who WANT more involvement will get any followup. It’s permission-based friendmaking and fundraising.

Perfect for your squeamish board member who is not so sure about inviting their friends to hear a pitch about their organization.

You can join me for the webinar by clicking here. Also, if the webinar has already taken place, you can still register and get a the audio file to download along with my Implementation Workbook that lays out step-by-step how to organize these events.

NO ASK fundraising strategies? What can I possibly mean?

If  your board members flee when they are asked to help in fundraising, you need a new approach and some new ideas.

So here is a wildly different approach to try:

Tell them they DON’T have to ASK if they don’t want to.

Let’s find some practical, easy ways your board members can help in fundraising, without soliciting.

They can open doors, and help you find new friends and donors – without having to solicit.

Here are my favorite six ways to use board members in fundraising, without soliciting. It’s just the start of a long list of productive jobs they can to to raise friends, thank donors and help create a sustainable fundraising effort.

In my webinar on Thursday May 13, I’ll lay out the critical success factors for employing each of these strategies.

And I’ll share a step-by-step plan to help your board members implement them.

If your board members are uncomfortable in fundraising, bring them to listen in so they can find out new ways they can support you without having to solicit.

1. MAKE FRIENDS FOR THE CAUSE

We need to capitalize on our board members’ personal social networks to further our organization’s urgent work solving community problems. So the job is clear: we have to ask our board members to introduce our organization to everybody they know.

Your board members need to be roaring advocates for your organization; they need to talk about it wherever they go.

They should be all over their friends, telling them why it matters and urging them to get involved.

Actually, you want your board members to start an epidemic—of good news about your cause that will spread through your community.

Make Your Board Members into “Sneezers“

I teach board members how to be sneezers – spreading the idea virus and conveying excitement about our cause everywhere.

2. IDENTIFY YOUR ORGANIZATION’S VIP PROSPECTS

Who are the important people who could catapult your organization’s future? I call them VIPs–for Very Important Prospects.

These individuals may be civic, political, philanthropic, religious, corporate, or social leaders in your community. They may also be among your current donors or on your prospect list.

Let’s start our board members on a strategy that I call “The VIP Prospect Game.”

It’s a seamless, easy, polite way to get your board members talking about WHO THEY KNOW and HOW THEY CAN GET THE DOOR OPEN. And this can be a tough conversation to pull off with them, as we all know.

Here’s how to start them working on major donor strategies – where they SHOULD be focused. We’ll talk more about the VIP Prospect Game in my webinar on Thursday.

3. GATHER FRIENDS WITH SMALL SOCIALS

You can expand your community relationships and make friends fast through gatherings such as Small Socials. This job is perfect for social board members who have many friends and like to socialize.

A Small Social can take several formats. It can be a coffee, a tea, dinner, a porch party, a cookout, or cocktails. It can be breakfast meetings or luncheons. It can include 3 people or 100.

When in doubt, throw a party!

Follow these rules for a successful Small Social:

1. A board member or volunteer invites people and hosts it.

2. There is no charge.

3. It is a cultivation event designed to fire up people about your cause.

4. A plan is in place for following up after the event.

If you don’t have a follow-up plan, don’t do the event at all.

Small Socials always have a short presentation in the midst of the socializing. The board volunteer host should welcome everyone, and the CEO gives a short high-impact message with a clear call to action at the end.

4. BECOME A TOUR GUIDE – AND SHOW HOW WE CHANGE THE WORLD

Board members can host tours to bring prospective friends closer to your organization.

A carefully scripted tour can be a powerful way to demonstrate your organization’s good work and to illustrate unmet needs in the community.

The tour lets your work speak for itself.

Your guests will hear staff members or even clients/students/stakeholders express in their own words their personal first-hand experiences with your organization’s mission— and the good it does—in the community.

A well-planned tour also has the board volunteer’s welcome, the CEO’s visionary message, and the same followup plan.

5. OPEN THE DOOR WITH ADVICE VISITS

We all know that within our board members’ social networks there is a gold mine of potential friends and donors. But they usually are not sure how to open the door to their contacts without seeming pushy.

But they can ask their friends for advice, guidance and counsel about their favorite project. And they can do it in person.

“If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, then ask for money.”

You’re really having a treasure hunt, because when you get together personally with someone for an exploratory conversation, you are not certain what you will find. But you always end up making a friend for your cause.

People are usually flattered when someone approaches them just to ask for advice. You would be surprised at the number of doors that would open if you just ask for advice.

You can read more about Advice Visits in my blog posts from April:

• How Advice Visits Can Open Any Door in Town
• Why Board Members Love Advice Visits
• Questions to Ask in an Advice Visit
• The Four Golden Words that Will Open Any Donors Heart to Your Cause

6.  THANK YOU CALLS TO DONORS

One of the most powerful actions a board member can take is to phone to thank a donor soon after his or her gift is received.

When board members call to thank donors, the donors receive a very powerful message. They think: “This organization appreciates me,” “I am a real person to this organization, not just a checkbook,” “This organization is well run.”

Donors who receive phone calls from board members invariably tend to give larger gifts the next time and tend to stay on board as donors longer.

Some studies have shown that donors who were called by board members within 24 hours of making a gift later made subsequent gifts that were 39 percent higher than donors who did not receive a call.

This means that board members can directly improve your organization’s bottom line without having to solicit!

Read more about Thank You Calls to Donors:

• How to Increase Your Organization’s Gifts by 39%

YOUR TAKE HOME:

Every board member can support your organization’s fundraising!   There is a fundraising role for each person on your board – whether they ask or not.

And if you are enjoying these posts, do forward them along to a colleague or board member who might find them helpful.

Leave a comment and share YOUR favorite ways to put your board members to work. Let’s create a long list!