Have you ever wondered why you aren’t raising more million-dollar gifts? There’s plenty to go around, right? Why aren’t you getting your fair share?
It’s another one of those unrooted expectations in fundraising. The million-dollar gift has become the symbol of success. If you’re good at fundraising, you’re raking them in.
There’s just one problem. There aren’t enough of them to go around.
Let’s take a look at one microcosm, one that attracts almost half of the gifts of a million or more given each year. It’s American higher education. Impressive, eh? However, while higher ed attracts about 1,000 gifts of a million or more each year, there are 4,000 institutions of higher learning. That means if every college or university got just one, 3,000 would not. There are not enough to go around. Further, some institutions attract multiple gifts of a million or more because of their prestige, their age, the wealth of their alumni, and additional factors which other institutions can’t replicate or compensate for by using more clever or aggressive fundraising techniques. Therefore, at least 3/4 of the colleges and universities are unlikely to receive a million-dollar gift in any given year. The odds are stacked against them.
If you are getting one or more, you are, by definition, in the top quartile.
The same is true in other sectors as well. There are at least three times more fundraising organizations than million-dollar gifts are landing in them. In our imaginings of fundraising success, we fail to understand some basic facts. Those financially capable of making gifts of a million or more represent about 10 percent of our population, but only 40 percent of that tier is philanthropic.
Sorry folks, it’s the wrong symbol of fundraising success. Oh, by the way, those who do give a million or more to their alma maters do so, on average, after having given for 17 previous years. That means they don’t grow on trees either.
Jim Langley is the president of Langley Innovations. Langley Innovations provides a range of services to its clients to help them understand the cultural underpinnings of philanthropy and the psychology of donors and, with that knowledge, to develop the most effective strategies and tactics to build broader and more lasting communities of support. Jim has authored numerous books, including his most recent book, The Future of Fundraising: Adapting to New Philanthropic Realities, published by Academic Impressions in 2020.
Related Resources:
- Webinar: 4-Step Process for “Reimagining Fundraising Operations”
- The Truth about Wealthy People and Philanthropy Should Affect Your Fundraising… But Does It?
- We Can’t Make People Philanthropic But We Can Deepen or Discourage Their Philanthropy
- The Most Important Fundraising Metric: The 20-Year Relationship
