If you create and track MGO metrics for visits, moves, and proposals (asks), you don’t need a metric for dollars raised.  The gift income will be a natural consequence of the activity of the MGO.

Not so fast my friend.

It’s not that I don’t buy the philosophy of activity leading to results.  In fact, I completely buy into that philosophy.  If you look the metrics programs I have helped establish over the years, the “activity metrics” (i.e., visits, moves, proposals, proposal success rate) account for more than half of the MGOs evaluation score.  Total gift commitments account for 25% at most!

But, that’s not the point.  The point is that tracking money matters.  It matters to the institution, to bosses (and Boards) and, I have found, it matters to quality development professionals.  Tracking total dollars raised also matters because an MGO can be fantastic at visits, moves, and submitting proposals.  However, depending on the process of proposal creation, he or she may consistently under-ask prospects.  Instead of stretching a prospect for a $100,000 gift, he may ask for only $50,000 because that amount is perceived as a safer amount.  And, if money really isn’t that important, then the $50,000 gift is just fine.

We should not evaluate and reward MGOs based solely – or even primarily – on dollars raised.  This is a wrong-headed and unethical approach.  However, it is just as wrong-headed to completely remove dollars raised from the goals of development professionals.   The best development professionals want a dollar goal, they want to make an impact for their institutions, and they want to stretch themselves and their donors.  If you have development officers who don’t want any part of their evaluation to be based on dollars raised, they probably have not yet found their true calling.

Why?  Primarily because the answer suggests that the MGO is the one who should be doing most (if not all) of the identifying, culitvating, solicting, and stewarding of prospects.  This is a myopic view of our work as development professionals and unnecessarily hampers our effectiveness.

Within the last 15 years I’ve witnessed a “professionalization” of our work to such a degree that we seem to have left behind a valued partner – namely, the major gift volunteer.  While we still witness volunteer assistance on principal gift solicitations, I have seen a decrease in volunteer solicitations at the leadership and major gift level.  This is an unhelpful trend.

Utilizing volunteers  during  major gift solicitations is key for at least 4 reasons:

• First, the very act of volunteering to solicit a major gift prospect is a cultivation experience for the volunteer.
• Second, volunteers can say and do things that exert gentle leverage on a major gift prospect in ways that a paid staff member can not.
• Third, volunteers provide a voice of unpaid affirmation and endorsement – the prospect knows that the MGO is paid to say great things about the institution, but the volunteer is perceived to be without that biased baggage.
• Fourth, volunteers provide continuity for our development programs.  MGO’s come and go (about every 2.5 years these days), but volunteers provide a line of continuity in serving donors and the institution.

Our role, then, could best be described as a coordinator.  We should coordinate the identification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of prospects and donors.   We should work with donors through volunteers.  We should view ourselves as much directors as actors.   But most shops, regardless of size, do not have a robust system of coordinating volunteer actions within the major gift effort.

When we engage willing volunteers meaningfully, educate them on the best approaches, and let them utilize their nicely-perched position as unpaid endorser, we end up cultivating the volunteer and the prospect, leveraging the best solicitation strategies, and we receive larger gifts.

In the end, perhaps the job title shouldn’t be “Major Gift Officer.”  Instead, maybe it should be “Development Volunteer Coordinator.”  Maybe then we’d get the volunteers  back.