Major gifts are essential to nearly all nonprofits’ fundraising strategies. As the largest individual donations your organization receives, they allow you to fund the most impactful mission-driven initiatives you launch each year. Plus, once major donors see that their gifts are making a difference, they’re likely to become long-term ambassadors for your cause.
If your organization is just getting started with major gift fundraising, it may seem daunting to ask donors for significant amounts of money. However, a solid strategic foundation and the right tools make it much easier to cultivate major donors and solicit high-impact gifts over time.
In this guide, we’ll share four strategies that you can use to jumpstart your nonprofit’s major gift solicitation efforts. Let’s dive in!
1. Start With Your Existing Supporters
If your nonprofit has been in existence for a few years, you likely have dozens or even hundreds of supporter records in your constituent relationship management (CRM) system. You may even have strong major donor candidates hiding among your existing supporters!
To find these candidates, Doubleknot’s major gifts guide first recommends conducting a database audit. This process involves “cleaning” your CRM of any duplicate, outdated, or inconsistent donor data and establishing standardized procedures for updating and verifying the remaining records.
Once your CRM is organized and up to date, segment your supporters; divide them into groups based on shared characteristics, such as:
- Demographics: Age, location, education, family status, employment, wealth
- Giving history: Average gift amount, frequency and recency of contributions, lifetime value
- Engagement with your nonprofit: Volunteering, event attendance, board service, membership status, advocacy participation
Then, identify any wealthy supporters who have made multiple mid-sized gifts to your nonprofit and engaged with your mission in other ways besides contributing. These are your top candidates to take with you into the next step of major gift fundraising: prospect research.
2. Conduct Prospect Research
Prospect research is the process of gathering information on potential donors to assess their giving capacity and likelihood of supporting your nonprofit. You can use prospect research to confirm whether the existing supporters you identified during segmentation are actually good major donor candidates, as well as to identify brand-new prospects outside your current donor pool.
Although it’s important to know whether a potential donor is able to make a major gift, prospect research goes beyond wealth considerations to determine if they’d be willing to contribute significant amounts to your organization. Use third-party prospect research databases, public records, and data appends to find two types of data on each prospect:
- Wealth indicators: Real estate ownership, stock holdings, business affiliations, political giving history
- Philanthropic indicators: Past giving to and engagement with your nonprofit and similar organizations, interests and values, personal connections to your mission (e.g., having graduated from your university or been a patient of your healthcare organization)
A potential donor needs to have both types of indicators to be a viable prospect for your nonprofit’s major giving program. Once you find these prospects, add them to your outreach list, prioritizing the individuals with the strongest philanthropic potential.
3. Build Relationships With Potential Major Donors
If you were to reach out to a potential major donor and immediately request several thousand dollars from them, they would likely be taken aback or confused. Donors want to give to organizations they feel connected to and confident in, which is why building relationships with prospects is critical for a successful major gift fundraising ask down the line.
As explained in NXUnite’s donor relations guide, here are some ways to strengthen your nonprofit’s relationships with potential major donors before the ask:
- Get to know each prospect personally. Meet with each potential donor one-on-one to provide an overview of your nonprofit’s mission and current initiatives (if they aren’t familiar) and have them tell you about themselves. Take note of their philanthropic interests and any personal details they mention, such as their hobbies, family members’ names, and upcoming life events. Then, bring this information up during future interactions to show that you were listening and care about them as a person.
- Establish a regular communication cadence. Ask prospects how often they’d like to hear from your organization and through what channels (emails, texts, phone calls, etc.). Then, use their preferences to send personalized, recurring communications where you answer their questions, share relevant resources, and introduce them to team members who are working on initiatives they may want to contribute to.
- Offer tailored engagement opportunities. Ease prospects into supporting your nonprofit by making a few smaller asks leading up to your main donation request. Use what you know about each individual to suggest opportunities they’d enjoy. For example, while galas are many major donors’ favorite fundraising events, a fitness-loving prospect might appreciate a personal invitation to your annual 5K fundraiser instead.
Additionally, make sure to thank prospects any time they contribute to your organization—even if they haven’t made a major gift yet. Effective stewardship helps donors feel valued, which makes them more likely to consider supporting your nonprofit in more significant ways later.
4. Make Your Request When the Time Is Right
There is no standard length of time your nonprofit should spend on major donor relationship-building. You need to monitor your relationship with each individual prospect to determine when you’re ready to solicit a major gift.
Once the time is right, deliver a compelling major gift request by following these tips:
- Ask face-to-face—either in person or via video conference—so you can get real-time feedback from the prospect.
- Use impact data and nonprofit storytelling strategies to explain your organization’s past successes and the progress you still want to make on key initiatives.
- Be specific about the amount of money you want the donor to contribute and the project or program their gift will fund.
- Prepare to pivot by having backup offers ready if they turn down your initial request but still want to support your organization.
If you come to an agreement with the donor, your next steps are to work out payment details with them, thank them for their gift, and continue following up to update them on their gift’s impact and try to retain their support. If not, thank them for their time and ensure their information is in your CRM in case you want to reconnect with them at a later date.
While the underlying principles of major gift fundraising are transferable from organization to organization, you may need to adapt the above strategies to align with your nonprofit’s mission and needs. For instance, a healthcare organization soliciting major gifts to purchase new medical technology will likely approach donor cultivation differently than a museum requesting contributions to a building campaign for a new exhibition wing.
However, this doesn’t change the importance of major gifts for all types of nonprofits; if you’ve been waiting to incorporate them into your strategy, today is the day to get started!
