1.	Identification
2.	Qualification
3.	Development of Strategy
4.	Cultivation
5.	Solicitation and Negotiation
6.	Acknowledgment
7.	Stewardship
8.	Renewal

What Works in Major Gift Fundraising

Fortunately, in the past several years, practitioners in the field of philanthropy and professors in our nation’s universities have begun to explore more deeply why benefactors make major gifts and why donors say they do not make gifts. This donor-centered research is both refreshing and instructive. Recent research funded by the Bank of America and conducted by the Center on Philanthropy (2007c) finds that high-net-worth donors generally are described by several donor portraits:

• The very wealthy, with net worth of $50 million or more

• Bequeathers, whose bequests leave 25 percent or more to charity

• Devouts, who attend religious services at least weekly and donate to religious causes

• Seculars, who do not attend religious services or give to religious causes

• Entrepreneurs, with 50 percent or more of net worth in entrepreneurial assets

• Dynasts, who give money to their children for giving to charity

• Metropolitans, whose primary residence is in a city with a population of five hundred thousand or more

• High frequency volunteers, who volunteer more than twenty hours per year

• Strategic donors, who have foundations and/or donor-advised funds and give to few subsectors

• Transactional donors, who do not have foundations or donor-advised funds and give to many or all subsectors

• Altruistic donors, who give from a sense of meeting critical needs in society or the belief that those with more should help those with less

• Financially pragmatic donors, who are concerned with return on investment and feeling financially secure

This important work emphasizes understanding the interests, concerns, needs, and motivations of wealthy individuals in terms of the role of philanthropy in their lives. By developing an understanding of such motivations, the development professional can better plan how to involve a particular prospective benefactor in the work of the nonprofit.

Some benefactors make major gifts because of a sense of obligation to the nonprofit, the greater community, or the world. Gifts of significance, however, arise out of the true interests, values, and passions of the prospective benefactor (see Figure 7.1). Regardless of the particular motivation for giving, the role of the major gift officer is to engage the donor in the important work of the nonprofit and deepen the benefactor’s involvement in the organization’s mission and value systems.

It is also instructive to note why fundraisers fail or why donors refuse to make major gifts to nonprofits. Sturtevant (1997) identifies the most common reasons that major gifts fail to materialize: institutional leaders and development officers neglect to establish basic trust between the organization and the nonprofit’s mission, vision, and services; nonprofit leaders don’t help donors to connect with the institution and serve the benefactor’s interests and needs; and fundraisers fail to instill a sense of urgency for the request. Donors choose not to make major gifts because of a mismatch of interests between donor and institution, a premature request before the donor was ready to give, a failure to ask for a specific amount, being asked too many times by the organization or by competing nonprofits, and a lack of connection between the solicitor of the gift and the donor. The Bank of America research conducted by the Center on Philanthropy (2009a) confirms the main reason that donors cease giving to organizations: they no longer feel connected to the organization’s mission.

Inquiring and Inspiring

Given the anecdotal findings of fundraising professionals and the recent research of social scientists, we are better prepared to understand the motivations of major donors. The next question confronting nonprofits is how we can best position our institutions and our prospective benefactors for success in the area of major gifts. Hank Rosso put it best when he said, “Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching people the joy of giving.” He long understood and practiced the idea of “transformational philanthropy.” He knew that major gift work was the result of relationship building. And like Sheldon Garber, he understood the need for fundraisers to be agents of change in the lives of their organizations and benefactors. What skills, then, do fundraising professionals working in the area of major gifts need to succeed? Simply put, they require inquiry skills that will help them understand the values and motivations of potential major benefactors and train and manage volunteers, the ability to articulate the institution’s mission, and the creativity and passion to inspire the benefactor to action. Being a successful major gift officer and volunteer fundraiser does not require having all the answers about the prospective benefactor, but it does require that fundraising professionals and volunteers know all the right questions to ask of both the institution and the donor. As agents of change, fundraisers and volunteers must be involved at the highest levels of decision making in the nonprofit. They must be not only skilled at articulating the mission but also involved in creating the mission and moving the organization to greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

The following are some key questions the major gift officer must ask of the institution:

• Is our mission relevant, important, and easily articulated?

• Can we use outcome measurements to determine if we are advancing the mission—that is, can we measure impact?

• How can we better involve volunteers and donors in the good that is done through our organization?

• Who best articulates our mission and vision for the future?

• Who would be a natural partner with a particular benefactor?

• Who is responsible for developing the relationship with a specific benefactor?

Every nonprofit must identify the “vision master,” a leader who brings the mission to life for benefactors. Just as important, each institution must identify the staff members with the skills to transform vision to action, to make things happen so as to advance the mission through definable steps and acts. Finally, the major gift officers must be primarily responsible to advance the relationship between the prospective donor and the institution. This is where donor and institutional values overlap and the “dance of philanthropy” is performed (see Exhibit 7.1). Some institutions discover that the vision master is primarily the organization’s president or chair of the board of directors. For other nonprofits, there will be many hands in the work of inspiring major gifts. It is wise to have multiple links between the nonprofit and the benefactor. This prevents reliance on a few people to raise major gifts. That can be devastating when and if the major players leave the nonprofit. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point (2000), speaks of the need for both “sticky” messages and “contagious” messengers in order for ideas and innovations to take hold. The “sticky” message is the institution’s most compelling articulation of its primary mission or cause. To attract the new, more engaged philanthropist, it is the development officer’s duty to discover from inside or outside their organization those contagious people who can bring mission and impact alive for benefactors.

There are questions major gift officers must ask themselves as well. To paraphrase Payton (1988, p. 74), who posed the most piercing question of all: Do we as professionals work for philanthropy or off of philanthropy? Why are we doing this important work? For major gift work is less a job than it is a calling. Fundraising professionals are not selling products; rather, they are promoting visions and possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This is serious work taken seriously by the professionals engaged in it. It is not a vendor/vendee relationship but rather a genuine partnership we inspire with our benefactors. O’Neill (1993) saw development professionals as moral trainers. Major gift officers are indeed moral trainers whose work is about ethical inspiration (Rosso’s “teaching the joy of giving”). Hence we must ask ourselves: Are we serving as role models of philanthropy? Are we making important philanthropic gifts ourselves? Do we serve as “soul models” of well-examined lives? And perhaps most important of all: Are we devoted to helping donors find meaning in their lives through acts of philanthropy? Many prospective major benefactors know how to accumulate “means” but not “meaning” in their lives. One way of looking at major gift work is that fundraisers, volunteers, and donors are on a long walk together to find meaning in life. Meaning can be found through philanthropy.

As important as it is to be an agent of change through professional introspection and probing the mission and values of the institution, the great work of development is done through exploring a benefactor’s values in an atmosphere of trust. Using a process Dunlop (2000) refers to as “nurturing inquiry,” major gift officers ask values-defining questions of donors. The classic work by Kübler-Ross (1997) on death and dying teaches that on their deathbeds, individuals do not measure the value of their lives by their net worth or accumulations; rather, they measure their life’s meaning based on whether or not they made a difference in the world and whether they’re leaving a lasting legacy. It seems apparent that through philanthropy, development officers and volunteers can help donors provide meaningful answers to those deathbed questions. For this is the essential partnership in philanthropy: our institution’s mission and the donor’s value system equal more than either can accomplish separately. This makes the essence of major gift work “helping people arrive before they depart!” This requires encouraging benefactors to transform from role models in business to soul models in philanthropy. These transformations are accomplished by inquiring about the donor’s core values and passions through values-based questions. By asking important questions, we help donors transform from motivations that are intrinsic to extrinsic, from self-centered to other-centered, and from independent to interdependent. Transforming major gift work is about changing “me-centeredness” to “we-centeredness.”

Questions of Values

Prior to elucidating some of the key values questions, it is important to set the rules of values-based inquiry. Before one asks important questions regarding values, it is necessary to establish an atmosphere of trust. Two essential components for an atmosphere of trust are permission and protection. These are assurances to the donors that before we probe core values, we will seek their permission to enter a deeper relationship. Beyel (1997, p. 52) calls it “philanthropic informed consent.” This is a discovery process whereby the development officer and the donor engage in a moral and ethical dialogue. This may be as simple as asking permission to inquire about closely held values, but more often it is an intuitive process, much like knowing when it is safe to ask an acquaintance a question we would normally ask a close friend. The second important way of establishing trust is to ensure that any information divulged will remain private and confidential. This means that the fundraiser must guard all insights gained and not mention them to the donor’s family, friends, or colleagues or in visit reports.

Some key donor questions include these:

• What values do you hold most dear?

• Who has inspired you in your life and your work?

• How does one make a difference in the world?

• What is your legacy in the world today or in the world of tomorrow? Can you finish your legacy alone?

• How much is enough money to leave heirs? Is there ever too much money to leave to heirs?

• What is the most satisfying philanthropic gift you have made and why?

• Which one of the nonprofits you support does the best job of keeping you involved in its mission? What kinds of reports do you want and expect as stewardship for your major gift?

• How do you prefer to be invited to make a charitable gift?

These are only a few samples of key questions the major gift officer must ask while developing a relationship with each benefactor. The questions are asked at appropriate stages in the relationship. They are meant to be stretching questions but can seem impertinent or assertive if they come too early in a relationship.

In addition to the individual contacts between the fundraiser and the donor, strategic questions may be considered when the donor interacts with other members of the nonprofit board or staff. One highly successful way to ask many of these questions is through a donor profile interview. In this setting, a donor is asked to participate in a profile of his or her life and philanthropy. These questions help turn dreamers into dream makers for your institution. It is a truism that once they have fulfilled their own personal goals and dreams, highly successful individuals will often transform into major benefactors who will fulfill the dreams of others through the nonprofit.

Building an Ownership Position

The most important role for the major gift officer is to forge a close relationship between a donor and the nonprofit, including its volunteers. One important device in this relationship building is philanthropic storytelling to elucidate to the benefactor great things that others have done to advance the organization’s mission through philanthropy. Storytelling allows the development officer comfortably to make maps for donors to follow with their own personal gifts. A part of the cultivation and relationship-building process may be to ask the donor to make investment or step gifts to the organization. It is important to ask for these smaller gifts, as they allow the donor to open a window into the nonprofit and provide the nonprofit with the opportunity to further involve the donor through meaningful stewardship and appropriate recognition. Solicitations of step gifts allow the development officer to determine if the proposal harmonizes with the donor’s core values. But rather than asking merely for any “starting gift,” it is paramount to consider what sort of gift will further involve the donor in the nonprofit and might naturally lead to additional gifts. The major gift officer should ask, “Does this proposal have the potential to grow into more significant and consequential gifts by the donor?” An annual gift request for a partial academic scholarship can be a step that leads to further requests to provide full scholarships and eventually to investments to endow that scholarship in perpetuity or perhaps, through an estate gift, to name the academic unit wherein the scholarship lies.

Although step gifts are common ways to encourage major gifts, it is not unheard of for a first gift to a nonprofit to be a major gift. Development officers and volunteers must be alert to those unique individuals who can quickly catch a vision and make major initial gifts to the nonprofit. This is especially true with gifts from entrepreneurs that come at much earlier ages than were the norm from older, more traditional major benefactors. The information age and the technology it has sparked have made billionaires out of thirty-year-olds, and they are asking themselves earlier and earlier about the social responsibility that comes with their wealth.

Another way to involve donors in step gifts is to “borrow their collections.” Often potential major benefactors have accumulations that can be appropriately used by the nonprofit. These may range from art collections to private planes. By borrowing these accumulations, the nonprofit recognizes their value and demonstrates to the donor that their collections, as well as their donations, will be respected and used wisely.

The Request or Invitation

Most of the work of a proposal is done prior to writing the request and making the appointments with a benefactor. Donor values have been explored, an appropriate gift amount has been considered, and the proposal team has been carefully selected and has rehearsed the solicitation in detail. The major gift officer must ask several questions: Have we come to know this donor sufficiently? Has this donor been involved meaningfully in the work of our organization? Is this an appropriate time for this request? Are we requesting a respectful amount? Will the project or the gift purpose resonate with the benefactor? Is this the inspiring team to set a vision and make the request?

In setting up the specific meeting to discuss a proposal, it is important that the potential benefactor know that the purpose of the visit is the request for financial support for an important project. This avoids fundraising by stealth or surprise and is the respectful thing to do. In some cases, saying, “We are coming with a compelling request that we believe will inspire you” is sufficient to let the prospective benefactor know that a request will be made of him or her.

Where will the major gift proposal be made? The site should be chosen with the donor’s needs and comfort in mind. Usually it is at the donor’s home or place of business. Sometimes it takes place at the nonprofit, particularly if the request requires a tour or on-site demonstration of how the donor’s gift will be employed by the nonprofit. Public settings such as restaurants for major gift solicitations can be disastrous. Privacy and protection can never be guaranteed in such a setting. A waiter may interrupt or stumble just as the proposal reaches its apex, spoiling both mood and decorum.

Regardless of the setting, the major gift officer must be sure to ask: Who will be in attendance from the benefactor’s side of the equation? Are all the decision makers at the table, or is this a meeting with the potential benefactor alone? Eventually all the appropriate leaders of the organization, the donor and spouse and family, and legal and financial advisers, as appropriate, may have to be on board. The proposal itself must be clear and include the gift amount, project goals and means of measuring the achievement of those goals, recognition options for the gift, and a plan for reporting or stewardship after the gift is made. A preproposal rehearsal will make certain that at the right time, the right person makes the right request. Part of a good rehearsal session before a major request is to brainstorm potential benefactor questions, to have ready the answers to those questions, and to determine precisely who is responsible for answering those questions about the proposal at hand. The worst possible scenario is for a potential benefactor to ask an important or unanticipated question and to be met with hesitation as to who should address that question. Sometimes volunteers prefer to tell the stories of their passion for the cause and describe the project but feel more comfortable if a member of the organization actually asks for a specific amount of money. “We are requesting your consideration of a leadership gift of [specific amount], which will be the catalyst for making this project a reality,” is only one tried and true way of asking for a gift.

Stewardship and Recognition

Once a gift commitment is entered into, the process of stewardship begins. To ensure that there is no “donor regret”—to adapt a term from the for-profit world—the organization must provide stewardship of the gift and send regular and meaningful reports. Reports on construction progress, thank-you letters from scholarship recipients, financial reports, lab tours, photos, and personal visits with progress reports are simply the best ways to strengthen donor ties to the nonprofit. Stewardship is both ethical and essential following receipt of major gifts, and it is the smart thing to do to encourage future gifts from the benefactor.

Donor recognition is another way to involve benefactors in the nonprofit. “How would you and your family like us to acknowledge your generous gift?” is an appropriate inquiry. Recognition should be as personal as possible, reflective of the uniqueness of the nonprofit and the gift, and appropriate to the size and importance of the contribution. Other major donors in waiting will examine how your institution respectfully recognizes and exhibits stewardship for gifts of significance.

Managing the Major Gift Process

Whether a major gift officer heads a one-person shop or is a part of a large and complex major gift team, the key to major gift success is an organized system for the identification, involvement, and solicitation of potential major benefactors. The literature is rife with examples of how to manage the major gift process. Successful programs can be managed using simple index cards or sophisticated software programs. Regardless of the format, every institution must identify the top twenty-five to one hundred, or 5 to 10 percent of the institutional donor base, for potential major donors whose philanthropy can have a significant impact on the organization.

Once identified, each donor should be assigned an individual file. Files should be developed with respect for the donor and include only information that is pertinent to the relationship and the potential major gift. This information will be useful in determining what types of nonprofit projects will resonate with the donor’s value system. Private and potentially embarrassing information about a donor has no place in these files. A good guide is to include only information, notes, or comments on donor contacts that could be read over your shoulder by the benefactor herself without embarrassment. Files should also include the names of natural partners who are centers of influence in the donor’s life. It is vital to include information about regular meetings with institutional leaders to discuss the donor, his or her deepening involvement in the nonprofit, a realistic potential gift amount, and details of any projects of great potential interest. All encounters, engagements, and experiences with the benefactor should be appropriately documented, for these relationships are a result of the alignment of the institution and the donor, and they do not belong to development officers who manage the relationships.

Specific ways to further the donor’s involvement and interests can then be documented. Essential to the management process is the appointment of the relationship manager—the person responsible for advancing the relationship using volunteers and other individuals as appropriate. Many management plans set goals for specific numbers of personal visits between the major gift officer and the potential major benefactor during a given period of time. However, it is not the frequency of the encounters that is important but rather how deep an impact the fundraiser or other institution leaders and volunteers have on a donor’s sense of belonging to the nonprofit. Visit numbers are less important than meaningful encounters with predetermined objectives that increase the donor’s “equity share” in the nonprofit. Fundraisers must fashion metrics based on the deepening of relationships as well as on dollar goals or number of donor contacts.

The Philanthropic Road Ahead

Much has transpired in the world of philanthropy since the publication of Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising, second edition. Research led by the Center on Philanthropy has revealed important evidence about who are the most generous people in the world. The Center’s study showed that the most philanthropic people in America are entrepreneurs who have earned and/or hold 50 percent or more of their assets from entrepreneurial activities (2006). Entrepreneurs have shaped and reshaped our country, and they are rapidly transforming the philanthropic landscape as well. Greg Dees of Duke University was quoted thusly in the book Philanthrocapitalism (Bishop and Green, 2008): “Philanthropy today is best defined more broadly than giving money away, as mobilizing and deploying private resources, including money, time, social capital and expertise, to improve the world in which we live” (p. 49).

The first lesson to be learned in major gift work is to scan your institution’s database for the entrepreneurs in your midst. This movement has been led by the words and the works of powerful exemplars of philanthropy and the positive impacts they have had in the world. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono, Muhammad Yunus, Steve Case, and many, many others are questioning the traditional “give, name, and go away style of philanthropy” more common in decades past. According to Bishop and Green, “One of the key elements of philanthrocapitalism is an obsession with ensuring that money is put to good use” (p. 69). They go on to say that Mario Morino, founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), “agrees that being businesslike as a philanthropist, which he favors, is not the same thing as treating nonprofits as if they were businesses. The social sector, he says he has learned, is ‘far more dependent on relationships than systems’” (p. 91). There are indeed economic norms associated with business, while our field is grounded on social norms. The new “engaged philanthropist,” however, expects nonprofits to look at and learn from the business world to gain efficiencies, learn to model new programs, replicate those models, and then scale them. These hypermanic, passionate, and results-driven philanthropreneurs will not tolerate nonprofit “business” as usual. They expect nonprofit organizations to work as hard at doing good with their gifts as the entrepreneurs worked to earn the money in the first place. They bring to the table their creative minds, their intense curiosity, their experience, and their contacts. They are attracted to new ways of doing social good and are willing to participate in venture philanthropy to change our way of serving the world, try new models, tinker with delivery systems, and quickly reinvest in success. They also know the value of leverage in their gifts and simply expect more from us. In response to this new trend toward social entrepreneurship, new low-profit, limited-liability corporations are taking hold. As Pink notes, “Dubbed an L3C, this entity is a corporation—but not what we typically think of it. As one report explained, an L3C operates like a for-profit business generating at least modest profits, but its primary aim is to offer significant social benefits” (2009, p. 24). Philanthropreneurs are both left- and right-brain sensitive and, as such, require that nonprofit organizations answer all their business questions as well as respond to their needs for purpose in their lives. Bill Gates said it well when he gave a speech on creative capitalism at the 2008 World Economic Forum: “There are two great forces: self-interest and caring for others.” Steve Case invented the term “not only for profit organizations” for a blended model with both business goals and social change as dual objectives. So fundraisers must be aware of this brave new world of major gifts, for it requires that fundraisers bravely embrace it.

FIGURE 7.2. PHILANTHROPY TO BUSINESS SPECTRUM.

There is a new landscape of philanthropy evolving the past decade or more and spreading rapidly around the globe. It is characterized by the “philanthropy to business spectrum” depicted in Figure 7.2.

Is this a fleeting trend to ignore? Should we lie low until the new “new thing” passes over us? Reason says not. As moral trainers, relationship managers, agents of change, and provocateurs, fundraisers are ethically equipped to inspire these game-changing philanthropists. We are accustomed to working with business-minded individuals; we know what motivates them. We are well positioned to lead dialogues within our organizations as to how to navigate these relationships and potential conflicts of interest. We must ensure that we remain true to our missions and core values while embracing new ways to affect our nonprofit worlds. It will not be boring. We invite these engaged benefactors along on the philanthropic rides of their lives where one can really exchange money for meaning through partnerships with our institutions.

Conclusion

Some specific techniques of major gift work have been explored in this chapter, along with ways to approach and manage the major gift process, but when all is said and done, it is still the spirit behind the major gift process that determines its success. If, as major gift officers, we operated on the “push” or “scolding” model of development (Schervish, 2000b, pp. 2-3), we will have neither long-term success in the field nor satisfaction in our work (see Exhibit 7.2). It is through Schervish’s “discernment model” that we respect donor wishes in the fundraising process.

EXHIBIT 7.2. THE SCOLDING AND DISCERNMENT MODELS.

Source: Paul G. Schervish, “The Spiritual Horizons of Philanthropy,” in E. R. Tempel and D. F. Burlingame (eds.), Understanding the Needs of Donors. New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising, no. 29. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Scolding Model	Discernment Model
You are not giving	Is there something
• Enough	• You want to do with your wealth
• To the right causes	• That fulfills the needs of others
• At the right time	• That you can do more efficiently and more effectively than government or commerce, and
• In the right way	• That expresses your gratitude, brings you satisfaction, and actualizes your identification with the fate of others?

If we compete with other nonprofits for perceived limited charitable dollars, we will look like avaricious children squabbling over a parent’s estate. We should adopt a supply side approach to philanthropy and not a scarcity model, as good philanthropic work is like the rising tide that lifts all ships and spirits. Schervish (2000b) helps us do just that with his idea of “supply side philanthropy.” This elegant theory postulates that it is not through competition for an illusory and limited piece of the “pie of philanthropy” but rather through inspiring individuals toward gifts of significance that the true growth of philanthropy will occur. This theory implies that the only limits to philanthropy are those that we impose on ourselves and our institutions through misinformed notions of this important work and the transforming effect that philanthropy can have on the lives of our benefactors. If we follow Schervish’s advice and focus on improving the quality of giving over the quantity of giving, we will achieve both greater respect for the work of fundraising and greater philanthropic success as well.