Effective Fundraising. F. Warren McFarlan
donor must do commensurate with one's personal resources is to aggressively support the organization (translation: write a personal check large enough that it hurts). Nothing gives you more credibility in selling an organization's mission and needs to future donors than the fact that you are personally supporting it in a meaningful way. When you are talking about your gift and how you thought about it, you add a priceless note of authenticity to your pitch. A neighbor of the author, when taking over her church's annual stewardship campaign, looked carefully at her previous years' donations and made a stretch gift from her perspective. In the ensuing months, the making of this gift gave an underlying passion to her presentations (both public and one-on-one) which rang with the authenticity of the true believer. This passion was critical to the campaign's ultimate success. Enthusiasm and passion are vital tools in the fundraising tool kit. A good fundraiser has many of the attributes of an evangelist.
A recent leader of a hospital's capital campaign shows the importance of donor longitudinal engagement. Twenty years ago, the individual had been chair of the hospital's board. After serving his term and making a significant seven-digit-figure gift to the hospital's first capital campaign, he had remained involved with the hospital as a corporator and then as its liaison to another medical organization. He also continued being a patient of the hospital, using many of its doctors over the years. As a fundraiser, the 20-plus years of experience and involvement with the hospital underscored his deep commitment, which came through in the various solicitation calls and visits he made for the current campaign (including his self-solicitation) to which, as a campaign co-chair, he had first pledged generously.
What the preceding example shows is that a trustee's fundraising skills can be valuable to an organization long after the trustee's term has expired. Former trustees properly engaged are real assets as solicitors in campaigns ranging from those of bricks and mortar to planned giving. Preparation for this role begins when one first becomes engaged as a solicitor and is then successively nurtured and deepened over the years of one's service in many ways. When you recruit trustees, you are engaging their services for the organization not just for their terms as a trustee but also for a very long period of time during which the individual will pass through many roles with the organization beyond that of trustee. Their historical memory of past donors and prior campaign issues, plus their deep commitment, provides invaluable context for today's and tomorrow's campaigns.
Practice makes perfect. The more times someone asks for money, the better they get at it. Additionally, of course, asking a person for support with whom you have developed trust over time yields especially good results. Consequently, matching the right solicitor to the right potential donor is key. Finding matches where mutual respect, common interests, and common history already exist is a good way to get started. Of course, brainstorming with the organization's officers and staff combined with good research in advance of a visit helps in getting an initial dialogue started. A shared hobby, children's common college, a common sport interest, and so forth are all things used to get the conversational ball rolling. As rapport is established, the conversation then naturally moves to the issue at hand. Multiple visits over many years are sometimes required to secure a major pledge. In one case the author is familiar with, it required 50 visits over a decade to secure a $50 million gift. The CEO made so many calls to the donor and other donors in the city where the donor was located that the CEO finally got an apartment there to cut down on travel/living costs. In this context, it should be noted that continuity in connecting potential donors to their previous solicitors can really help. This is also why turnover in an organization's major gift officers can cause real problems as important history and relationships can be lost.
Making the Ask
One of the hardest questions to address is do you ask a prospective donor for a specific dollar number and if so, how high should that number be? (For the record, professional fundraisers say you should always do so.) Several things I have learned that may be helpful:
1 It is almost impossible to insult someone by asking too much. At the worst, they will be flattered to be thought of as being much wealthier than they are.
2 If you ask too low, you may leave a lot of money on the table. The donor may be delighted to get out with such a small commitment given their prior expectations.
3 Inexperienced solicitors tend to blink at the last moment and ask for dramatically less than they were instructed. Sending a team of two (expensive in terms of time) is one way to deal with this, since it is very unlikely the two will collude to lower the ask.
4 Even worse, people will say they asked for more than they did. (Surprise! They sometimes lie.)
5 Approaching someone with the right mindset is key. You are not begging but, rather, offering an unusual and attractive opportunity to the prospective donors to invest in their passion and to have their names associated with it long term. You are not asking for money per se. You are giving a unique opportunity for individuals to contribute to something of importance to them, an opportunity they would not otherwise have. They can make a difference.
6 Start your work as an asker with a known easy prospect on a straightforward project. It will be a confidence builder for you. Building on this success, you can then evolve to more complex donors and projects as you refine your pitch and develop more confidence.
7 For major solicitations, you should prepare a detailed call report shortly after the visit. Prospective donors have quirks and preferences that are really important for askers to understand for effective solicitations in the future. These preferences can in some cases last over decades. The report jogs your memory for your next visit or helps someone else pick up the solicitation thread. Two relationships for an educational institution that evolved over a 40-year period illustrate this point. In each case, what the donor had requested at the time of the initial gift in terms of the types of solicitation processes that the donor would be receptive to was adhered to for many years. However, time and circumstances ultimately changed the preferences of both the donors dramatically. Previously unthinkable projects became desirable alternatives in the fullness of time. “No” sometimes means just “no for now.” Careful listening and sensitive longitudinal stewardship are key for successful long-term philanthropy.
8 Don't wait too long to start your visits. Psychological hurdles can build up in your mind, and they get ever larger the longer you worry about them. Get started and let your technique improve through practice. The longer you wait, the bigger the hurdles will seem in your mind until they become insurmountable and you never get started.
9 Develop a short customized pitch in advance of your first meeting with a donor. Donor attention span, particularly at the beginning of a meeting, can be limited. You need to build interest and get the hook in quickly. When you have their attention and rapport has been established, you can then get into the meat and the details.
For the most part, the primary readers of this book are what I call prospective community-level philanthropists. This covers everything from the neighborhood music school to the local community hospital. The recommendations become more complex with a trustee being more of a connector as one deals with mega institutions and mega donors. Harvard's and the Metropolitan Museum's seven-digit-or-more gifts, tend to be handled by the CEO and professional development staff. These organizations have large staffs of major gifts officers, sophisticated databases, and computer software. The role of a donor trustee is more complicated and nuanced in these situations, because the donor calls are often done by a combined trustee/donor and a professional working as a team.
The fundamentals of fundraising, however, are remarkably similar regardless of the size of the organization and the asks. The author recalls interviewing the CEO of an organization that had just completed a successful $1.4 billion capital campaign. The CEO confessed he had gotten his fundraising skills 25 years earlier as a trustee of a local day school where his children went. He found the $25,000 ask for that organization was identical in terms of planning and approach to what he was doing 25 years later as he approached $25 million gift asks.
Your Role as a Solicitor
In summary, the most important thing to understand is that as a fundraiser,