Generous charitable support is consistently motivated by:
- being invited to give by someone the giver admires;
- believing in or having been personally impacted by the institution’s mission;
- trusting in the institution’s leaders to deliver on their vision for the future;
- having a personal connection with the institution today;
- believing that making this gift will be personally satisfying.
Generous charitable support is not consistently motivated by:
- receiving tax benefits;
- receiving public recognition;
- the giver’s family tradition of support for an institution;
- reviewing a spiffy, well-designed case statement;
- being convinced through data, logic, or an overly-suave presentation.
Research as well as practice repeatedly prove the above points. And most everyone who has sat with even a few donors knows these truths and how sustained generosity is motivated.
Why, then, do we spend so much time highlighting or perfecting the last 5?