Here’s an enlightening exercise: Go through your database and identify your current donors who have made leadership-level annual gifts, current major gifts, and planned gift commitments. Next, do the following: For those donors who have made leadership-level annual gifts (whatever the amount as defined by your institution), determine the average age at which they made…
Author: Jason McNeal
I provide leadership, advancement and fundraising consulting services to educational, healthcare, and non-profit organizations.
Is “Hard Data” The Best Way to Make Your Case?
In building a case for support for our institutions, advancement professionals typically rely on one of two approaches: a fact-based, quantitative, logical approach, or a story-based, qualitative, anecdotal approach. Depending on the predilection of the author of the message, a reader or listener quickly can see a fondness for one approach over the other. If…
Interruption or Opportunity?
True story. Yesterday, a major gifts officer at one of my clients received a call from the President’s office. Seemed the executive assistant had a man on hold who wanted to talk with someone about making a gift. The MGO took the call. Here’s what happened next. The man on the other end of the…
How Do You Respond When A Mistake Is Made With A Donor?
The gorgeously designed and perfectly-bound printed annual report was just mailed. It was a master-piece. It was a work of art. The VP’s pride directed him to fan out 5 copies of it on his coffee table in his office. And then his phone rang. It was Mrs. Donald, the lead gift donor during their…
The Problem with “Handsome Clothes”
My son, who is 6, likes to refer to any nice suit of clothes as “handsome clothes.” So, when I travel to visit with clients, or when we get ready for church, or head out for a nice event, he will ask me, “Daddy, which handsome clothes are you going to wear? I want to…
What Are You Promoting?
The ineffective advancement professional promotes their institution. The average advancement professional promotes what their institution does. The artful advancement professional promotes why their institution does it.
How Much Does It Take To Feel Wealthy?
I recall some years ago working with a major donor who, after making it through the shuttering of one of his businesses and selling one of his four homes, said to me, “These days, I’m not feeling quite as wealthy as I used to.” His remark wasn’t born out of arrogance, he actually was a…
Attracting the Attention of New Donors
You may recall some year’s back, the experiment in which the task is to count how many times the players wearing white passed the basketball. If you have not seen the video or do not know about the purpose of the study by Chabris and Simons, click the link now and participate. Focus on…
Donor Engagement as Coaching
Last night, Pat Summitt, the legendary women’s basketball coach from the University of Tennessee received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the ESPY awards. If you missed the live broadcast, you would do well to take a few minutes and watch the video here. For those that may not know, Coach Summitt recently retired…
Searching for the Major Donor Higgs Boson
Last week, to international scientific acclaim, physicists from Geneva’s CERN announced they had discovered a new subatomic particle which holds the promise to help explain all life on earth. The Higgs boson particle – or the “God Particle” as it has become known – has been theorized since the 1960s. But it wasn’t until a mountain’s…