Major Gifts: The Strategic Guide to Growing Donations

Major gifts constitute the largest donations a nonprofit receives. The exact dollar amount that’s considered a major gift varies from organization to organization.

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Due to their size, major gifts can be game-changers. They’re substantial funding for a nonprofit. One major-gift-size donation can be the difference between meeting your fundraising goal and not.

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To identify major donors, you need to analyze a prospect’s financial capacity to contribute and their philanthropic interest in doing so.

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Even if your donor profiles aren’t 100% complete, you should start your search for major gift donors off on the right track by working from information that’s as current as possible. Before you begin identifying, update donor data, remove duplicate records, and delete records for donors who have been inactive for 2+ years.

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Proper major gift donor identification rests with your organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively sift through donor data to find the best candidates for your program. Your nonprofit won’t be able to do that if the data you’re working from is outdated and unnecessarily dense. 

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Prospect screening is a research technique used by fundraisers to uncover donor data that will help determine donor giving capacity and willingness to donate. For major gifts, the top data types are past giving, nonprofit involvement, real estate ownership, and political giving.

First, you’ll need to segment your database into giving levels to see which of your donors likely has the capacity to give a large donation.

Next, you should look at past giving patterns to your organization and other nonprofits as well.

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Prospect research is your organization’s most direct path to find major gift prospects. You’re looking for people who want to give substantial donations and have the finances to support that desire. Prospect research helps highlight who those prospects are.

Without prospect research, your nonprofit is basically looking for a major gift needle in a donor haystack. It can be a frustrating and fruitless effort.

Prospect research lends a helping hand to nonprofits who want to analyze giving patterns and examine their donors’ willingness to give larger contributions.

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Your annual fund could be an untapped source of major gift potential. Use your screening results to see if any of your annual fund donors have major-gift-level wealth or have donated substantial amounts elsewhere, and plan your strategy accordingly.

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If you can find a loyal donor who has major gift potential, the cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship phases of major giving will be far easier. Past giving is the greatest indicator of future giving, so you should begin your search within your own database.

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Although planned giving donors don’t legally have to tell you that they intend to leave a donation, many will. Accounting for that and recognizing that planned gift and major gift donors share much of the same philanthropic DNA, you can look to your planned donor list for major donor prospects.

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Planned gifts and major gifts occupy the top of the donation pyramid. As such, the two donor types share a bevy of traits. It’s likely that your planned donors are major gift candidates and vice versa. Due to that relationship, cross-checking your lists is a logical step to take.

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In order to see success with your major gifts program, you need to appoint a leader. That leader is most often a major gifts officer. Whether you have a team of major gifts officers (MGOs) or one employee guiding the process part-time, you need someone to lead the charge.

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Without a true leader, your program will flounder. Major gift acquisition requires cohesive messaging and a personalized approach. The best way to get your whole team on board is to appoint a major gift officer who can take charge and connect with your prospects.

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In order to gain valuable face-to-face time with potential major donors, create events catered specifically to them. The events can be as glamorous as a gala or as casual as an informational luncheon. They provide an opportunity to deepen your relationship.

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Creating a situation wherein your frontline fundraisers can get invaluable face-to-face time enables your prospects to learn far more about your nonprofit and your fundraisers to learn far more about your donors. If you’re capable of doing so, hosting an event is a superb opportunity.

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Check your list of prospects in conjunction with your list of current supporters to see if any of your supporters have pre-existing relationships with any of your prospects. If so, ask your supporters to make introductions for you, so you can begin cultivating a relationship.

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Starting your relationship off with an introduction from a mutual contact establishes trust from the get-go. That trust can be a powerful force as you get down the line with your major gift pitch. Simply put, people don’t part with large sums of money if they don’t trust where it’s going.

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As you get into the later stages of cultivation, you should steer conversations toward solicitation. Part of the process should involve detailing how your nonprofit is looking to better serve its mission and how you would use additional funds to achieve those goals.

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Major gifts mean major money. And for those donors, it’s an immense amount to give. They need to be able to envision a clear path from their donation to a desired outcome. Within predictive reason, emphasizing their service-oriented ROI is a helpful step.

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Although there is no science to predict the exact amount a prospect will be willing to give, you should come prepared with a well-researched ask amount, founded on the data you pulled during prospect identification and bolstered by your interactions during cultivation.

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It’s intimidating to ask for money, especially major-gift-level money. Having a dollar amount in mind that you feel confident about will help ease that tension. You need to go into the solicitation prepared and self-assured, and predicting giving capacity can help with that.

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Once you understand a prospect’s giving capacity, make a decision about how much you’ll be requesting. Specific asks lead to specific results. Prepare an amount that’s not only within reason for the donor but that also matches the needs of your organization. Find the happy medium.

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For starters, you want to demonstrate that you’ve done your research. Your confidence in your number will translate into the prospect’s confidence in you. Plus, having a specific gift amount allows you to start the discussion within the range you’re hoping to secure.

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There’s an adage in major gift fundraising that if someone accepts your first ask, you likely asked for too little. It’d be great if your dream number was accepted on the first go-round, but be ready to continue the discussion and counter if a prospect does not immediately say yes.

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Your major gift solicitation meeting should be a discussion and not a lecture. You want to create space where an open dialogue can occur, but you also want to be able to lead that dialogue. Coming in with a specific ask and back-up alternatives best allows you to do so.

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In fundraising, as in many aspects of life, you should always go in with a plan. Before your big meeting, run through what you’re going to say, make sure anyone else who is going to be there is on message, and ensure that you have all materials ready.

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You can never control how your prospect is going to react. You can only control the information you present. Optimizing the variables that you can control reduces the potential unpredictability of the meeting, situating you to better handle surprises that do occur.

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Donor acknowledgement strategies vary depending on the type of donation in question. For major gifts, ensure your thank yous are as customized as possible. Major gifts make a huge impact on your fundraising bottom line, and your gratitude should reflect that.

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Acknowledgement is the first step in the stewardship process. It’s your lead-in to donor retention. Donors need to feel and deserve to be recognized for their contributions. One thank-you won’t cut it for major gifts. You’ll want to demonstrate continued gratitude over time.

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A major donor society is an exclusive club with benefits for those who donate major gifts. It’s a means of recognizing your major donors who have already given and incentivizing prospects who are looking to do so.

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The benefits of major donor societies are three-fold. First, people like to be part of something bigger and recognized as special. Second, its entry bar encourages people to donate a certain amount to be included. And third, it allows for ample stewardship activities.

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After someone has given a major gift, you can’t immediately follow up with another ask. Instead, you should be providing other engagement opportunities such as volunteering experiences, event invites, and involvement in special projects.

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By engaging major gift donors in unique and exciting ways, you’re offering them a window into the work you do and keeping them within your community. Meaningful engagement fosters loyalty, and you want loyal major gift donors in your corner going forward.

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Practice makes perfect, and continual striving for improvement is imperative. You should be tracking success metrics such as average major gift size, frequency of contact with donors, number of asks made, donor retention rate, fundraising ROI, and more.

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By studying your own performance, recognizing areas of weakness, and adjusting accordingly, you position yourself for better performance down the road. A well-run major gifts program empowers your team to provide major donors with the optimal experience.

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Ready to Get Started?

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