Requiring fund raisers to make lots of visits to lots of donors may be getting in the way of winning the very biggest gifts, say some seasoned fund raisers.
Speaking at a meeting in Tampa organized by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, three veteran fund raisers said development officers can be so focused on meeting campaign goals or making personal visits to lots of donors that they don’t build the relationships that lead to huge gifts.
That’s why they say it makes sense for colleges and other large nonprofits to allow some staff members to focus exclusively on truly big gifts.
David Dunlop, who spent his career working for Cornell University, described how he gradually came to understand that fund raising boils down to three types of pitches: solicitations to win modest gifts (ideally every year); appeals for capital campaigns and other projects that require big donations for specific purposes; and building relationships that lead to large “transformational” gifts.
Transformational gifts are different from the others because they are motivated by a donor’s personal hopes, dreams, and individual timetable, not the institution’s, Mr. Dunlop said.
Getting donors to the point where they will make such a big contribution often takes decades, said Ronald J. Schiller, another speaker at the meeting.
Mr. Schiller, who gained national attention in March when he was caught in a video sting while working at NPR, pointed to an analysis of donors to the University of Chicago, which was done when he led a $2.3-billion capital campaign there. An average of 33.5 years elapsed between the time donors who gave $10-million or more made their first gift and their biggest one.
Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Schiller both advocated hiring people who focus exclusively on landing huge gifts. During the campaign for the University of Chicago, Mr. Schiller said, such dedicated fund-raising staff helped focus the president’s time and improved communications and events with donors capable of making the largest contributions. That led to several unprecedented gifts, including a $300-million contribution from David Booth, founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors; another $100-million donation for scholarships; and several other gifts of $10-million or more.
Fund raisers, especially those who are competing with colleagues to meet performance measures, often seek to control communications with wealthy donors or become their primary point of contact with an institution, Mr. Schiller said.
Instead, fund raisers should enlist the help of numerous people inside the institution to help win over a donor.
For example, his analysis of University of Chicago donors found that more than 70 percent of those who gave $10-million or more supported multiple departments and projects.
Among donors who make the biggest multimillion-dollar gifts, he said, it is not uncommon for them to have close bonds with five to 10 people, and maybe more, within the institution.
“Introduce others to your donors,” Mr. Schiller said. “Many friends are better than one. Deans, faculty, curators, and others can often represent your institution more vividly.”
David Voss, a senior fund raiser at Stanford University, now nearing the end of a $4.3-billion campaign, says that to win large gifts, he spends just as much time forging ties inside the institution as he did with potential donors.
Showing other staff members how their help mattered is essential, he says. He recalls taking a donor’s check for more than $1-million to a colleague on the communications staff who helped him craft his pitch and thanking the woman for helping him secure the gift—even though her help had come long before the check finally arrived.
In other cases, he built relations with Stanford’s fund raisers in other parts of the country who promoted and helped win gifts for campaign goals that Mr. Voss was responsible for. “It was like having my own sales force,” he said. “This really, really works.”