- What do I know about this donor?
- What do I want to learn about this donor?
- What is the preferred outcome from this visit?
The first and second questions should be focused on what we know and want to learn about the donor based on their their professional life, their personal life, our institution’s priority in their lives, and their giving interests and values.
Through open-ended, thoughtfully-posed questions, we mostly control how question two is implemented.
The third question asks us to identify a preferred outcome because we have less control over this portion of the donor interaction. The donor may take the visit in a direction very different than we had planned by discussing other topics or interests.
The purpose of pre-visit planning for donors is not that we predetermine the outcomes fully.
The purpose is for us to have a planned strategy for the interaction.
When we do this work, not only will the individual donor visit become more productive, but our donors will engage more meaningfully over time.
