Not long ago, I interviewed a couple who are significant major gifts donors and asked them how they got started making significant gifts. When and how was the seed planted for them to give generously?
The husband and wife looked at each other for a moment and then he shared with me a brief story about an annual donor stewardship event they both attended as alums years ago. They were much younger then. He was early in his engineering career and they had just welcomed their first child into the world. From their perspective, they were giving generously at that point, but more modest annual gifts.
At this event, they ate dinner and listened as an older alum spoke at the podium about his “giving journey” to their alma mater. This man spoke about the notion of building and leaving a professional legacy, a personal legacy, and a giving legacy.
“We had never really heard of anything like that,” the wife spoke up. “It really made an impact on both of us.”
“After that,” the man said, “we talked a lot more about our ‘giving legacy,’ and we wondered if we could one day have a scholarship endowment that would fully fund one student each year. That was our goal. And that’s where the seed was planted.”
Advancement professionals talk a lot of “planting seeds” with donors.
More specifically, advancement professionals talk about their work personally in planting seeds with donors. As in, “we just need to plant more seeds with our alumni.”
Perhaps a more helpful way to think about this agricultural analogy is not that we should be the seed planters.
But, rather, that we should be focused more on preparing the soil and, then, inviting other farmers to plant the seeds.
PostScript: The seed planted by that other farmer that night long ago at the stewardship event took hold with the couple I was interviewing. Over their lifetime to this point, they had already given over $10 million to their alma mater.