How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 3 of a series)

How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 3 of a series)

By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

Question: Any particular advice on operations to enhance efficiency of the gift officers and to ensure prospects don’t fall through the cracks?

Before measuring dollars, measure activity

While dollar productivity is the ultimate test of a major gifts officer and your fundraising program, over the years I have learned the hard way not to make dollar production the first measure of productivity, of efficiency.

Why? In pushing for immediate dollars to hit this month’s target, this quarter’s numbers, this year’s objective, you can rush donors into making quick gifts rather than big gifts.

I certainly found this in my career when I moved from annual fund major gifts of $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 to capital campaign major gifts of $50,000, $100,000, and $1 million. The relatively quick cycle of the annual fund is replaced by the patient cycle of major gifts – many more meetings, and more lag time between a “stretch” ask and a final decision by the donor. If I ask for $5,000 I might get a decision at the ask meeting. If I ask for a million dollars, the donor needs time to think about the gift, discuss it with family and advisors. A quick response at this level means I asked for too little.

So, the first measure of a major gifts officer’s effectiveness is the number of their face-to-face (F2F), personal, relationship-building meetings with qualified, prospective donors.

Some of these visits are:

• discovery calls trying to qualify donors for potential gift propensity and intent
• site tours to demonstrate your organization in action
• listening sessions to determine values, family situation, and life stage
• reviews of the case statement to obtain reactions and probe for questions
• prospect list reviewing (to find connections to other potential donors)
• Kaizen calls (continuous process improvement to make your donor benefits stronger or your next special event more so)
• designing door-opening events for other donors to become engaged with our organization
• A $1,000 or $5,000 small major gift for the annual fund might involve 1 or 2 meetings. A major gift for a comprehensive campaign, a special project, or endowment 6 meetings – for a planned estate gift 10 or 12.
• I require my major gift officers to do a minimum of 1 F2F (face to face) call a day on average monitored monthly. The visits don’t count unless a contact report is filed in our office. If they want to be seen as a “star player” then they should aim for 2 or 3 a day.

Get out of the office and interact with prospective donors and the money will come.

Of course, with less experienced major gift officers you will need to spend time on determining who to call so they get results. And, you’ll have to debrief sessions to see what they learned without knowing it.

This is why I like holding major gift officers exchange sessions every 7 to 10 days so they can share positive stories to help train each other. We spend time focusing in on next steps as we debrief contact reports so everyone knows the next steps. And, we utilize team brainpower discussing puzzling cases where it’s not clear what to do next or where it feels like there is a roadblock.

This article is part of a series. To read the other articles also in the series, please click the links below:

• How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 1 of a series)
• How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 2 of a series)
• How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 4 of a series)

Permanent Link: How to Enhance Efficiency of Major Gift Officers (part 3 of a series)

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/08/how-to-enhance-efficiency-of-major-gift.html