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| Major Donors – 101 By Dan Mirgon, CFRE, CLU, ChFC
As ministry leaders, we all
need to have a strategy for moving our annual
You remember the Donor Pyramid don’t you? Its foundation is made up of annual donors who make regular or semi-regular gifts. The middle level is for Major Donors and the top level is for Planned Gifts. The process of moving people up the pyramid is what we mean by “Donor Development.”
For the Annual Donors their gifts are usually small, and require regular communication to maintain this “relationship”. Donors are added to the list using “Acquisition” activities such as mailers to targeted neighborhoods, newspaper ads, TV/Radio spots, and other means whereby a person makes a gift for the first time.
Through your regular mailings and enewsletters, these donors stay with you or they don’t. Most organizations lose about 40% each year and replace them with new lists and more mailings.
Those that stick around for a few years are sometimes motivated to volunteer, refer others, or increase their financial support. Those that increase their support are what most ministries think of when we talk about major donors.
Another type of person is the “obviously wealthy person.” We hear about someone that just gave to a ministry that is similar to ours. “If we could get introduced to them and tell them about our ministry, maybe they would give to us too.” (Sound familiar?)
Take a deep breath.
With either type of major donor, what are we trying to do? Right – get money from someone. Not a bad goal – especially for fundraising people.
The real issue, however, is that you must first define why you are raising the money, how you will do it, and what you want to be known for as you do it. (I told you - it gets hard right about here) Before we can begin cultivating annual donors into major donors, let’s take a look at some definitions that will help an organization think through the basic philosophy.
What is a Major Donor? Simply put, a Major Donor is a person that cares enough about what God is doing through your ministry to invest the financial resources to help you accomplish your mission. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?
This can be as simple as a person catching the vision and increasing their annual support, or a sophisticated plan that combines charitable giving, financial planning, and estate planning into a cohesive plan that meets the needs of the donor and the ministries they care about.
To find people that meet this definition, you need to first be in the mode of “serving their interests” before you can actually ask them to part with more money.
Where do Major Donors come from? What I am asking isn’t what neighborhood do they live in, or what personality profile do they match, but “What is the Source of Major Donors?”
After working with dozens of ministries in many settings I can tell you that Major Donors are a Gift from God. They are not something to be taken lightly. How we steward these people says a lot about how much we trust God to provide for His ministry.
Given all the pressure to support hundreds of organizations, donors that choose to add you to their budget have something on their heart that connects with what God is doing through your ministry. You have to understand what it is before you can confidently ask them to invest toward meeting that goal, or serving those people, or (whatever) . . .
How do we go about it? The final piece is to understand that these people need a person to talk with them. To thank them for their investment in the ministry, to share with them the hopes – dreams – problems- and desires of “their” ministry. Someone who will take the time to find out what “their mission” in life is.
I have likened this to “shareholder meetings” where we ask the donor how we are doing. There is a process for moving them through the evaluation and using the most excited donors to invite others to the party.
What’s next? All of this begins with an understanding that Development is Ministry. Outlined in the book, The Ministry of Development, a good friend of mine, John R Frank, CFRE, writes that “Development is the process of linking God’s people with God’s work.” It is a much higher calling than secular fundraising, and ultimately has to do with a person’s Biblical Stewardship of the resources God entrusts to them.
For ministries, this also applies to how we Steward, or manage the relationship God offers us through the people He brings to us. We need to see things from God’s perspective when writing our fundraising plans, praying for our donors, and building a compelling case for support for why a person might consider joining in the work.
All of these things result in donors who invest, ministries that are funded and God getting the glory. After all, isn’t that what we all want?
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donors
up the Donor Pyramid into the Major Donor category. For many
organizations though, this is an area where the question of “how
to do it” stops all progress.