Let’s jump right into it. I believe there are three primary reasons for the major donor disconnect most gift officers face.
1. Major Donors Feel Misunderstood
What image comes to mind when average people think about wealthy people? If you’re like most, you have been groomed to think negatively about the wealthy. They’re usually portrayed as conniving, greedy, manipulative, ruthless, and spoiled by the media including films, books, the news, and so on.
But is that what real wealthy people are like? Of course not.
The wealthy people I know (especially the philanthropic ones) are kind and giving people who want to find meaning in their lives. They’re just like you and me, but with more assets. And most of those assets were earned, not inherited.
Wealth statistics
The World Ultra Wealth Report released some stereotype-busting data in 2021. 72.5% of wealthy people earned their money. They did not grow up rich. And that’s even higher than it was five years before (66.5%). 20.1% gained their wealth through a mixture of earning it and inheriting it. And just 7.4% inherited their wealth.
Think about that. How differently will a person think about their money if they earned it compared to inheriting it? The vast majority of your potential major donors earned it. But they feel like everyone assumes they’ve been rich their whole lives.
See how that could lead to a relational disconnect?
Values and mindset
The values, work ethic, and decision-making skills that helped these people earn their money will continue to guide them as they think about philanthropy. Yet, many have little to no experience with giving away large sums of money. They never saw their parents do it because their parents weren’t rich. It’s new.
Furthermore, people who don’t grow up wealthy often don’t perceive themselves as being wealthy – even if they are. They know where they came from, and they know they could end up there again. They worked for this. They’re not just going to give it away because a wealth screening report says they can.
Social-emotional motivators
What makes wealthy people – especially those who earned it – consider major gifts?
According to award-winning researcher Dr. Russell James, the number one predictor of charitable giving, by far, is when social-emotional outcomes related to giving become activated in the mind of the donor.
How do you help wealthy people activate these outcomes? First, you need to know what they are. There are three:
- Visualization
- Identification
- Empathy
When donors can visualize the benefits from doing something, the chances increase that they will actually do it. Visualization can be encouraged in a number of ways, such as
- Showing other donors who have given
- Providing visuals of what the money would achieve – photos of affected people
- Asking questions to draw out their life story, and proving that you listened and heard
That third one is a big one, because your goal in asking the right questions is to help these donors see giving as a critical part of their own life journey. Their whole life has been, in part, lived so they can make a transformative difference in this world. Giving can be part of that. But they have to feel it. Not just ‘know’ it.
If they feel like you aren’t listening to them, they’ll stop listening to you.
It helps to understand why donors give, and here are 11 reasons.
Next, you want donors to identify with the people their gift will help. When you listen, you are able to show similarities between their story and the donors. Then, identification increases. For example, maybe the donor got inspired to take their life path as a result of a particular teacher’s role in their education. A child in some far off country wants that same thing, and the donor could help it happen by helping build schools, funding scholarships, or supporting mentoring.
The motivation to support things like this will increase when the donor sees themselves in the recipients of their gift or as the hero helping people like them.
As you help the donor explore these things, empathy – the most powerful social emotion – will begin to grow within them. And together, these three social emotions will spur the donor to want to give a major gift.
What’s missing?
Notice what’s not here. Nothing about wealth capacity, giving history, giving frequency, or any other quantitative metrics or activities.
What we’re doing is helping the donor advance their own hero story – this is what Dr. James has fixated on as the single most powerful way to increase major gifts. When you can do this, donors will feel understood and heard. And then, they will give.
2. Major Donors Don’t Trust You or Your Organization
Major donor prospects – especially ones with first generation wealth – are wary about sharing their actual financial reality with other people. Many have lost friends and some have had to distance themselves from family members as their wealth increased. Sadly, people in their lives often feel they deserve some of what they earned.
Consequently, wealthy people have lost trust in some of their friends, their family, and organizations like yours, too. It’s driven them to conceal and hide their wealth.
That’s one reason you struggle to correctly identify major donor prospects who are ready for deeper connection and opportunities to give. Many of them are hiding their true wealth from you and from the data and software that powers wealth screeners and predictive analytics.
Such people will do things like put their assets in other people’s names or in trusts. They might create shell companies to hide their actual assets or net worth. They’ll use offshore accounts or tax havens.
They’ll also live modestly, not lavishly, and will give anonymously. For people like this, they won’t show up at ritzy galas and plop down a hundred grand for all the world to see.
Plus, they’ve likely heard about sour giving experiences from others who have felt unheard or unloved, and so they protect themselves.
That’s why, these days, you need to let them engage with your nonprofit on their terms, not on yours. You can do that by using surveys to understand them. Then you need to prove that you heard and listened by following up. MarketSmart’s customers let our system do that for them automatically and at scale.
For example, if a prospect says they want to keep getting communication from your nonprofit, but they aren’t interested in giving a major gift for a couple years, you can respect those wishes (and save yourself a lot of time and effort). Keep sending communication, but do NOT pester them for a meeting now. Wait to engage them when they grant you permission to do so.
This WILL happen, I promise. They’ll even arrange a meeting with you on their own IF you prove you listened and cultivate the relationship in a donor-driven way. We see this happen every day because MarketSmart’s system helps major donors arrange meetings like these.
Here’s a video with more on how it works
3. Major Donors Experience ‘Rational Error Detection’
Lastly, is a reason that sounds a bit wonky at first: Rational Error Detection.
Imagine you are in a meeting with a prospective major donor. Of course, you want to continue to tap into and activate those same three social emotions mentioned previously. You keep drawing them out through meaningful conversation—nurturing them, reinforcing them, and deepening them. You keep talking about the things that produce more such emotions.
That’s how you get the biggest gifts. We covered that but you can read more about it from Dr. James here.
Now, if you get off track and introduce rational error detection, you can easily derail all your efforts and end up with a go-away gift that is meant to shoo you away. Or, you might get nothing at all.
What is rational error detection?
It’s what happens when the emotional centers of the brain get turned off, and the rational, logical, analytical parts take over. Most gift officers make this happen when they ask for money too early in the process or offer ways to give such as from their IRA (HOW) before the donor’s motivations have been established clearly in their mind (their WHY).
Giving is an emotional act, not a logical one. If the logic side of the brain is running the show before the foundation has been set (thanks to understanding the WHY), big gifts won’t happen as often.
How does rational error detection happen?
It happens when you introduce figures, numbers, processes for giving, giving calculators, legal jargon, and giving proposals. These are brain-intensive items. And the brain loves them. But they are not emotional. And once donors begin analyzing everything and turn off their emotions, that inspiration to give a huge gift begins to diminish if the foundation (WHY) has not been firmly established.
The key is to bring up this stuff at the right time, after the donor already knows why they want to give. And they may even know where they want their gift to go. After that, once they reach the question of how to give, you can then introduce the technical aspects and various options for giving without inhibiting the giving process.
We call this the why-what-how cycle.
Hold off on logic and analysis until the donor has reached the ‘how’ stage. By that point, they’ve already decided to give. The decision is made. All that remains is to work out the details.
Wait until then to introduce those details, and you will avoid rational error detection.
Discover How to Strengthen Your Donor Relationships
Donor relationships are the key to winning the biggest major gifts. Not facts, figures, and wealth screening data. But emotion and authentic connection.
We’ve written extensively about this topic, based in part on a revealing and groundbreaking study that looked at donor relationships at all levels, not just major donors.
See the study and explore how to strengthen your donor relationships
Related Resources:
- What We Should Value More: Fundraisers Who Are Reluctant Askers
- 4 Ways Your Assumptions about Major Donors Are Hurting Your Fundraising
- Understanding Wealthy Donors – 3 Truths Every Gift Officer Needs to Know
- Fundraising is Not About “The Ask.”
