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Four Ways to Develop Your Relationship With Your Major Donors

Major Donors, or ‘high value’ donors are so important to many charities that they deserve a fundraising strategy all of their own, often with a member of staff devoted exclusively to ‘Major Donor Fundraising’. A charity CRM offers you a fantastic means of managing your relationship with your major donors, monitoring your contacts and promoting greater engagement with your cause.

The following tips can help you engage major donors and maximise the level of high value giving that comes to your charity:

1) Make sure your figures match your story

Any fundraising appeal needs a well thought out case for support in order to engage potential donors. It is always a battle for both hearts and minds, the essence of fundraising is persuading individuals to hand over their hard earned cash. In the case of major donors, they need to have confidence that the very significant amount of money they are entrusting to your charity is going to positively impact the lives of the people they care about, and that you are a responsible partner to deliver those services. It is therefore very important that you know your numbers and get your figures straight. For a fundraiser, this will mean getting on board your CEO, trustees and colleagues to get your research straight and work out the basic figures that need to be raised. Creating a watertight case gives you a better chance of securing major gifts and also enables you to channel those funds to the most needed areas of your work.

2) Select your prospects carefully

How do you identify who your potential major donors are in first place? It is possible to buy expensive research data from companies such as Factary, which identify high net worth individuals in your local area. This shouldn’t be discounted out of hand if you have the funds. However, you can make a start by consulting your charity CRM and looking for engagement patterns. Take a look at all your donors and from this construct a list of 20 to 50 individuals based on the following criteria:

• Loyalty to your cause (e.g. length of time as a donor, events attended etc.)
• Connection to your charity (how involved has the individual been in fundraising, volunteering, events, responding to appeals and so on)
• Ability to make a high-value gift (What is their donation pattern. The most promising prospects for a major donor campaign are individuals who have consistently made mid-to-high-level gifts over time, rather than donors who have given low amounts interspersed with occasional large gifts.)

When you have this data, you can consider fundraising strategies for how you can engage the donors more deeply, and potential ways for you to maximise the value of the relationship you have.

3) Tailor your approach

In an individual giving campaign you may utilise between one and six segments, with different messages aimed at targeting various ‘donor personas’. With major donors this broad brush approach will not work. Your appeal needs to be completely personalised to that individual in order to succeed. In effect, each one of the 20 to 50 individuals you have identified needs to have its own segment and a bespoke fundraising program attached to them. A charity CRM will make managing this sort of programme achievable and gives a fighting chance of success.

4) Use their network

Most high-level donors will socialise within a circle who also have the ability to give major gifts. These colleagues, friends and family members are obvious targets if you are looking to expand your base of major donors. Therefore, your fundraising program should be not only to secure one-off high-level gifts, but to engage your donors as brand advocates who will represent your cause to the people they know and love. Through resilience, persistence and carefully logging all the communications and leads that you get through your relationship, your major donor program could expand into a serious source of revenue for your charity.

Major donor fundraising is often a long-term endeavour, but the rewards can be substantial. Working with high-level donors forces fundraisers to get down to the nitty-gritty of personal relationships to secure hearts and minds. It is for this reason that it is both one of the most challenging and also one of the most rewarding approaches for a professional fundraiser.