Donor Stewardship Matters, but Momentum Can Be Magical for Big Gifts

Jim Young/Reuters/Newscom

On a plane trip to California, two Northwestern University officials worried over the $3.75 billion campaign they were leading. Three years after the start of the quiet phase of the drive and almost a year after its public launch, they were ahead of schedule and landing multimillion-dollar pledges, including one for $40 million. But in their planning, they had expected at least one gift of $100 million.

“Are we ever going to break the $40 million level?” President Morton Schapiro wondered aloud to development chief Robert McQuinn.

That was December 2014. Mr. Schapiro needn’t have worried. Within weeks, the university had secured one gift of $100 million and another for $92 million. A second $100 million contribution rolled in later. And by year’s end, Northwestern could count four donors who each had reached nine figures in total campaign giving.

Bagging Megagifts

Landing multiple nine-figure donations in a year is the fundraiser’s equivalent of bagging Everest, though it’s a rarer feat. Since 2010, only six institutions have received two gifts of at least $100 million in a calendar year, according to The Chronicle’s database of publicly announced donations.

Northwestern’s remarkable year offers lessons for any nonprofit chasing large gifts. In part, it’s a case study in fundamentals. The university had worked with the four donors (each a husband and wife) for years. Five of the eight individuals were alumni; four had been tapped as trustees, and three had helped craft the university’s 2011 strategic plan that the campaign aimed to fund.

University officials had been diligent stewards of each donor’s previous gifts. “You cannot underestimate the time and attention that these level of donors take,” says Debra LaMorte, senior vice president for development at New York University, which received three nine-figure gifts in 2008.

Northwestern’s story also illustrates the power of momentum — a not-so-obvious and not always predictable force. The big-gift tide began to turn for the university on Mr. Schapiro and Mr. McQuinn’s trip in late 2014 to California, though they didn’t know it at the time. Roberta Buffett Elliott, the 82-year-old sister of the legendary Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Warren Buffett, had asked the two to visit and discuss a bequest, not the campaign.

A 1954 graduate of Northwestern, Ms. Buffett Elliott had reconnected with the university when she chaired her 50th-reunion committee in 2004. Over the next few years, she made significant contributions — reportedly $10 million — to endow the university’s center for international studies. In 2006, the university named the center and an annual lecture for her. Each year afterward, she returned to campus for the lecture and a dinner with the president, the speaker, and guests.

At one encounter, Ms. Buffett Elliott was pleased to learn that the university was raising money to supplement her endowment giving to the center, according to Mr. Schapiro. “We made her happier than she expected to be.” (Ms. Buffett Elliott and the other donors declined through the university to be interviewed.)

Now, over dinner, Ms. Buffett Elliott listened as Mr. Schapiro and Mr. McQuinn outlined plans to expand the international-studies program and create an institute for global studies. They suggested several levels at which she could contribute, all through her will. The top number: $100 million.

As Ms. Buffett Elliott walked the two men to their car after dinner, she said, “I’m excited about this.” Within a few days, she called Mr. Schapiro with a decision: She would donate $100 million, and not as a bequest; she would transfer shares of Berkshire Hathaway right away. “I was floored,” said Mr. Schapiro. “I sat down on my couch and said, ‘Are you really going to do $100 million?’ "

Announced on Jan. 28, 2015, Ms. Buffett Elliott’s gift rippled across the university’s pool of big donors. A few weeks later, the university announced another big gift: $92 million for its biomedical-research programs.

The donors were trustees Kimberly Querrey and her husband, Louis Simpson. Mr. Schapiro had phoned them not long after his conversation with Ms. Buffett Elliott. Mr. Simpson is a longtime friend of Warren Buffett’s, having managed investments for Geico, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, for decades. In the phone call, he agreed to help host Mr. Buffett at a dinner for Ms. Buffett Elliott. He also marveled at her gift, Mr. Schapiro remembers. “He said: ‘That’s a great number. Maybe you could use some more. What’s the next big thing?’ "

Momentum Swing

Top fundraisers swear by the notion that big gifts beget more big gifts. Regardless of size, an organization should design a campaign calendar with signature moments and events that inspire others to give, says Rhea Turteltaub, vice chancellor for external affairs at the University of California at Los Angeles, which secured two $100 million gifts last year. “You go into a campaign with the express expectation that you’re going to build momentum. You want large gifts to become the norm, not the aberration.”

A large university has a natural advantage creating big-gift momentum; each of its colleges and institutes can create significant gift opportunities. A small organization can mimic that approach, Ms. Turteltaub says, by designing large-gift opportunities rooted in multiple elements of its mission.

They Don’t Need My Money

Some fundraisers worry that big gifts can work in reverse, depressing giving. “People may say, ‘Well, they just got $100 million dollars. Why do they need my $100,000 gift?’ " says Timothy Winkler, a consultant and former Furman University development officer.

To guard against this, Northwestern has redoubled its campaigns efforts and hammered the message that every dollar is needed. “We need to be more visible rather than look like we’ve declared victory,” Mr. Schapiro says.

So far, the effort seems to be working. Giving at all levels has surged, Mr. Schapiro says, and the university has secured more significant gifts: an additional $34.5 million from Mr. Simpson and Ms. Querrey, which brought their five-year campaign total to $152 million; $100 million to the law school from the venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker; and $26 million from the billionaire executive Patrick Ryan and his wife, Shirley — this on top of the $75 million that the couple had already given to the campaign.

With two years left in the campaign, the university isn’t done. Mr. Schapiro met recently with big donors who weren’t yet talking about nine figures. But then the president told them that the campaign’s four lead donors were contributing nearly a half-billion dollars. “Their eyes went very wide,” he says.