Think small. Get small.
It’s true in major gifts. If your vision for what your organization can do is small, careful, fearful and short-sighted, your donor will immediately sense it and give in line with that – a small token gift.
Small thinking is everywhere. Jeff and I run into it almost every day in our calls, meetings, emails and speaking engagements.
I was speaking at a conference for one organization that had many small affiliates and chapters. They were small in terms of budget and current impact. But their cause was huge. And they didn’t know it.
So, when I was talking about millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars they said, almost to a person: “this doesn’t apply to me. It’s too big.” I responded: “OK, take some zeros off and apply the concepts.” Some could – many couldn’t.
And that, my friend, is why they stay small.
We have plenty of examples to prove this point:
- The donor who rejected a $400,000 ask and told the MGO to come back when she had something with “a bolder vision in the million-dollar range.”
- The $4-million-dollar organization who presented a bold vision and asked for $9 million from a donor – and got it.
- The MGO who carefully matched the donor’s passions and interests to a need in the organization and presented a bold plan – she converted that donor from a $5,000-a-year donor to one that gave $4 million in one year and $8 million the next.
- A MGO who presented a bold plan to a donor who gave $250,000. The year before that, the donor had given $85,000.
I could go on.
What is your organization trying to do? Are you just talking about things in a one-year budget time horizon, or do you have a plan that states a bold vision for the future?
Small vs. bold.
Believe me, there’s plenty of money out in the marketplace to fund anything you want to do. The only thing missing is a bold vision and plan. (Tweet it!)
Here’s what you can do about it in your organization.
- Persuade your Development Director or VP of Fundraising to see the need to have a bold vision and plan.
- Suggest that they convene a meeting of leadership to create such a plan.
- Start the meeting by taking away all restrictive thinking. Say: “If money were no object, how much would you need in the next three to five years to make a major impact in [INSERT PROGRAM CATEGORY]?”
- Once you’ve landed on that number – and it had better be big – have the group or program people create a roadmap to make it happen. This is more complex than I’m making it sound, but this is the concept. Your organization needs to have a bold vision and plan.
- Once you have that plan, be sure that the plan’s short-term horizon – the one that matches the budget – can be executed by your current donors. You don’t want to create a situation where you’re using current donor assets to fund things outside your budget, or you’ll run the risk of creating budget deficits. If a donor has the ability to fund more than what you expect from that donor for the current budget, then be sure that when you ask the donor for the larger gift, you’re clear that “this is above and beyond your current giving.”
This is the conceptual framework of planning for a bold vision and ask. Take steps to do it, and start moving toward bigger thinking. It will be good for you, your organization and the donor – who now will get to more fully express their passions and interests through you.
Richard
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Not sure what this means, Richard and Jeff.
5. Once you have that plan, be sure that the plan’s short-term horizon – the one that matches the budget – can be executed by your current donors. You don’t want to create a situation where you’re using current donor assets to fund things outside your budget, or you’ll run the risk of creating budget deficits.
What’s the definition of the plan’s “short-term horizon?” What do you mean by it matching the budget? What budget? The org budget, or the plan budget? What do you mean by it being executed by your current donors?
Thanks for the clarification.
Hi, Richard. The plan’s short-term horizon is the one year budget. Anything beyond that is the longer-term horizon. What I am cautioning about is not to use the current donors and their current giving to fund something outside of the budget that may be a good idea or even may be in the long-term plan. Because if you do that you will run deficits in the current budget. Does that help?
This is great. However, I am personally conflicted because I wonder about the other side of the spectrum for this situation – where the gift officer is being too bold. A colleague of mine had a situation where he made a big ask and the donor reacted in a way that we did not expect her to. The donor has been a leadership level donor at our organization and we are aware that she makes major gifts to other institutions. My colleague made a bold ask via proposal. Once the proposal was delivered, she said it is above what she can give and said there is no need for the gift officer to reach out to her for further meetings since she sees that there are no needs for meetings. She noted that she will reach out to the gift officer and that is all from her – nothing else. Since then, she has not made her annual gift around the time she usually makes her leadership gift. That said, I wonder our ask was too bold. Then where do you draw the line when the bold ask is okay and when is not?
I don’t think the ask was the problem, Susie. I think the relationship was the problem. Your colleague did not, in my opinion, have a deep enough and connected relationship with the donor to (a) really know what her interests and passions are, (b) understand her economy, and (c) meet with her personally to talk about the cause and the ask. Note that the ask was via a proposal vs. a personal conversation. Note also that the donor makes big gifts to other institutions – something is working there – most likely a strong relationship plus a perfect match to passions and interests. So the problem was not the amount of the ask, in my opinion. If you have the right relationship and a solid match of interests and passions to the ask it is easy for the donor to talk back about any problems with amounts. In this case she went away and that is a big clue.