Making outreach to major donors requires more than pre-qualified prospects. That’s essential, and it’s the reason MarketSmart exists. But even with an array of leads who have given your nonprofit permission to reach out to them, someone still has to make the calls.
Is your team as prepared as they could be for this task?
Preparing your team for outreach requires more than just the right phone script and some knowledge about the prospect. There are particular tools they need at their disposal. There are methods they should be trying to use. There are even things they need to believe in and pursue as they make outreach and continue to follow-up and build relationships with major donor prospects.
We’re going to cover five of the most critical concepts and goals your team needs to fully understand and pursue as they prepare for outreach.
Resonance
You won’t find this one on most major gifts fundraising training programs or articles. But resonance is how big gifts happen. We’re talking about emotional resonance, an intuitive sense of belonging, a bond between the person and a nonprofit’s mission.
Emotional resonance is a way of relating to something or someone. You feel this sometimes when you watch a particularly powerful movie or have a religious experience. You can also feel it when participating in a political movement, volunteering, visiting another country with someone, or sharing a tragedy or victory.
When a supporter’s life story, values, and people they know align with your nonprofit’s mission, they experience emotional resonance. Again, this is the feeling that produces the biggest gifts.
How do you elicit resonance in a potential major donor?
It begins by communicating in a personalized manner, with relevance. When prospects share things with you, and you restate those same things back to them in the same conversation – or even better, in future conversations – they feel closer to you because it shows you listen and are trustworthy.
The more you communicate with relevance, the more trust gets built in the relationship. Over time, this eventually produces resonance. The supporter feels bonded to your organization in a way they never did before, even if they’ve been a subscriber or an occasional low-dollar or mid-level donor.
When your conversations feel like two friends talking, you’ve achieved resonance.
Reciprocity
It’s primal.
When someone does something for you, you feel more obligated to do something in return. We all feel this. They gave you a gift for New Years, so now you feel like giving them a gift at your next opportunity. They invited your family to dinner, so you feel like you should invite them. Much comedy has been borne from this instinctive urge on various TV shows and movies.
The same law of reciprocity works in major gifts fundraising.
When you give things to your donors and prospects, they will feel an inner compulsion to do something for you in return. Ultimately, what you want them to do is give a transformational gift.
But what can you give them?
You’ll hear MarketSmart talk a lot about offers, and this is why. The more offers you make, and the more offers each prospect accepts, the stronger the urge to give will become. This is why businesses give out free samples. Same exact idea.
And, this is why you shouldn’t ever mention a supporter’s giving history in your early conversations. Past giving is transactional. Transactions are non-emotional. They’re procedural. Tasks. Items. Checkboxes.
The biggest gifts are given out of emotion, not transaction. Use reciprocity to motivate gifts, and do that by giving things that each prospect will care about. Relevant gifts are even more powerful than random ones.
Here are a few offers you can use to instigate reciprocity:
- Surveys
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Games
- Polls
- Quizzes
- Volunteer or activism opportunities
- Tours
- Case studies of other donors
- Invitations to things like webinars and live streaming events
- Opportunities to share why they care
- Infographics that make complex concepts easier to grasp
- Blog articles
- Printed and digital publications the donor wants
- Group activities like work parties
- Opportunities to engage with researchers, staff, or beneficiaries
- Sneak peaks at designs, maps, or building plans
- Workbooks
- Branded gifts
- Ways to connect with like-minded people, like giving circles
Consistency
Sending one message or making one call starts something. But if you don’t follow it up with consistent communication that is relevant and desirable to the prospect, your influence will fade into nothing.
People can tell if you want to get to know them. It shows you are trustworthy, reliable, and dependable. It doesn’t matter if they respond every time. Simply seeing you show up consistently helps keep you on their mind.
You can one-up the impact of staying in touch by mentioning their past responses, questions, and requests in future communications. This shows you are listening, another key to building trust.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s an example of a simple but personalized and highly valued email:
Hi Mary! I thought you might enjoy seeing this photo of the kids playing in the park you helped us build with your support. Hope you’ve been well.
Keep showing up. Keep calling. Keep emailing. Keep leaving voicemails. Keep messaging them on LinkedIn or other social media channels you know they use.
MarketSmart’s fundraising automation system makes consistency easy. You don’t have to do anything, and thousands of supporters and donors will continue to receive communications at the cadence they have said they prefer.
Social Proof
The less kind phrase for this term is peer pressure. The humorous phrase is the bandwagon effect.
Just like reciprocity, social proof is emotional, not logical. It’s primal, wired into our humanity to do what we see other people doing who we think are like us in some way. So when supporters see other donors experiencing emotional resonance and gaining deeply meaningful outcomes through giving, they feel a lot less uncertainty and friction about doing the same thing.
This is why nonprofits and fundraisers should, at appropriate times, share the experiences and support of other donors, businesses, institutions, and partners.
And the best way to do this is through storytelling. Let them share why they gave, what happened, and how it affected them. Let them voice their victories. They’ll also share some of their challenges like technical hurdles, apprehensions, and second thoughts.
This isn’t about bragging. In fact, you want to avoid it sounding like they’re tooting their own horn. This needs to be donor-centric storytelling. Here’s what happened when I gave. Here’s how I felt. And here’s how it’s going to help the organization’s mission and their beneficiaries. Social proof is actually one of the most effective ways to generate resonance.
You can also leverage the power of social proof even in your regular donor communications. Consider the following phrases:
- Many supporters like you
- Our community
- Be part of something bigger than yourself
- You’re not alone
- Others like you
- Be part of a community of like-minded people
These kinds of phrases hint at a larger group of people who all want the same thing. It makes people feel part of something. Group identity is more powerful and motivational than individual identity. Leverage this in your fundraising in every way you can think of.
Authority
People like to feel important. When someone with power or authority takes note of them, they like it. This is why people fawn over celebrities who just glance at them as they pass by on the red carpet. It’s why they’ll tell everyone they got mentioned on page 4 of a long article in a magazine hardly anyone reads.
Authority implies significance and importance.
You can use this desire for significance by telling major donor prospects that the founder or CEO of the organization asked you to call them. You can also use a board member for this purpose. Be sure to make this truthful – the person in authority needs to know you’re doing this so if the supporter ever asks them about it, they won’t be a deer in headlights.
But this works. You could say something like, “I was talking with our CEO the other day and she mentioned you as someone whose philanthropic values align with our mission. She asked me to reach out to see if you’d be interested in sharing how you came to care so much about our cause.”
That’s a great introduction. Way better than, “Hey, would you like to talk about giving?”
With that introduction, the donor is buttered up. They feel important. They feel seen and noticed by someone with power. They’re going to be far more interested in this conversation. Authority is a powerful motivator, and the person you’re calling will be much more likely to comply with the request – especially if it doesn’t involve giving money.
Related Resources:
- Why what you do is called ADVANCEMENT
- 5 Steps to Take As You Prepare For Outreach to Major Giving Prospects
- The 4 Habits You Need to Develop for Productive Major Donor Outreach
- How to Determine Which Prospects Are Prioritized for Outreach
