Creating, Cultivating and Expanding your Donor Base

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Creating, Cultivating and Expanding your Donor
Base

• You cant make a good pickle by squirting
  vinegar on a cucumber it has to soak awhile.
• Harold J. Seymour, Designs for Fund Raising, 2nd
  Edition

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• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
  How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?
• Nursery Rhyme
• Peter Piper proved a pretty pampered pepper
  picker. Less privileged persons such as you or
  I are expected to pick produce unpickled and
  process it promptly ourselves.
• Joy of Cooking, 1964, p. 781

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Pickling can be accomplished in several ways,
some of them lengthy, but none of them difficult.

• It is imperative that vegetables and fruits for
  pickling are in prime condition and were
  harvested no longer than 24 hours in advance.
• Be sure of your equipment
• Stoneware, pottery or glass for brining
• Stainless steel or enamel for pickling
• Long-handled spoons enamel or glass for
  stirring
• Perfectly sterile glass jars with glass lids for
  packing
• All equipment must be absolutely clean and
  grease-free.

4

• If you are in hard water area, try to get some
  distilled water or use rainwater.
• Distilled white vinegar gives the lightest
  color.
• To make pickles crisp, use grape or cherry
  leaves during brining.
• Since spices vary so greatly in strength, taste
  before bottling and correct the seasoning.
• Joy of Cooking, 1964, p. 781

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• Most homemade pickles are of the less exacting
  short-brined type. They are soaked in a salt
  solution only 24 hours or so.
• Joy of Cooking, 1964, p. 781
• Pickles subjected to the long-brine process
  and held at 86 degrees from 2 to 6 weeks, turn,
  after appropriate seasoning, into dill types
  kosher and non-kosher. They may be desalted
  and further processed in a vinegar solution at
  126 degrees for 12 hours to make sour pickles and
  then in a sugar solution to become sweet-sours.
  To learn the details for these long and short
  processes, read Making Fermented Pickles, in
  the U.S.D.A. Farmers Bulletin, 1438.
• Joy of Cooking, 1964, p. 786

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What Does All This Mean?

• How do we decide where to gather our cucumbers?
• How can we focus on only the very best?
• How do we turn a promising cucumber into a tasty
  pickle?
• In short, how do we get people to give the first
  time, and then again, and again, and again?

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Gather Your Cucumbers/Create a Data Base

• Determine your most promising growing conditions
• Prepare and cultivate the soil
• Fertilize
• Prune
• Harvest on time not too early and not too late

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Focus Your Search

• Determine linkages to your organization
• a contact
• a bridge
• a point of access through a peer
• Research financial ability
• Assess interest in you and your organization

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Where to Begin?

• Step 1
• Current donors are your likeliest donors. Ask
  them for a gift first, starting with the board.

• Step 2
• Ask the senior staff
• Ask the board
• Ask your volunteers
• Ask your major donors

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Where to Begin?

• Step 3
• Ask your clients
• Ask your members
• Ask your general donors

• Step 4
• Identify donors to similar causes
• Identify people who might care about you

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Focus your Energy Turn your most likely suspects
into prospects

• Through conversations with a friend of theirs who
  is also a friend of yours
• Through a meeting with your CEO
• Through a personal letter, followed by a phone
  call
• Through a phone call followed by a letter
• Through a phone call alone

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Turn your most likely suspects into prospects
(cont.)

• Through a special event
• Through direct mail
• Through telemarketing
• Through printed materials
• Through the media

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Refine Your Focus Turn Prospects into Donors

• Move prospects from
• Information to interest
• Interest to knowledge
• Knowledge to caring
• Caring to Giving

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Signs of movement

• Participation in a program/visit
• Request for information
• Attendance at an event
• Information gained from personal contact
• A gift
• A repeat gift
• An increased gift

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Responses to movement

• Appreciation
• Recognition
• Personal attention
• Understanding donors motivation/needs
• Updated records

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Narrow Your Focus Again Turn Prospects to
Donors and Donors to Major Donors

• How? Get people involved
• As participants in a program
• As volunteers (use their skills if possible)
• As members of a committee
• As members of the board
• As contacts for other donors

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Manage Your investment

• The more personal, the better and the greater
  the chance of a gift, and of a larger gift.
• Face to face is better than a phone call
• A phone call is better than a form letter
• A letter is better than a PSA
• Major gifts may take several calls
• How to ask?

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AFP Quotation

• Select the right person,
• To ask the right question,
• At the right time,
• For the right amount,
• In the right way,
• For the right reason.

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Appreciation should be

• Appropriate to the donor
• Appropriate to the size of the gift
• Early and often

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Why People Give?

• Belief in the mission
• Interest in program/project
• Community responsibility/civic pride
• Regard for staff leadership
• Fiscal stability of your institution
• Local respect for your institution
• Leverage or influence of solicitor

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Why People Dont Give

• Not asked
• Guilt
• Appeal of Campaign Materials
• Memorial Opportunity
• Tax Considerations
• Absence of future plans (the organizations)
• Inadequate communication and cultivation
• Wrong solicitors
• Not asking for a specific amount relative to
  organizations need and donors ability
• Jerry Panos, Megagifts

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What Donors Want

• To be thanked in a timely and appropriate way
• To be recognized and treated as an investor in
  your organization
• To achieve a meaningful impact/outcome on a
  social problem or cause
• To be given assurance that the gift was stewarded
  properly
• To be able to realize their own aspirations
  through giving

Karla A. Williams, Donor Focused Strategies for
Annual Giving, Aspen Publishers, 1997, p.74
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Back to Pickles.

• Determine the outcomes you want.
• Do what you need to do to achieve them - follow a
  plan/recipe
• Pay attention to detail
• Savor the results.
• Dont get discouraged if you dont get all you
  want.
• Work hard.

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Conclusion

• In 2004, 76, of all charitable gifts came from
  individuals.
• Americans over age 50 control 70 of the wealth.
• There are 8 million millionaires living in the
  United States. Thus, if the population of the US
  is over 270 million and that of Virginia 7
  million, Virginia may have as many as 200,000
  millionaires.
• This generation will inherit 10 trillion from
  their parents that transfer is expected to peak
  between 2010 and 2020.
• 8 of charitable gifts are bequests 85 of
  Americans die without a valid will.
• GO FOR IT!