Should You Send Your Donors Gifts?
With the holiday season upon us, gift giving is sure to be on your mind. A nonprofit CEO, Doretha, recently asked me, “Should I send my donors gifts?”
Category: Major Gift Fundraising
Donors Drop By 7% But Dollars Up 6.2%, Buoyed By Major Donors
U.S. charitable giving increased significantly in Q2 2022, but gains were accompanied by a continuing steep decline in donor acquisition and retention, particularly among new and newly retained donors, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s (FEP) Second Quarter Fundraising Report. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) is a collaboration among fundraising data providers, researchers, analysts, associations, and consultants to empower the sector to track and evaluate trends in giving. The project offers one of the only views of the current year’s fundraising data in aggregate to provide the most recent trends for guiding nonprofit fundraising and donor engagement. The FEP releases
Site Visits in the Zoom Age
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA & Sheldon Bart In what we might call the BC era (Before COVID), site visits mainly entailed a tour of your nonprofit’s facility. You took the foundation program officer or the major donor on a walk around the program site to give them a good look at your day-to-day operations. They were happy to see in action the services described in words in your proposal or application. The tour consumed most of the time available for the visit, with a few minutes left over for questions. Now, after the disease disrupted our routines (or AD),
Why Donors Stop Giving to You
As year-end giving is now upon us, discovering why donors stop giving will provide you a keen understanding of what you need to improve on to get higher fundraising returns.
A new Bank of America report found that 28% of wealthy donors stop giving to a nonprofit that they supported in the previous year.
How Much Time Should It Take To Close a Major Gift?
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA How much time should it take to close a major gift? The short answer is less time than you think. You see, I have observed that fundraisers spend far too long cultivating donors. Cultivation can even mask procrastinating over making the ask! I hear this from fundraisers quite frequently: “I don’t feel like it’s the right time to ask this person for support. I am scared they will say ‘no,’ and then what will I do? So, I keep ‘cultivating’ them.” Such delays lead to protracted cultivation and solicitation period and likely a missed opportunity—or clarity
The Value of a Fundraiser
By Roger Craver Almost every sector of the economy is now facing the issue of how many employees will actually return vs. how many will simply opt for greener pastures. If the financial meltdown of 2008 was the Great Recession, will post-pandemic 2021 turn out to be the Great Resignation? Virtually every part of the nonprofit sector – from higher ed, to healthcare, to advocacy and social benefit organizations – have historically been notoriously irresponsible when it comes to training, onboarding, promoting and holding on to fundraisers. The result of this neglect on the part of boards, CEOs and even the
Why Donors Stop Giving to You
As year-end giving is now upon us, discovering why donors stop giving will provide you a keen understanding of what you need to improve on to get higher fundraising returns.
A new Bank of America report found that 28% of wealthy donors stop giving to a nonprofit that they supported in the previous year.
A New Approach to Major Funding
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Unleashing Philanthropy’s Big Bets for Social Change [i] , a collection of articles, offers the latest thinking about grants of $25 million-plus awarded by individual philanthropists and private foundations are changing the ways that social entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, donors, and philanthropic advisors in the U.S. and abroad are working to have an impact on major social problems. Here are five tips to help you succeed: A Trusting Relationship. You need a donor or funder who knows you well and trusts you deeply. Building this type of relationship takes time and effort. A Clear Investment Hypothesis To
5 Ways to Get More Donor Meetings
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Is getting a meeting with a donor more difficult for you than securing the gift? If so, that’s my experience too. The fact is that, if you get the meeting, your chances of securing the gift are relatively certain. Why is it so Difficult? There are many answers to this question. We’ve become more dependent on technology and because of it, our donor relationships are more distant. It’s easier to zoom in for a video call than to leave your office and meet in person. Another reason is that the increase in income disparity has left