We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Privacy Overview
Login
Your Role
Challenges You Face
results
Learn
Resources
Company
What makes a great Gift Officer great? 5 traits
Great Gift Officers have common traits. Here they are:
- Genuine curiosity. They ask donors questions and they truly care about the answers. They don’t sound like interrogators. Rather, they get supporters to think introspectively often saying, “Hmm. No one has ever asked me that before.”
- Competency for building trust. In order to be allowed to ask personal questions great Gift Officers learn how to build trust. In return, their supporters give them honest answers.
- Ability to inform and educate. They know that major gifts (including planned gifts) require careful consideration. Therefore, they act as facilitators. They provide information that is relevant and personalized for each individual supporter. They educate them.
- Skilled at connecting the dots. They know how to take what they’ve learned in order to align each supporter’s goals and aspirations with offers that meet their needs while moving the mission of the organization forward.
- Antennae. They are sensitive. Truly sensitive. They don’t think too much about themselves or the needs of the organization. Instead, they focus on the needs of individual donors. They stay alert. They look for intersections that benefit both the supporter and the organization.
Related Posts
>> The Six Secrets to Becoming an Extraordinary Major Gift Officer
>> Build Relationships: The Foundation of Fundraising
LIKE THIS BLOG POST? LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW AND/OR SHARE IT WITH YOUR PEERS!
Get the book!
Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
Want to help more people make impact by facilitating their acts of philanthropy but feel like too many obstacles keep getting in your way?
Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
Get smarter with the SmartIdeas blog
Subscribe to our blog today and get actionable fundraising ideas delivered straight to your inbox!
Well said – as I think of successful development staff these are the traits that are consistent.
Thanks Betty. Then it’s clear you’ve been working with a lot of successful people. Birds of a feather flock together!!