One of the most helpful but underutilized strategies available to gift officers is the incremental invitation. An example: After making a gift of $2,500 in 2022, a donor who has been giving consistently for the last few years, is assigned to a gift officer’s portfolio. Not knowing much about this donor – save the giving…
Tag: #Giving
Mission Or Method
If your goal is to increase the amount of gift income you receive, you can: Ask new prospective donors to give for the first time; Ask past donors to give again; Ask current donors to give more. Those, really, are the only methods (or some combination of these 3) to increase gift income. Developing plans…
The Day-Trading Boss
If you haven’t yet worked for him or her, you probably will at some point. He’s the VP who focuses more on metrics than on the relationships and processes the metrics are there to measure. She’s the President who wants to know why gift officers aren’t asking for major gifts during a first meeting. Day-traders…
3 Ways to Market Giving
“Marketing,” to an advancement professional almost always refers to the marketing of their institution’s programs and services. You market what you do. Or more importantly, the impact of what you do. You market your mission as a way to communicate the rightness and goodness of people giving in support of your institution’s efforts and outcomes. …
This Next Year. . . And Beyond
Today marks the first work day of 2020. And, while there is some measure of confusion, today also marks the first work day of the new decade – the decade of the ’20s. Every New Year holiday brings with it the time and opportunity to reflect on the past and plan for the future. A…
The Gift and The Giver
It’s easy to focus on “the gift.” What is the amount we are seeking? For what purpose? Over what period of time? We talk about the gift in strategy sessions, when we ask for it, and when we receive it – especially when we receive one of significance! We write proposals that answer the questions…
The Intersection of Politics and Giving
The 2016 U.S. Presidential election is now behind us (although my Facebook feed would suggest otherwise). If we can remove the divisiveness from the election for just a moment and look at what the candidates proposed about charitable giving policy, we will see that neither of the major party candidates were focused on enacting tax…