This article is for everyone in a position to help donors consider larger – maybe much larger – gifts. You might be the Executive Director/CEO, or a Board member, or a Fundraising staff member.

Or maybe you’re a major donor yourself, and you’d like to feel more comfortable volunteering for your favorite groups in engaging other people with means to make larger gifts to these groups.

Why are major gifts so important? Well, we know this:

Nonprofit groups with a strong record of impact, a great vision for the future, and well-planned projects to support the vision almost always need more funding, and the effective ones know how they would use it.

One efficient way to raise more funding is through bigger gifts from those who already know the organization – at least well enough to have given recently. Some portion of your recent donors have the wealth capacity and discretionary income to become major donors to your group.

That’s great! But how do we get from the assertion I just made to building a major donor program for your organization, with actual major donors and then a bunch of prospective major donors? And how do we work with these folks over time to help them make more and larger gifts to your group – gifts that are meaningful to them and perhaps transformational for your efforts to make an impact?

You may need help at several levels:

1) THE WHY - understanding that your group’s purpose(s), expressed in organizational values, projects, and initiatives, can become more compelling to those capable of larger gifts;

2) THE HOW - understanding how to identify and approach those donors who could give a lot more than they’ve been giving, a subset of whom can also help you find new major donor prospects; and

3) THE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS - building one or more constituent groups of major donors that come together (whether they know each other or not) to help your group accomplish great things over time.

I have often said that being well-informed and enthusiastic about your group, gracious, persistent, and an interested listener are all important to being an effective major gifts fundraiser - staff or volunteer. But given those characteristics and strengths, how does it all come together?

You and your group might benefit hugely from the help of a major gifts coach.

Coaching has always been an important piece of my consulting services, but for most of my clients, it has been part of a larger project.

Given the need that I currently see in the nonprofit community to understand major gifts, I’ve recently decided to offer major gifts coaching as a stand-alone service.

How does it work?

First, you don't need to be located in the same city or state as your Major Gifts coach. It can all be done by phone, Zoom, text, and email.

I spend a few hours assessing your group’s capacity and strengths to attract and retain major donors, and then the main vehicle for our work together becomes a weekly-but-flexible touch-base meeting, with plenty of brief, focused communication in between. First, we develop some goals together for you to accomplish over a 6 month period (our first contract period). Examples of activities we might work on together include role playing, designing individual cultivation strategies, processing feedback from conversations with donors that have already occurred, and developing effective informal communications with donors – both outreach and follow-up.

Typically, I spend between 4 and 12 hours per month with you (and on any small projects you ask me to do), but we project a specific number of hours up front in our contract. Contracts can be renewed after 6 months, but I find that often a 6 month period of support is exactly what the client wants. And we get great results together.

Let me know if you’d like to explore my major gifts coaching services. Contact me through the Contact page on this website.