How to Win More Major Gifts by Understanding the Donor Hero Journey

Don’t believe what you hear in the news. The truth is, everyone still wants to be a hero. Deep down, we all want to do something great, either in or through our lives. And this, according to a lifetime of research by award-winning researcher Dr. Russell James, is the primary motivator for why people give.

Dr. James was given the great honor of being selected for The National Association of Charitable Gift Planners Hall of Fame in 2021 for his work. He has amassed a trove of data behind his conclusions.

So you can take it from him with great confidence – while there are numerous secondary reasons that motivate major gifts, at the core, what drives donors is the desire to advance their own personal hero narrative. Every donor is on a journey. You can help lead them through the donor’s hero journey.

Internal and External Heroism

What is a hero? And what is heroism? Interestingly, one reason not everyone in the nonprofit world immediately warms up to this idea is because they are limiting their definition. Heroism can be external or internal.

Internal heroism

Internal heroism means you change something about yourself. Perhaps you have a limitation of some sort – physical, mental, emotional, or otherwise. The desire to overcome that limitation is an example of internal heroism. Sometimes, that desire ends up manifesting externally, but it doesn’t have to.

For example, a person might be afraid of taking a particular risk, such as applying for a certain job, or going up and talking to someone. Those actions wouldn’t be noticed by anyone else, because they are common behaviors. But for the person taking the risk, the act could have great personal meaning because fears or other inhibitions had prevented them from doing this. So, they achieved internal heroism – no one is aware of it except for them.

Changing your character, altering a perspective, trying something new, believing differently – these are all examples of internal heroism.

External heroism

External acts of heroism get noticed by other people. These can be very small and noticed by just one other person, such as picking up someone’s keys they didn’t notice they had dropped. Or, they can be noticed by larger numbers of people.

External heroism accomplishes a goal, changes the world in some positive way, leads other people, or influences people in good ways. External heroism is associated with action. You did something. Other people noticed.

In terms of giving, this is why some wealthy people like to announce their philanthropic initiatives. They want the world to know what they’re doing because it will alter the public perception of them. That can be a selfish motive, but it doesn’t have to be. The motive could be to get the word out so people and organizations know this is a potential source of funds they can access.

Donating Is Heroism

Giving money away is inherently heroic in nature. Why? Because the donor is sacrificing something they own for the benefit of others. Ultimately, that’s probably the purest definition of a hero.

When you give, you don’t get anything financially in return. You lose the money. Unlike a purchase, you don’t get anything tangible in return. Donors give because they want to make a difference in an area that matters to them. They see a need. They want to solve it. They give. That’s their heroic action motivated by a desire to do something good.

The Donor Hero Journey Arc

As a major part of Dr. James’ research, he was able to correlate classic hero story arcs to the donor journey, thus revealing the donor hero journey.

If you want to win more major gifts and bigger gifts, this is how you’ll do it consistently.

What you’re about to read works because you will be tapping into core, primal motivations for doing great things – and giving money is a great thing. It’s external heroism because it tangibly affects something outside the donor in a positive way – even if it’s an anonymous gift. It can also be a form of internal heroism if the act of giving represents a profound transformation for the donor themself.

Here are the four major parts of the donor hero journey.

Original identity – donor at the beginning of the story

Donors come to you with a story. Their life story up to that point. This story could be comprised of:

Friends
Being part of a certain community
Values and how they developed them
Experiences and how they affected the person
Fears
Desires
Traumas

Everyone has a story, but many people are not aware of their own life stories, much less how those stories have fashioned them into the person they are.

Even more, how might their story relate to making a major gift?

Figuring that out will take… a journey!

When potential donors first enter your circle of influence, this is where they’re coming from. They have all this history. That personal history will affect when, if, and how much they might give.

Pursue relationship first

Your job as a gift officer or organization is to develop a relationship with each potential donor that helps bring out these qualitative data points. Yes, quantitative stuff like wealth capacity and prior giving history matters too. But this qualitative life story data is far more valuable when you’re trying to lead someone through the donor journey.

You learn a person’s story through relationship, conversation, and trust. That’s why you can’t rush major gifts. You can just run a wealth screening report, call up the rich people, and ask them to give. It just doesn’t work. Even if you win a gift, how much bigger would that gift have been had you taken the time to lead them through the donor hero journey?

Introduce new characters

During this initial phase of the journey, you also want to introduce the donor prospect to other characters in their new story. These might be beneficiaries of your organization’s work. They might be volunteers, staff or board members, or other donors.

These are the people who will be part of a new donor’s journey.

Inciting incident – the challenge that forces donors to respond

In the hero story, the inciting incident is the challenge. The most famous story in modern times is Star Wars. When Luke is told by Obi-Wan that he should learn the Force and help fight the Empire, that’s the challenge.

In the donor hero journey, giving is a challenge, but it should not be the first challenge, because it’s too big. That would be like sending Luke straight to the Death Star. He’d fail. He’s not ready for that big of a challenge.

Donor challenges

In MarketSmart’s major donor cultivation software system, the first challenge asks potential donors to fill out an online survey. That’s a relatively simple challenge. But it still requires some time. It requires a measure of trust that the organization won’t respond by selling their information or blasting them with solicitations.

Why a survey? Because a good survey lets the donor reflect on their life and start to discover how their life story and values entwine with your cause and mission. It propels them on the journey.

Our next challenge will be to opt in to receive emails from your organization. That, too, is a low-level challenge. But if someone isn’t even willing to accept emails from you, what is the likelihood they will make a major gift? Pretty low.

Future challenges increase in the level of commitment and trust required to meet them. These might include taking a call or being asked to meet in person. Here is where we’re getting into what you might label the ‘call to adventure.’

This is where they start making new friends and entertaining ideas and possibilities they hadn’t considered before – but that align with their life story, their values, and their desire for a sense of belonging.

Ultimately, the challenge will be issued to explore the idea of making a gift and discovering the possibilities for how that might look. In fundraising terms, this means the major gift officer invites the donor to work together on developing a cultivation plan—a concept pioneered by Greg Warner, CEO of MarketSmart. Once the donor accepts the invitation, the gift officer creates a calendarized cultivation path and shares it with the donor to gather their feedback. After some back-and-forth making revisions and adjustments, they agree to the roadmap and begin to make progress (also known as advancement).

This is why so many refer to fundraising as development and advancement.

Plot – donor battles with and navigates the challenges

Those later challenges comprise what could be called the heart of the plot – the story for this donor’s journey.

As the depth and difficulty of these challenges increases, so must the personalization for each donor. For it to have meaning and resonance, what you challenge them with, and what you talk about when you meet or talk on the phone must relate to their life story, values, and desire for a sense of belonging.

They’re giving because of particular reasons that matter to them. And those reasons will be different for each donor. That’s why you can’t treat each donor the same way, or use templates for giving proposals that basically all look the same. You can’t offer the same giving options to each donor – and that doesn’t only refer to the size of the gift.

Part of the donor journey is also discovering the timing for when they should make their gift.

You’ll know when that is, because the donor will reveal it to you as you develop the roadmap for their cultivation plan together. That way you don’t have to ambush them when they aren’t ready. In fact, many will remind you (the gift officer) that they want to finalize the gift by the predetermined date. Often, that’s because they want to move on to other things in their lives.

That’s when you’ll provide a giving proposal. You won’t blindside them with it. Now that you’ve navigated the roadmap with them and understood why they want to give, what they want to give, and how they’d like to give, you will be able to craft a proposal that’s right-sized for them.

The proposal will be a reflection of the act of heroism they have been longing to perform and they will want to do it, because it makes sense and provides value in line with their needs and desires.

Climax – donor gives and overcomes the challenge

At the end of the story when you use this process, the donor will usually self-solicit. They will ask if they can make a gift, because by this point, they want to. The problem is known. The challenge is before them. And they are ready to rise up and meet it.

They have not been ambushed, manipulated or influenced in misleading ways to reach this point. You’ve helped them reach a point in their journey they always wanted to reach, but didn’t know how to get there. So when this time comes, they will often initiate the steps required to give.

Either they’ll ask you about the next steps, or they will take them on their own.

It will be organic, in other words. Not a surprise to them. It’s the natural flow of events. And then, they make the gift, and the story reaches its climax. Goal achieved. Everyone can relax.

The resolution

This is the ending of the narrative. Here you and your donor tie up the loose ends and reflect on how the story wrapped up.

In Star Wars, Luke and his new friends attended a ceremony. They stood on a stage and accepted awards around their necks.

Now, with enhanced identities, they could reflect on how far they had come and what they had achieved with the help and guidance from Obi Wan Kenobi.

But there’s more to this stage than meets the eye. The very moment the money leaves their account and reaches yours, they will begin to ask themselves: “Was the value of my giving experience equal to or greater than the value of my gift?”

If the giving experience failed to exceed the amount they shared (and remember, value is in the eye of the beholder), then they might never give again. But, if the value of the giving experience was tremendous — and they cried tears of joy, thankful that you offered them the opportunity to gain that experience — then you can be sure that they will consider your next offer to receive a new roadmap and go on another journey together, with you as their guide and facilitator. Plus, they might tell all their friends.

But there’s one more thing you should know about the resolution stage: If you fail to prove to them that you did what you promised with their hard-earned money, you will lose their trust and they will eschew your invitations to consider attending the sequel.

The sequel

For many major donors, there is usually more in the tank. They have more money to give and another story (a sequel) to tell a few months or years from later.

So, if your smart, you will continue the relationship by learning about them, finding out what’s changed and what hasn’t, and determining whether they’d like to consider developing another roadmap together with you. In time, yet another story may emerge, and you will be granted permission to help them walk through these same steps so they advance and make another major gift of assets.

Strengthen Your Fundraising

How can you learn how to use the donor’s hero journey in your fundraising process?

MarketSmart’s software system has been designed to automate the early and most crucial parts of the donor journey to help gift officers pre-qualify donors for outreach and cultivate the ones who aren’t ready with a virtual gift officer. This frees up gift officers to devote much more of their time to the later stages, where relationship and trust must be developed by real people and human connection.

You and your team can level up your understanding of how to treat donors like characters in their own hero stories by reading Dr. James’ four books on the subject.

Or you might try learning about Fundraising Automation by downloading this white paper which includes case studies and free ideas.