Goal setting is critical to major gift fundraising. As readers of this blog probably know, Richard and I have been preaching goal setting and strategy as one of the bedrocks of a solid major gift program. Without goals, how would you plan? Without goals, how would you have something to attain?
You wouldn’t. This is why they are absolutely essential if you want a successful major gift program.
But sometimes, revenue goals can go really bad. Let me tell you a story.
I know a major gift officer, Katherine (not her real name), who had a very successful year in 2013. She surpassed her revenue goal by over 50%. One of the reasons she surpassed her goal by such a large amount is that she solicited three very large gifts. These large gifts were amazing, and she worked hard to cultivate those donors to bring in those gifts. However, it was clear that these three donors’ gifts would not be repeatable in 2014.
When it was time for Katherine to set her goals for 2014, her manager essentially forced her to create an overall goal of 20% more caseload revenue than the previous year. Never mind that she would not be able to repeat those three large gifts – the manager didn’t want to hear it. “I want to see each caseload grow year over year,” her manager barked to the team.
You may at this point be thinking how unbelievably unfair, short-sighted and downright wrong this manager was.
You would be right – but unfortunately, our team at Veritus has run into this same story repeated over and over.
So here is what happened to Katherine. Katherine is a very good MGO. However, as 2014 begins, she can’t sleep. It’s only January and she already feels this heavy burden to figure out how to grow her caseload revenue by 20% when she’s already behind – because those three donors are not even going to be able to give in 2014.
The first few months go fine. She is actually ahead of her year-to-date goal. Why? Because the previous year, those three gifts all came in July. Then July hits. Now, she is way behind goal compared to last year.
Here is a good MGO, executing her plan, doing all that she can to cultivate and steward her donors, but now each month when that revenue report comes out, she is always behind. It’s defeating, and Katherine feels like a failure each month.
2014 is almost over. Katherine is going to end the year up 5% over her revenue from last year. Unfortunately, it’s well below the 20% figure her manager asked her to bring in. Katherine is completely deflated.
This is so unfortunate. Had the manager taken into account the full story of Katherine’s caseload performance from 2013, taking those three gifts out of the goal-setting equation, she would easily have made her 20% goal.
So Katherine actually did incredibly well – but she feels like she has failed.
Have you heard a story similar to this? This kind of stuff happens all the time in our industry, and Richard and I are tired of it. We want to make one thing absolutely clear:
Goals are not meant to set up a form a punishment – they should be a positive guide, something to reach for.
Please remember this and embrace it.
In my next post I’m going to tell you how to understand goal setting and how goals can be your friends and make you successful.
Jeff