A fundraising shop does not just ceaselessly ask people for money. There is a lot of strategy behind crafting a message, coming up with an annual plan, and so on. It isnat rocket science, but itas important to know that a lot of thought has gone into those appeals you get in the mail, or those phone calls you get between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time.1 They were timed that way on purpose. Your efforts must be just as well planned. While annual planning and strategizing are not the primary focus of this chapter (weall cover these topics at great length in Chapter 6), theyall give you a backdrop for thinking about its contents: an overview of the gift cycle, and the steps you will take to engage donors and maximize their contributions to your organization.
The gift cycle is less about ma.s.s appeals and more about cultivating the donors who will be receiving individual attention from your staff in person. Understanding the gift cycle is key to understanding the information I present in the chapters on stewardship and major gifts. It will also provide you with a framework for the contents of the next chapter, on a.s.sembling your team.
I am including this information early in the book because all too often, we charge forth, frantically raising money to keep the lights on, without any long-term view. This serves to hurt your organization down the road. You need to set up your fundraising shop with a solid understanding of annual gifts, major gifts, and the steps involved in raising both. The first step is understanding that the actual act of asking for money is only one element in a much larger cycle.
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1Yes, even the really bad pieces of direct mail.
The Gift Cycle.
There are five steps in the gift cycle: a.s.sessment, cultivation, presolicitation, solicitation, and stewardship, which starts the cycle all over again (after all, itas called the gift cycle, not the gift line). These five steps can be automated, or they can be individually tailored depending on the available staffing resources at your organization as well as the size of the gift.
In fundraising lingo, we often talk about amoves management.a Moves management refers to the system of moving your donors along to the next step in the gift cycle. Ideally, each new contact with a donor should move that donor to the next level (although plenty of times they get caught in cultivation limbo, as weall see later in this chapter).
Letas now dissect each of the steps in the cycle. The majority of what you are about to read is tailored for conversations revolving around larger gifts and donors who merit individual attention from a frontline fundraiser. As I discuss this information early in the book, so should you consider it early in what Iam a.s.suming to be the development of your shop. This is because, again, I want you thinking about the entire gift cycle from day one. Itas easier to do it now than to have to backtrack when your team is already operating at 90 miles an hour. I want you to appreciate the many steps involved in a professional solicitation.
a.s.sessment.
Think of it as your first date, a meeting to get to know one another. a.s.sessment is best executed in person, but can be done via phone or e-mail if your organization does not have the staffing resources (consider that a suggestion to push for such resources if you donat have them yet!). The goal of a.s.sessment visits or calls is to get an idea of each prospectas capacity to make a gift (in other words, how high you can shoot), inclination (feeling of warmth toward giving to your particular inst.i.tution), and the timing (of when it is likely that a gift will occur). You also want to begin to discern where individual donorsa interests might lie with respect to your organization, and where they might be looking to make an impact.
Major gift officers, princ.i.p.al gift officers, and senior staff will often have researched a prospect beforehand to discern the prospectas capacity to give, or had research done for them (weall discuss research in the next chapter). If this is the case, then focus your attention on trying to figure out inclination and timing.
If youare strapped for resources and therefore donat have research staff, then youall have to start making a.s.sessment calls with your already-generous donors.
For nonmajor gift work, a.s.sessment takes on a different tone. From raising money chiefly through ma.s.s appeals, a.s.sessment turns to a.n.a.lyzing the efficacy of each solicitation, and each mode of solicitation, within your shop. What modes (written, e-mail, or telephone appeals) worked best? Which individual appeals or telephone segments got the best response?
However, with individuals at the larger gift levels, the a.s.sessment meeting, more than any other, necessitates that you listen actively and with intent. Have your ears open for any cues that will help you perceive the donoras position.
If youare meeting at the prospectas home, drive around the neighborhood to get a sense of the community. You canat judge a book by its cover, but it will give you at least an introductory idea of your prospectas wealth.
Donat fret if you donat get a view of the house. You can drive by it later. And if you canat do that, then you can do homework on the value of the house. The point is that the conversation itself should yield enough clues for you to begin to home in on capacity, inclination, and timing.
Here are some questions for which you want the answers, if you donat already have the information on hand: How old is this prospect?
In what industry does this prospect work? What is his/her job t.i.tle? Is it possible to know this prospectas annual salary, or at least estimate it?
How is the economy treating the industry in which this prospect works?
Does the prospect own property? Multiple properties?
Does this prospect come from family money? Is there a family foundation?
Does this prospect have children? How many? How old? Are they going to private or public school?
What other organizations does this prospect support philanthropically? Where does your organization stand in this prospectas esteem relative to these other organizations?
What is the prospectas level of awareness of what your organization is doing today?
Is there a history (positive or negative) with this prospect and your organization?
Is there anything happening right now in the personal life of the prospect that could affect the tempo of a gift conversation (for example, divorce, lawsuit, bankruptcy, scandal, family illness)?
During this first conversation with prospects, be very up-front with them about your role and your ultimate intention. Never skirt around the fact that you are a fundraiser. In my major gift work, I often say something along the lines of, aNow, I am a major gift officer, so it is my job, at some point down the road in our conversation, to ask you to make a significant philanthropic commitment to us at the six-figure level. Today is not the day that Iam asking you for that commitment, and I want the conversation to advance at a pace that is comfortable for you. But I wouldnat be doing my job if I didnat let you know that up front.a Terrifying, right? On some level, sure, but think of it this way: by frontloading the idea, you are offering them an opportunity to reveal the answers to your questions about inclination and timing.
It is a huge time saver to have prepared some phrases such as the ones I have just used. If they let you know that now is not the right time, or that six figures is totally beyond their current price range (or that your organization is not high on their list for philanthropic relationships), this is very useful information to you. It helps you prioritize your prospect pool. You can put that particular prospect a little lower (or a lot lower) on your call list.
Again, in the words of Stan, from Gra.s.sroots Campaigns, aJust move on to the next door.a If they donat jump out of their skina"and youall be surprised: they rarely doa"then you know that this is a good prospect and that you can continue the conversation with confidence. And if they do fall out of their chairs, well, thatas OK, too.
Of course, if youare not raising major gifts yet, thereas no need for that sort of end-of-meeting language, but it is always useful to let donors know that your ultimate intention in continuing to meet with them is to get them to open their checkbook.
Cultivation.
a.s.suming your first date went well, itas time to start cultivating your prospect. In the dating parallel, this is where you buy flowers, write poetry, and make a mix tape (or an iTunes playlist for the younger readers out there). In the actual world of fundraising, this is where you engage the prospect on the goings on of your organization in a way that is tailored and meaningful to that person.
Cultivation is usually the longest stage of the gift cycle in that it can take a while to move a prospect from cultivation to presolicitation. Gift officers will often refer to their prospect pool, or portfolio, as acultivation heavy,a meaning that an overwhelming number of their prospects are stuck in the cultivation stage.
Depending on how you view it, it can be the most challenging, tedious, or fun part of the gift cycle. Itas often all three at any given point within the cultivation process. It is also the most exciting part because it allows you to think creatively about how best to engage your prospects. You are getting them to trust you, or as we say in fundraising lingo, building (or cementing) the relationship.
Put yourself in their shoes: What do they want to know about the organization? What gets them excited about the work that your organization is doing? When meeting with them, take note of how they react to what youare pitching to them, of when their posture and body language changes, of when they really perk up or get enthusiastic.
Cultivation can take on innumerable forms. It can be as simple as forwarding a press release they might find interesting. It can be as formal as getting the executive director to meet them for lunch. It can be making a personal phone call to make sure that they plan to be at an event that you want them to attend.
It could even be asking them to host or underwrite an important event that your organization is putting on. Yes, hosting or underwriting costs money in itself, but it engages donors by allowing them to feel, correctly, that they are promoting your organization in a manner beyond simply writing checks. Putting on an event, whether itas an aall-comea event or a smaller, invitation-only dinner with a targeted invitation list, donors often feel good when asked to help put something like this together, and it gets them involved in a way that isnat strictly monetary (although there is still a check being written).
Hereas a trick that Iave never worked up the courage to use, but I think it is brilliant. Itas not necessarily restricted to a cultivational strategy, but could certainly be a good gimmick to employ. A colleague of mine used to work with someone who once a year would mail thirteen or so of his top prospects a hand-written card that merely said, aCongratulations!a above the officeras signature.
He reported that over half the people who received that card would call him, reference some event (pregnancy, marriage, graduate degree, house purchase, or retirement) and thank the gift officer, asking how he knew about the event! Youad have to be quick on your toes to come up with a reply, or have them canned in advance, which is why I donat do it, but I think the idea is fascinating, and could be useful in cultivation if you can pull it off.
The length of cultivation will depend both on the prospectas inclination and timing, and the scale of the gift that you are hoping to secure. It can take as little as 90 seconds or as long as a year (or more!). As you visit with more and more prospects, and ask for a variety of gifts ranging from $100 to $100,000, you will gain instincts that allow you to gauge how long the cultivation stage needs to take. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the gift, the longer the cultivation. While there are certainly exceptions, itas a safe bet.
There are two things that can elongate the cultivation stage (well, there are many, including any number of untimely changes in personal circ.u.mstances). The first is that a donoras interests can change over time. I have a number of prospects in my pool that were once very interested in supporting financial aid. However, when their children began applying for college, the prospects changed their tune for fear that their support of needier students would be crowding out their own childrenas potential for getting into our inst.i.tution.
Another example is a prospect of mine whom we had been targeting, with some progress, for financial aid with an eye toward soliciting him upon his sonas graduation. Then, he learned about another effort to build an endowed scholarship fund to honor a professor of his, who had recently pa.s.sed away. He very quickly changed where he steered his support for the college, and to a level lower than we were hoping for.
It isnat always a bad thing when your prospectsa interests change. I was meeting with a prospect recently to discuss building his already-endowed fund to $750,000 over five years, when in pa.s.sing, I mentioned the collegeas efforts to endow its cross country program. He wasnat a runner in college, but has since become one. His son is now quite an accomplished cross country runner, so he made a gift over and on top of his current pledge schedule. Sometimes a change in interest can be a pleasant surprise. It can just change the time horizon, or alter the direction of the conversation. Or, in the case of this alumnus, supplement an already-robust conversation.
The second reason that cultivation might take longer than you like is that the donoras interests in your organization donat match up with current funding priorities.
A quick detour: Funding priorities are usually set (or should be) by your board of directors and your executive director. Those priorities should be communicated clearly with the advancement shop. It is your job, as director of development, to ensure that this happens. Donat a.s.sume that your board or executive director will think to tell you immediately. You need to be proactive, especially early on in your shopas development. Thereas no buy-in yet, nor is there a standard operating procedure to communicate these priorities.
I want to stress just how important it is for your fundraisers to be receiving top-level communication from your board and your executive director. You do not want a situation where your donor knows more about your organization than you do. Having a fundraiser get caught off guard undermines the donoras confidence in your inst.i.tution. If a development officer asking for money cannot successfully articulate the nonprofitas mission, that officer and therefore the inst.i.tution are in trouble.
Again, be proactive and interact with your executive director and your board. You need them to understand the importance of keeping the development office in the know. When thereas a new project, you need to know. When there is a change in funding priorities, you really need to know. Donat leave it to chancea"or worse, to your donorsa"to become informed about the latest and greatest things that your nonprofit is doing.
When a donoras interests donat align with your inst.i.tutionas funding priorities, you need to be delicate, as you want to honor their desire to give and the spirit of how they want to steer their philanthropic support, even if it is in a way that does not perfectly correspond with their explicitly stated intention.
Sometimes, incompatibility with a donoras interests occurs because inst.i.tutional priorities change. For example, one time I had a prospect whom I was planning to solicit for $100,000. When we got down to discussing where he might like to make an impact, he expressed interest in funding winter internships that would send students abroad to lesser-developed countries. At the time, this was not a funding priority at the school. I had to explain that while I was ecstatic for his support, internships were not a top need at the moment. Would he consider instead a gift that would support bringing students from lesser-developed countries to our college in the form of an expendable financial aid commitment? He ended up making a gift to financial aid; it was at a much lower level than I was hoping for, but he was on board, which was the important part.
Imagine my surprise (and rage) when not six months later I learned that the college had a new goal of pumping up its experiential learning programming. This meant both that there was a push to provide internships to students, but also to raise money so that students who had unpaid internships could have a stipend to live on during their experience.
The good news is that once the aforementioned prospectas current pledge is paid off, we can go back to him and get him excited about a new undertaking that aligns more directly with his original interests. The not-as-good news is that the timing was misaligned and it might undermine his confidence in our ability to communicate clearly and accurately with donors. That, and the fact that we might have been able to get him on board at a higher level of commitment earlier on. I could have had a $100,000 commitment on the books, but now weall have to wait five years to resolicit him. If your organization runs on a shoestring budget, that five-year waiting period can be extremely costly. If this is the case, it might make sense to communicate the change in priorities sooner, in the hopes that the donor might convert his pledge to cover his original area of interest, at the amount for which you originally asked. Beware, though: asking for another gift while a pledge is being paid off can upset donors. Be diplomatic if youare forced into this situation. And do everything that you can to avoid being caught there in the first place.
Sometimes, things donat fall into place and you are forced to make things work imperfectly, like a Gemini and a Capricorn trying to date. Donat despaira"it can be donea"it just requires finesse, patience, and an openness to a longer, more drawn-out conversation.
If your organization has a very narrow mission, the chance that your prospectsa interests might not line up with your inst.i.tutional priorities decreases. Of course, each organization has a wide range of needs, some as mundane (but essential) as keeping the lights on and having a budget for office supplies, but the narrower your mission, the more focused your donor base will be in the first place.
Sometimes donors arenat particularly excited about your current undertaking. This can be especially relevant for nonprofits that focus on influencing policy, either locally, at the state level, or nationally. That isnat to say that they wonat be excited about your next battle. Itas just that this project might not be the right one for them to fund.
If, after much effort, you find yourself still finagling an angle that is pleasing to the donor and in line with your organizational priorities, you have to make a decision: do you side with the donor or the inst.i.tution? Sometimes, it can turn into a bit of a skirmish, and youall have to be the mediator.
One example is a prospect of mine from the Midwest who had set up an expendable lectureship fund that would bring a speaker to campus once a year to lecture in j.a.panese on the state of, and trends in, that language. This was done through a gift of $200,000. After a few years, she was satisfied with how the lectureship was being managed and wanted to endow the fund, so that the lectureship would live on in perpetuity.
When I broached the subject with the budget office on campus, I met some resistance. Lectureships were not a funding priority on campus. Would the donor consider repurposing the fund?
After reviewing this donoras history, having spent time with her smoothing over some rough patches that she had already had with the college, and having several conversations with her face-to-face, it became clear to me that it was going to be lectureship or bust on this particular prospect.
For one, she had already reconverted the fund a few years ago from a research fund to a lectureship fund, when she quadrupled the level of the fund with a significant gift. Secondly, her philanthropy to her other alma mater supported the library and its acquisitions. Finally, in conversation, she revealed that her other alma mater had pushed her about financial aid and that she just flat out wasnat interested in supporting that aspect of the universityas programming. I floated the idea of faculty support at our college, since she had been a professor, but at the end of the day, she wanted her fund to remain a lectureship fund.
I did my homework and put in the effort, but with all other options exhausted, I had to go back to the budget office and explain that this donor simply wouldnat budge and that we had to go ahead and endow this fund, despite the fact that it did not align with our inst.i.tutional priorities.
Of course, you canat always take the side of the donors. Sometimes you have to draw a hard and fast line and insist that in order for them to support your organization, they have to change their tune. Ethical questions can arise, and when they do, red flags should go up. Philanthropy is not a quid pro quo arrangement (weall visit this theme in depth in the chapter on political fundraising). You have to make it very clear to donors what their support does and does not entail. Supporting an athletic club does not give them a say in who coaches. Supporting a college does not get their children into that inst.i.tution.
In short, cultivation is a critical step in the gift cycle. The majority of prospects that receive individual attention (i.e., your major gift prospect pool) will likely be in cultivation at any given moment. As noted, it requires imagination, creativity, and persistence to move them from cultivation to the next step.
Presolicitation.
In the interest of propriety, itas time to stop drawing the parallels between fundraising and dating. Iam confident that by now, you get the idea. Presolicitation is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: you either ask donors if theyall consider a proposal in writing or you simply let them know that you plan to solicit them soon, whether as a part of your follow-up to this visit, or the next time you see them.
Be prepared, in this scenario, to be asked how much you were planning to solicit them for. Some donors donat really want to draw things out and want to cut right to the chase. When a donor is asking for athe bottom line,a or asks you outright, aSo, what is it you want from me?a you had better be prepared to turn the presolicitation visit into a solicitation visit (find out how in the following section, and in Chapter 10 on athe aska). You need to have a figure in mind in case this does happen. And it happens often enough.
As noted before, the gift cycle can be as short as a single visit, or as long as years. By the time you are at the presolicitation stage, you have gained a good understanding of where the prospect is interested in making an impact on your organization via their philanthropy. Youave done your homework, figuring out which programs would be involved, and youave gotten buy-in from the parties to be affected. More importantly, the prospect continues to be warm to your advances. Even more importantly, you have been able to calculate just how much you think this person might be willing to give you.
Solicitation.
The big moment is upon you. You are either going to solicit your prospect for a gift during this visit, youare compiling your talking points for the phone call, or youare preparing a proposal for them in writing.
If youave done your job up to this point, your ask should not catch the prospect off guard. The amount might, and thatas OK. Believe it or not, at some level, the prospect has been waiting for this moment much like you have (and probably looking forward to getting it over with, much like you have!). Their time is limited as well, and the last thing you want to do is leave a meeting with the prospect wondering, aWhere was the ask?a Itas a delicate balance, as you donat want to be hasty, but again, if you have been up-front with them, prospects will know that there is a solicitation coming. Linger too long, and youall actually undermine your chances of success.
Chapter 10 will focus on the solicitation itself in much more detail.
Stewardship.
The prospect says yes. Tell your boss, tell the executive director, pop the champagne, leave work at four. Itas time to celebrate. After all, the development shop has done its job, right? Well, mostly.
Stewardship is the art of thanking your donors for their gifts. It is you reporting back to them on the impact of their generous support. You have to demonstrate to your donors how their philanthropic relationship with your organization has enlivened your programming, helped you to succeed when you otherwise would not have been able to, and how grateful you are for them.
As a gift officer myself, I cannot stress enough how much I value having a strong stewardship team where I work. Solid stewardship renews the gift cycle all over again, and when properly done, makes resolicitation a whole lot easier . . . or inspires a new commitment all by itself. Iave devoted a whole chapter to the subject (Chapter 8). Itas that important.
So, there is the gift cycle in a nutsh.e.l.l. I spent a good deal of time on a.s.sessment and cultivation, and I went a little lighter on the nuts and bolts of presolicitation, solicitation, and stewardship. Again, examples and more in-depth explanation will appear later on in the book. For now, I want you just to have a basic idea of the life cycle of a gift, so that it makes more sense as we move on to talking about staffing your office, which we are about to discuss in the next chapter.
a.s.sembling Your Team.
Having taken a look at philanthropy and its relationship to the nonprofit world, the development shop in the context of the nonprofit as a whole, and having discussed the gift cycle at an introductory level, let us now turn toward recruiting an inst.i.tutional advancement team.
In order to give you a better snapshot of an ideally staffed team, I am going to a.s.sume that you have unlimited resources to hire as many people as you want (knowing that this is likely an erroneous a.s.sumption). At the end of the chapter, I will talk about how to prioritize when you are cash-strapped and canat recruit everyone you want.