How to Approach a Major Donor You Have No Connection To
Somewhere on your desk or in your database there is a list of names you made over the summer. Local business owners. A couple of people from the rich lists. The name that keeps turning up in the local paper beside a new wing or a new school. Nobody on that list knows you, and you are fairly sure that writing to them will lead nowhere.
This is the question I hear most often in our major donor Let's Chat sessions. Autumn is when it bites, because next year's target is being set and that list is all that stands between the target and a plan. So here is how I would go about it.
Check that they really are strangers
Almost nobody is as unconnected as they look. Before you write to anyone cold, take the list to the people who already care about your charity: your trustees, your volunteers, your longest-standing supporters and your community fundraisers.
Community fundraisers are the ones people forget. The person running a coffee morning may well know your next major donor, because they sit inside local networks that no amount of desk research will reach. Talk to them before you buy a prospect list.
When you ask, be specific. Trustees and volunteers freeze when you ask them to open their address book. Ask for one introduction to one named person, and tell them you want advice, not money. A specific request is far easier to say yes to than a general one.
Research the major donor before you write
If nobody on your list has a route in, spend an hour on each person before you write. Find out what they have given to, where they come from and what they have said in public about the causes they care about. This is the start of finding out what they really care about, and every later conversation rests on it.
The research is not there to flatter them. It lets you say, truthfully, why you are writing to this person and not the next name on the list. A message that could have gone to anyone is read by no one.
Ask for advice, not money
When there really is no route in, you are making a cold approach. The one rule I would not break is this: do not ask for money.
Ask for advice. Advice is a question almost anyone can say yes to, and it is the fastest route I know to a second conversation. Most people are glad to be asked to be the expert.
In practice it looks like this. You write to the local business owner you have never met. You tell them who you are in a sentence. You tell them you are building a strategy for your charity's work in their area. You ask for 45 minutes of their expertise on one specific question. That is the whole message.
Ask a real question
The advice has to be real, so take them a problem you actually have. How does this newsletter read to someone like you? What would make you open a letter from a charity? What would you want to know before you got involved?
People enjoy being useful, you get better material than you would have written alone, and the conversation moves closer to a gift without you forcing it.
If you ask for advice and then ignore it, you have spent their goodwill for nothing. Do something with what they tell you, then go back and say what happened. That is stewardship, and it starts at the first meeting.
Expect silence from some of them
Some people will not reply. Follow up once, politely, a couple of weeks later, and then leave it. Someone who does not answer a request for advice would not have answered a request for money either, and you have lost nothing.
What if they ask whether you want money?
Answer honestly. "Not today. I would like your advice. If you find you want to hear more about the work afterwards, I would be glad to tell you." People can tell when they are being managed, and the honest answer is the one that builds trust.
This early conversation sits at the start of the 7 steps of major donor fundraising and I explain what tends to go wrong with those steps in a separate post. If you want the foundations a charity needs in place before approaching anyone, they are in how to attract major donors to your charity.
The aim of a first approach is a meeting, not a gift. That is a much easier thing to ask for, and for most of the people on your list it is the only door that is open.
Bring the name you are stuck on to a free Let’s Chat
Let’s Chat Major Donor Fundraising is a free hour on Microsoft Teams where I answer your questions on finding prospects, getting a first meeting and making the ask. Bring the name on your list you have not managed to reach. The next dates are on our Live Events page, with our paid webinars.