Do you know your donors’ opinions? Especially your top donors? Do they know you care?
How many of your donors have you spoken to over the last twelve months?
Finding it hard to engage everyone you know you should be talking to?
Allow me to introduce the concept of a Mission Feasibility Study.
This is an idea that has been used by Major Gift Solutions in multiple contexts to drive a high number of conversations with key stakeholders over a short period of time. It allows you to steward your donors in a tasteful and high-impact way. It allows them to feel connected to your mission. And it cultivates them tastefully for a future ask.
And it just may be the key to your next transformational gift.
The strategy is simple, and we help facilitate it for you. Here it is in broad brush strokes:
1- Identify participants in the study. This could be anywhere from 10 to 200 stakeholders. We suggest prioritizing your highest potential donors – those who have given you the biggest gifts the most recently, along with those who have capacity to make big gifts in the future. You may also want to include board members, key volunteers, members of your staff or leadership team, or anyone n your community who is adjacent to your mission.
2 – Create a straightforward communication strategy that invites these participants to join you in an analysis of the mission and programs being run by your organization. This will consist of a letter (click here for a sample) from your Executive Director and Board Members as appropriate introducing the campaign and informing the recipient that “someone from our team will be reaching out in the coming days to follow up this invitation and schedule a conversation.”
3 – Perform authentic due diligence in reaching out to all invitees. This includes sending no fewer than three emails and making no fewer than two phone calls to each recipient of the letter. These phone calls are not pressure tactics. All outreach performed by MGS is done with taste and a down-home friendliness. But the phone calls are designed to get donors’ attention and to remind them of this important exercise and the good opportunity it gives organizational leadership, as they evaluate the mission and programs that are the lifeblood of your organization.
4 – Hold 30-minute Zoom meetings with respondents. This typically takes between one and three months, depending on the size of your outreach portfolio and the responsiveness of your invitees. The purpose of these Zoom meetings is to listen. MGS team members come with a series of questions that are asked to respondents. You can view a sample of our questions here.
These questions are designed to help you understand how stakeholders perceive the organization’s mission and programs, what they see as future priorities and industry challenges, how they engage with events and visibility, and their willingness to increase their giving. The questions do not include a direct ask. There is, however, a “soft ask.” One that is designed to inform you of the donor’s willingness to make a larger gift and that simultaneously plants a seed for a future, more strategic ask from you.
5 – Take detailed notes from all conversations. This is done by MGS staff and AI if appropriate. We ask the donor’s permission for the interview to be recorded but do not require it. These notes, along with all outreach activity, are recorded in a shared spreadsheet that allows you to track our progress and correspond with us along the way. We will hold regular meetings with you to facilitate these conversations. At the conclusion of these conversations, you are encouraged to record our notes in your donor CRM or other record-keeping location as appropriate.
6 – At the conclusion of this exercise, Major Gift Solutions will submit a detailed report that (1) quantifies all outreach activity, (2) provides a qualitative summary of the information received, and (3) provides advice for ways your organization can leverage the information recorded in the interviews. We quantify our activity by charting the number of donors contacted, number of letters and emails sent and deliverability rates, number of phone calls made and accuracy of phone records, number of visits held, and minutes of direct donor interaction. The qualitative summary and advice for next steps comes in a narrative form.
Here are two examples of how this process resulted in real revenue for real organizatipns:
For organization one, Major Gift Solutions held interviews with 52 stakeholders, a combination of board members, volunteers, and lead donors. We compiled a 53-page report with thematic summaries and suggestions for next steps. Among the giving potential we uncovered was $675,000 in verbal commitments, including five commitments at the 6-figure level and enough interest to suggest that the organization engage in a $2 million fundraising campaign. Our report included clear steps for how to go about this campaign in an effective manner.
For organization two, we held interviews with 42 stakeholders, both donors and board members. After our campaign, the size of individual gift grew by 38.89%, from $863 the previous year to $1,199 during the year of our study, including several who made their largest gift ever. Eighteen interviewees expressed interest in making an estate gift, while eight expressed interest in making a substantial gift. And one donor made a $1 million commitment, which has in turn generated enough positive peer pressure for a second donor to make a gift of $2 million.
These two samples are illustrations of what can happen when you speak with donors. There is not a magic formula for how to close big gifts. But successful fundraisers know that the path to successful fundraising runs directly through tasteful, unapologetic conversations with donors about their giving. The Mission Feasibility Study model allows you to accomplish this in a way that does not put your donors on the offensive. It takes place without pulling you away from the tasks that require your attention every day. It accomplishes the important work of stewardship – work you know needs to happen but that is so challenging to find time to do. And it tees up your donors for a direct ask from you when the time is right.
If you are interested in partnering with Major Gift Solutions to facilitate a Mission Feasibility Study at your organization, please reach out. We’d be absolutely thrilled to see your nonprofit benefit from the rich possibilities of major donor conversations. You never know – your next million-dollar gift may be just around the corner.
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