Major donors give more when they’re inspired to give. Inspiration is emotional, not logical. It’s very difficult to inspire powerful social emotions by attempting to persuade or convince someone to give.
What drives emotion is primal. It is what’s deep inside of a supporter based on their past (history or life story), their values, and their desire for community or a sense of belonging. It’s their identity.
But timing also drives emotion. That’s why one must know their supporters well—so their timing is understood and embraced. After all, people give on their timetable, not your organization’s.
Most gift officers know all of this, because giving is relational, not transactional. Just like wealth advisors, lawyers, and business coaches, the work of a gift officer is relational. You are a guide, a sage, not a notary stamping forms. And the donor is on a journey, fueled by inspiration, and driven forward through their relationship with a guide.
So how do you inspire a donor to go on that journey, one that will end with them happily and passionately giving their biggest possible gift?
It begins by understanding what a life journey is. A journey that involves a human life is a story, and the most memorable and emotional stories are the ones where the hero faces great challenges, and finds a way to overcome them with help from friends like you.
Here’s the big secret:
Donors want to be gently challenged (‘invited’‘ might be a better word) by fundraisers to take bold steps as long as they make them feel like they’re living a heroic life and the timing is right. The best example of this is found in the 1843 novel by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come challenged Ebenezer Scrooge to change his ways and become more generous and charitable.
So when you look at your existing major gift fundraising process, I believe it’s time for you to consider reframing it around challenges. You ‘advance’ a prospect (or help them move themselves forward, really) when they meet one challenge and get offered the next one.
Everyone involved should know that these Challenges are the next most logical steps and everyone should be aware of the path forward. There’s no reason for ambiguity. That drives confusion and distrust. Leading well-meaning supporters to an ultimate victory is what makes people feel like the hero in their own life story.
When you accept your role and confidently guide your supporters as they lean in and advance, you help them realize the version of themselves that they want to be. A newer, enhanced and improved identity.
For this paradigm, MarketSmart has identified seven primary challenges you can offer donors to compel them to keep pushing forward in their journey.
Challenge 1 – Offer a Feedback Loop
The idea with challenges in a story is that they get bigger, more difficult, and more consequential the further into the story you get. So the first challenge is relatively easy:
Only, let’s be clear on what kind of survey we’re talking about. We’re not talking about research surveys or data collection. This is not to fill up your CRM with information you’ll use later, or to inform some internal process.
No. These surveys are feedback loops. You plan the survey, and you also plan the follow-up communication that will be sent to each participant after they complete the survey.
This is critical. We’ve seen so many organizations send out surveys to prospects and then never follow up. The result has been tragic. Many supporters end up reducing their giving or dropping off altogether if no one follows up after their survey response.
What this tells us is that donors view surveys as relational overtures. You’re reaching out, and they’re responding. They want you to respond back. If you don’t…they feel ghosted. And no one likes that feeling.
MarketSmart’s system is designed to do exactly this:
- Offer surveys to prospects
- Respond to each donor’s responses with personalized communication
- Continue engaging each donor based on their ongoing responses
With this approach, the prospect initiates a relationship with your organization, but it’s on their terms. They know they can stop anytime. They know they can engage when they want.
But as long as you communicate in ways they’ve made clear they’re okay with, everything is good. They’ve passed the first challenge.
Challenge 2 – Invite Them to Personal Cultivation
This challenge happens as part of the survey. So, to be clear, the initial simple act of offering a survey is the first challenge. But then, within the survey they encounter the second challenge. It’s one of the questions.
Here you’re asking the supporter if they want to opt in to receiving ongoing communication from your organization. In MarketSmart’s process listed a moment ago, their acceptance of this challenge leads to steps 2 and 3 in that sequence.
One caveat here is that, because they already took your survey and shared information with you, even if they don’t explicitly grant permission for you to continue sending content to them, you can still do so, and they can always opt out and unsubscribe.
But it’s better if they do actually accept your invitation.
Then, you’ll have the freedom to send information that the supporter has indicated they want to receive. This is a big win for everyone.
The supporter is getting something valuable they asked for. And their trust in your organization is growing because you’re doing what they asked – and not doing things they didn’t ask for, like asking for money.
During this process, you can also attempt to gauge their openness to one day – not now – talking to someone from your organization about sharing assets. And you can begin gathering information that will help you identify potential major donors.
MarketSmart’s system does this for fundraisers automatically. It doesn’t ask people to give. Instead, it asks them to rate their likelihood of giving using a Likert scale and breaks each asset into a separate question. That way you learn the likelihood of giving among your survey respondents for sharing real estate, business interest, stocks, their IRA or 401k, and other property as major gifts.
This process helps determine which supporters are going to be more likely to respond to the third challenge. Plus it helps you stay focused on the people for whom the timing is right.
The key thing to remember with the second challenge is that for now, you are asking the question so you can give, not take. You want to understand why they care, what programs or initiatives they might want to support, and how (with what assets) so you can align their passions, interests, and timing with content or experiences you can offer or provide. And you position yourself to ask for nothing in return except their engagement.
As their trusted guide, your job is to nurture and grow their interest in your mission and build confidence and belief in your organization’s ability to get the job done on their behalf, but you’re doing this on their terms.
Challenge 3 – Invite Them to Follow-Up Outreach
After the second challenge and after a good amount of pre-qualification and trust-building work has been accomplished, you’ll want to have someone from your team make an initial outreach call. For many we recommend you have a Lead Outreach Associate undertake this role. Some also call these folks Ambassadors, President’s Liaisons, or Donor Experience Specialists.
The goal of this call is simple – to offer the third challenge. That challenge is to schedule a second outreach call.
The supporter likely will welcome the initial outreach call because you’ve been sending valuable cultivation content for probably many months, if not years, depending on the organization.
But to help someone move themselves toward major giving, you know you’ll need that second outreach call, and that’s what you’re challenging them with here. It’s a challenge because it means they are scheduling a call with someone from an organization. This is a real phone call and they have agreed to have it. It’s a much bigger step than opting in to receive some emails.
This is where MarketSmart’s software shows some of its greatest worth.
Because, how do you know when a prospect is ready for outreach? With our system, you know because it monitors their ‘digital body language,’ and also records key milestones once a prospect reaches them. These include sharing details like wealth capacity, a powerful reason to give, and timing.
With this approach, the people you’ll be calling will be looking forward to hearing from you.
And once you connect with them on that first call, you can offer the opportunity to have a second. Not everyone will take it. But some will, and for them, you’ll now be positioned for an ongoing phone relationship where your gift officers can build much deeper trust and connection.
Challenge 4 – Invite Them to Meet One on One
At some point in your phone outreach, you’ll discern that this supporter might be ready to meet in person. This is the meeting invitation step. You might determine the supporter to be ready for this on your very first outreach call. If they indicate how excited they are to give and are so glad you called – even though you didn’t ask for a gift – there’s no reason to hold back on scheduling that first meeting.
But in most cases, you’ll probably have a few calls back and forth before you feel the supporter is ready for this fourth challenge. An in-person meeting is a much greater commitment than a phone call. And again, notice how the difficulty of these challenges is escalating – just like in a good story.
Challenge 5 – Invite Them to Join Your Caseload
If that first meeting goes well, you may decide to plan a second one. But at some point, probably in the first meeting or even when you invite them to it, you’ll want to explain that you think they’re a great candidate for making a gift. How you bring this up to them matters, and is the subject of other content we’ve produced. For now, the point is, your next challenge is to invite them to join your caseload.
What this means is, you’re inviting them to go on a journey that will end with them deciding whether to give a gift, and how much. You have to be clear about this. You’re not asking for money, but you’re openly exploring the idea of doing so.
You also want to be clear that this part of the journey may take a while. It may take several months, or sometimes even longer, and that’s okay because no one is getting pressured to do anything, and the relationship matters more.
What you’re doing here is building what we call a ‘roadmap.’ This gives them a chance to co-create a cultivation plan for deeper exploration and understanding with you. It’s their acceptance of this invitation and process (acceptance of a custom roadmap), or strategic plan, that fully qualifies them for major giving, and ends with them thinking about the amount they might like to give. Here is where you become a true guide, leading them on the journey they want to take.
But it is not the final decision for what to give. And you are not asking for a gift here.
Challenge 6 – Invite Them to Collaborate on a Giving Proposal
When the roadmap has concluded, it’s time to invite them to create a giving proposal.
This is where you get detailed. The supporter has decided they want to make a gift, but they aren’t sure how, or which financial assets to use, or where they’d like the money to go, and many other questions.
The challenge here is to work with you to iron out the details of their gift.
For example, maybe they have stock options from an old employer and they’ve wondered how to cash them out without incurring a huge tax bill. This sixth challenge gives them the opportunity to talk about things like that, and to learn how giving can offset some of the taxes while still fulfilling their desire to help your organization.
These are the kinds of conversations you have during this stage. You’re finalizing a giving proposal. It may end up including two or three specific options, or perhaps just one. But the details will be discussed collaboratively, so the donor feels like they have agency in the process. They feel respected and valued, and they understand how this gift expresses deeply felt desires to do something profound and become the hero in their life story.
This is what award-winning researcher Dr. Russell James says every donor wants more than anything. And these seven challenges are the path you can use to help them realize that dream.
Challenge 7 – Encourage Them to Agree to Share Their Wealth
This final challenge is what has traditionally been known as ‘the ask.’
But as you might have realized, there’s not much suspense at this point if you’ve used these seven challenges, because the donor has worked with you to create the very same giving proposal they will be asked to act on. This is called self-solicitation. They created the plan, so they will of course say yes to it.
Thinking of this moment like most do, as a persuasive ‘ask’, and training your team with all these strategies for how to cajole a donor into responding positively, misses the whole point of why people give. No one wants to be pressured or convinced to give. They want to love the idea because it aligns with deeply held passionate beliefs about whatever motivates them to give.
This final challenge is thus relatively easy if they make it through the sixth one.
How MarketSmart Empowers You to Lead Donors Through the Challenges
It’s hard to believe, but our software actually helps make this process work. Software can truly help your organization build and cultivate strong relationships with donors – at scale.
Our system’s greatest value happens up to the third challenge. At that point, the gift officer takes over the process. But as you saw, the big question is – how do you know when someone is ready for personal outreach?
Not answering that question well is what leads to hangups, avoidance, and angry supporters complaining about being harassed for their money.
When you’re only calling people you know are likely to want to hear from you, the experience is much more positive and productive for everyone, and it feeds the pipeline so your team can lead supporters through the remaining five challenges.
It works. And it works very well – which is why we’re able to offer a 10:1 ROI Guarantee. Our system works so well that we guarantee you will make ten times the revenue you spend on it.
Watch this video to see how MarketSmart works
Related Resources:
- How to Win More Major Gifts by Understanding the Donor Hero Journey
- 4 Ways Your Assumptions about Major Donors Are Hurting Your Fundraising
- Understanding Wealthy Donors – 3 Truths Every Gift Officer Needs to Know
- The 7-Step Donor Journey from Stranger to Philanthropic Partner