Major Donor Fundraising: What Are You Waiting For?
What is a major donor programme, and why most charities don't have one
A major donor programme is the deliberate, sustained process of identifying your highest-value donors and investing in genuine relationships with them. It does not require a specialist team, a minimum income threshold, or a polished case for support before you begin. If your charity has donors, you almost certainly have major donors, you may just not know who they are yet. Here is what to do about that.
Why the reluctance? The three most common reasons charities delay
Most charities seem fascinated by the concept of major donor fundraising, yet very few explore it thoroughly or have everything in place to run a major donor programme effectively. This is totally understandable as most charities are small, don’t have the resources and don’t know where to look for potential wealthy benefactors.
“Major donor fundraising is for charities of all sizes and all stages”
The bee in my proverbial bonnet is not that charities on the whole don’t have this high potential growth area cracked, it’s that they seem so reluctant to give it a go. I regularly meet charities who say “I don’t think that’s for us” or “it’s not the right time for us at the moment” or worse “we have a few major donors, so we’re sorted on that front.”
Now, it’s strongly my belief that major donor fundraising is for charities of all sizes and all stages. This is because it isn’t a magic formula or a whole new area of fundraising requiring great investment, like recruiting cold donors or opening a chain of furniture shops – it really only means identifying your top donors and looking after them really well – that’s it!
If you have donors, you probably have major donors
…even if you don’t know who they are. And so, you need a major donor programme. If you have some major donors you know of then you definitely need a major donor programme. Ergo, unless you have no donors at all, you need a major donor programme – hence my frustration at this source of great potential being kicked into the long grass.
It appears to me that this is because the results take time, most likely requires the involvement of senior colleagues, there is an overriding fear factor of speaking to wealthy individuals and asking for money and that ‘we’re all too busy doing other things.’ Thinking back to the 80/20 Pareto Principle that predicts that 80% of your income will come from your top 20% of donors, this seems like a total aberration of time well spent.
To give an example of this thinking, I spoke to two charities recently; the first is a well-established regional charity raising in excess of £4m per year with increasing targets and declining income from their ‘traditional areas of income, yet they had absolutely no intention of moving away from community and events fundraising in order to focus on the top 20% of their 20,000+ donors.
The second is a relatively new, London-based, £1m+ turnover charity with just 300 donors – yet they are looking to invest in a major donor programme, with our support. No prizes for guessing whose income is going to grow over the next two years.
Ten steps to start your major donor programme today
Fortunately this is not rocket science. Here are ten easy first steps for anyone who needs a major donor programme should take:
Know your pipeline
1 pull out your biggest givers over the last three years
2 organise by recency, frequency, value
3 pick out Coutts/CAF/Private Bank donors
4 wealth screen if you have sufficient numbers
Build your case
5 research top prospects. Google is generally good enough
6 ensure you have a strong case/project that will appeal to wealthy donors
7 start to personalise your communications to top prospects and donors
Start the conversations
8 plan how you might get to them. Allocate responsibilities to key members of staff
9 regularly monitor progress and review actions
10 practice conversations with donors and asking with colleagues or very warm donors.
These easy steps will cost you nearly nothing and yield results. The effort is less than putting on another event. The return will be higher.
Not sure where to start with major donor fundraising?
We work with charities at every stage, from first-time major donor programmes to established teams looking to grow. Start with our Major Donor Scorecard so you have an accurate picture of where you need to start.