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Lawrence Pierce-Durance Campaign Feasibility Study What They Are and How to Use Them

Good morning. I am Lawrence Pierce-Durance and I have been doing a series of short videos on fundraising. My focus has been on small to medium size nonprofits where I have spent most of my career.

Today’s attention is on Campaign Feasibility Studies – What They Are and How To Use Them.

The heart of a feasibility study is conducting 25 to 100 confidential interviews amongst major gift prospects and other stakeholders of your organization.

These studies are expensive (from $10,000 upwards to $50,000+) so learn as much as you can as to what you can expect from a study and what not.

In planning a major campaign at your organization do you always need to have a feasibility study?

Lawrence says no. If your organization has a sound track record of recent campaigns; a viable case for support; and strong leadership, a feasibility study may not be necessary.

But for many organizations this is not the case. So what does a feasibility study do? Lawrence Pierce Durance PD Solutions Inc indicated it seeks candid insights from the interviewees in these four areas:

1. Your case for support for the proposed campaign - is it clear, concise and compelling.

2. Your Board and other volunteer and staff leadership – is this group capable of truly leading the campaign.

Lawrence indicated that it is in this area of leadership why it is important to have an outside person or organization conduct the study.

Interviewees are often in a difficult position to comment here if someone from inside the organization is conducting the interviews.

3. Sources of support – are there enough prospects at high enough potential gifts to help ensure campaign success.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance Fundraising Consultant said gift range charts are often used in the interviews to focus attention on sources of support. The chart indicates what typically might be need in terms of the levels of gifts and number of gifts. Interviewees often have their own sights lifted.

4. How is your organization perceived in the community and what is the fundraising climate like in the community?

The feasibility study report should focus on the four areas mentioned above and indicate for each the findings, conclusions and recommendations.

Typically, the report is presented to the Board in person by the person who conducted the study. The Board may accept, reject or ask for more information on the report.

Lawrence believes the critical piece in the report is the recommendations. That is what you are really paying for in using an outsider. If they are any issues, your organization wants them pointed out AND recommendations how to fix!

They are two distinct types of feasibility studies.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance said the first is where your organization has its case in order and the feasibility studies is basically and exercise to alert and cultivate your major stakeholders. And unless there is a really major unexpected issue that arises, the campaign going forth is a done deal.

The second type of study is truly testing the “feasibility” of going forth with a campaign. The Board is hesitant to make such a decision until it confirms in amongst its potential supporters that the case is on point; the dollar goals are reasonable (albeit typically a stretch); the leadership is strong; the organization is respected in the community; and the timing for the campaign is good.

Lawrence said which type of study is best for your organization is best decided at Board level and is an early step in preparing for a campaign.

At the same time, an initial draft of the case should be reviewed by the Board.

This has been a simple overview of campaign feasibility studies to hopefully help you get started in your thinking.

If you wish to discuss any of this presentation as it relates to your organization’s situation, you may contact Lawrence through his website “Lawrence Durance PD Solutions”.

There will be no charge and anything discussed will be confidential.

Finally, other videos particularly on major gift fundraising for medium size organizations may be found on YouTube by searching Lawrence Pierce-Durance.

The article Lawrence Pierce-Durance Campaign Feasibility Study What They Are and How to Use Them is courtesy of: http://www.lawrencedurance.com

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Planned Giving Fundraising Part ll by Lawrence Pierce-Durance

Recently Lawrence Pierce-Durance did a YouTube video called Planned Giving Part I by Lawrence Pierce-Durance on setting up a planned giving program for small and medium size nonprofits and discussed the most common planned giving instrument…wills and bequests.

That video also reviewed what role the Board of the nonprofit has in establishing a planned giving program.

Today Lawrence will give a brief overview in layman’s terms of some of the other most popular planned giving instruments.

But first an important disclaimer – this video should not be viewed as legal advice.

Organizations will need to contact a local attorney in their state if planning to consider moving forward with any of these planned giving instruments.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance has found that in dealing with many nonprofits about planned giving that too often the nonprofits spend a tremendous amount of time in “selling” the tax advantages of some of these instruments and getting wrapped up in the legalese and details too early in the process.

True there are often some tax advantages for the donor but Lawrence urges nonprofits to not focus on these especially in the early stages of discussions with a potential donor.

The reason being that any and all nonprofits are able to sell the same tax benefits. This does not make your organization unique and a reason to make a planned gift to it.

Instead, Lawrence strongly advocates focusing on your case for support and what makes your organization special and worthy of support, including planned gifts.

So prior to considering a planned gift program, organizations should review their case for support and if weak or nonexistent go through steps to have a vibrant compelling case.

For suggestions on developing your case, organizations might take a look at an earlier video Lawrence did on YouTube “Lawrence Pierce-Durance Fundraising Part II

Another thing before describing key planned giving instruments. Donors and nonprofits needs to remember that charitable intent is a central element in planned giving.

Without charitable intent, planned giving programs simply will not work. Sometimes prospective donors get quite wrapped up in making a “deal” that works very well for them.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance recalled working with a prospect trying so hard to squeeze more and more tax advantages.

Finally, Lawrence said that if the prospect wanted to save the most money (which quickly got the prospect’s attention), not to give any away.

The prospect did not like hearing this initially, but in time got back to focusing on the nonprofit and making a “tax efficient” gift with charitable intent. The point being there is no substitute for charitable intent.

Lastly, before getting into the planned giving instruments, Lawrence Pierce-Durance urges all concerned to remember cash and appreciated securities are king.

For most nonprofits, money is needed annually for operations and the planned giving program should be seen as longer term support. So be careful to not let annual support be sidelined.

Planned Giving Instruments..

After wills and bequests, one of the most popular and used instruments is charitable gift annuities. Simply put this is a contract between the donor and the nonprofit. Donor agrees to give money (often these annuities have a minimum of $5000 to $10,000) and in exchange the nonprofit agrees to pay the donor for life a fixed interest rate on the money in the annuity.And the rates are much better than any bank pays and the older the donor the higher the rate. When the donor passes away, the remaining funds from the annuity go to the nonprofit.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance indicated that donors of charitable gift annuities are often 50+ years old.

And noted that as donors see the benefit they get and the ties to the nonprofit grows, some donors will set up additional annuities as the interest rates gets better and better the older the donor is.

Life insurance (notably paid up policies) is a useful option for some donors. They can transfer ownership of the policy to the nonprofit and the nonprofit receives the proceeds when the donor passes away. Lawrence said this instrument is easy to understand for all concerned and that anyone with a policy can make this kind of gift. But a word of caution – Lawrence Pierce-Durance discourages marketing life insurance gifts to younger donors.Why – because some young donors will think they have done so much with the policy gift and not be interested in continue annual support.

On the other hand, older donors who are in the habit of annual giving and want to do something more, might see a life insurance gift as a possibility.

Charitable Remainder Trusts are a useful instrument for some larger donors. Basically, Lawrence indicated a donor sets up a trust and puts in money or other assets (often these trusts are set up at a minimum of $100,000).

During the life of the donor, he/she receives and agreed interest rate on the funds for the donor’s use. Upon death, the trust funds go to the nonprofit.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance indicated candidates for this kind of gift are well off; often middle age or older; love the nonprofit; and want to do something significant for the nonprofit in the long term.

Charitable Lead Trusts are fundamentally the flip-flop of remainder trusts. Lawrence said with this instrument a donor sets up a trust with a large amount of money (often seven or eight figures) for a fix period of years with a negotiated fixed interest rate and passes the income onto the nonprofit during the life of the trust and at the end of the trust the assets revert back to the donor (or often the donor’s children or grandchildren).

Lawrence Pierce-Durance indicated candidates for this type of trust are wealthy (in many cases first generation wealth ie, think of some leaders and employees in the tech industry); do not need income from the trust now; but are concerned that in the long term their family be taken care of.

In summary, planned gifts come in many shapes and sizes. This has been a brief, simple overview but hopefully enough to get nonprofits to start thinking about the pluses in setting up a planned giving program.  

Lawrence believes the first step in setting up a planned giving program is to establish a wills and bequests program with appropriate involvement and commitment from the nonprofit’s Board. And then in time walk – not run – into adding some of these other planned giving instruments.

If anyone has questions or issues about planned giving as described in these two YouTube videos, Lawrence Pierce-Durance said you are welcome to contact him, and there would be no charge, through his website – pdsolutionsfundraise.com.

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Planned Giving Fundraising Part l by Lawrence Pierce Durance

Planned Giving Fundraising Part l by Lawrence Pierce Durance

Lawrence Pierce-Durance recently completed a four part series on YouTube on major gift fundraising for small nonprofits. In looking what might be helpful going forward, the most common request was about “planned giving”.

In response, this is the first of two YouTube videos that Lawrence did on planned giving for small nonprofits. Planned giving is simply a way people make provisions in their will for anyone or any organization such as your charity.

This is an extremely important part of a well-designed fundraising program yet most of the small nonprofits Lawrence Pierce-Durance has worked with over the years do not have a planned giving program. And yet over 20% of money given each year to nonprofits is in the form of planned gifts, specifically will and bequests.

So why do so many small nonprofits ignore this area? Here is what Lawrence  hears most often are the reasons.

It is too hard and too much “legalese”.

We do not have any extra money to invest in a planned giving program especially staff.

We doubt whether we really have any planned giving prospects.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance went on to say these reason are myths and believes this video will show you why.

To begin it is important to know that of all the planned gifts made where nonprofits are recipients, 75% are in the form of will and bequests. So the focus will be on will and bequests for now. Establishing a wills and bequest program is relatively easy and in this order.

With every communication you have with your donor base be it by mailing, printed brochures, email or any social media, make sure there is a box somewhere to check (literally or electronically) that says “Please send me information on how I might consider making a provision in my will for (name of your organization)”. 

Once you begin to receive any responses, you must follow-up those with these people.  A basic pro forma piece that describes various ways to put your organization in a will along with your organization’s legal name should be enclosed. Lawrence Pierce-Durance says you can Google for samples or contact him through his website (pdsolutionsfundraise.com) and he will be happy to send a sample to you. Once you have a pro forma piece that you have made your own, you need to have a lawyer look it over to make sure it follows whatever guidelines are required in your state.

Once you have responded with your piece, Lawrence suggests waiting a week or two at most and then follow up with a call to see if the person has any questions or comments. You may only get a voicemail or they may not have any questions. So be it. Do not hassle them. From this point forward you have a planned gift prospect and they should be treated like any other special or major gift prospect.

At the same time you are working on the above, Lawrence Pierce-Durance urges you to educate and work with your Board. Most important – the Board needs to understand a will and bequest program is not a “quick fix”. It is inexpensive to start but statistically speaking, it takes on average five to seven years before your organization will begin to see results.

Next with your Board, they need to adopt a will and bequests “gift acceptance policy”. You can Google to get samples or Lawrence will be happy to send a sample along. Just contact him through his website.

With the gift acceptance policy adopted by your Board, you have a wills and bequest program. As you move along with this program and keep your Board apprised of progress and issues, Lawrence urges you begin talking about Board members making provision in their wills for your organization.

        That is a very brief overview and that isall there is to it. Now get on with it.

In the next video, Lawrence Pierce-Durance will go over in layman’s terms some of the other most common planned giving instruments after will and bequests. This includes trusts, insurance, contracts and others. In the meantime, if you wish to discuss any of this, please feel free to contact him through his website (at no charge, really!) –��pdsolutionsfundraise.com.

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Lawrence Pierce-Durance Fundraising Part III

Good afternoon, this is Lawrence Pierce Durance. We’ve been doing a series of short videos on YouTube for small and medium size nonprofits on major gift programs. We completed Fundraising Part I (How important is it to a small nonprofit to have a major gift program?) and Fundraising Part II (How to develop a “case” for major gift prospects). You can find those online on YouTube by just going to Lawrence Pierce Durance.

Today we’re going to deal with Fundraising Part III. Here’s a common question or statement I get from small nonprofits. We haven’t focused on major gifts in the past. In fact we question whether we really have any major gift prospects. How do we get started? How do we find major gift prospects?

Lawrence suggests that before we answer these questions there is a prior issue you need to address. If you don’t mind, go back to Fundraising Part II which dealt with developing your case for support for major gifts. You’ve got to have a reason why people would want to give you money, especially major gift prospects.

You have to have viable case. If you’re not worthwhile supporting, Lawrence Pierce-Durance says it doesn’t make any difference what we do.

Second, we’re going to focus on individuals. Now Lawrence said in an earlier video that individuals give some 80 percent of the money we raise for nonprofits in America and if that’s where the action is, that’s where we’re to spend our time.

Also when you deal with major gift prospects that are individuals the identification, cultivation and solicitation of them is transferable to work with corporations and foundations. The converse is not true.

So for instance with foundations, if you want to find out what kind of money they give to whom at what levels for what purposes, nine times out of ten you can just go online find that out.

It does not mean you will automatically get a gift but you can get that information. It is not so easy with individuals.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance says to keep in mind this little simple phrase – major gift fundraising with individuals is a contact sport. You have to get to know and understand your individual prospects before you can expect major support.

Now to help you at least to begin identify major gift prospects, Lawrence says the key need to do is rate and screen prospects. This is an example that he has seen work. Take your donor list and look at it over the last two or three years and look at the top 10 percent of the donors see what kind of gifts have been coming in. You are looking for trend or patterns not the one off bequest or one time only special gift.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance say for example say $5000 would be a major gift to your organization. And now come up with three levels of possible giving, assuming $5000 is a current major gift donor and Lawrence is going to use a figure that’s twice that $10,000; then a figure of $5,000 and then a figure $2,500.

Now label so as we move along the $10,000 and up would be A’s. The $5,000’s would be B’s. And the $2,500’s would be C’s.

Now then what you need to do is probably a senior gift officer, or the chief executive or consultant take your donor list (all of them, say 1000) and go interview confidentially as many top board members, top donors, top volunteers, top staff as you can.

If you can find 20 to interview that’s great. If you find 40 that’s twice as great. But you want to have as many people as possible who are going to go over all your donor list.

Lawrence Durance stresses that you assure those being interviewed it’s going to be confidential and you’re going to ask them to go through the list and ask them to identify capability. Their best guess as to capability of an individual not the prospect’s inclination. Your organization should develop marketing and cultivation techniques to address “inclination”.

As someone goes through that list and they’ll mark down any A, B or C’s that they come across and in many cases they will not have a clue, and they can go through a 1000 names literally in an hour or so.

You just sit quietly as they mark down any A, B’s or C’s they see. Then you ask the question are there any other names we should include in here people who might be an A, B or C? Would you please share those with me confidentially? And how would you rate in them A, B or C?

Now you can see that the more people who do the screening the better information you will have. Let us assume you have 30 interviewees. When you completed doing all the interviews correlate the information.

Take a look at the trends you have. If somebody on the donor list has for instance 10 of the 30 interviewees saying they are an “A”, count the prospect as an “A”. And do the same kind of overview/correlation to find how many “B’s” and “C”s”. This is not a science but it is a beginning!

When you come back with the whole exercise going over maybe a 1000+ names, let’s say you came up with five A’s, 10 B’s and 25 C’s that’s 40 names. We started with a 1000. We have now culled this down on the initial run through to a workable manageable size.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance encourages you start with just the A’s. You now need a key Board member or two or three to work with you on strategies on what you are going to do to, for with each prospect to bring them along so you ultimately solicit them. The first contact is not going to be “hey why don’t you give us a big gift”.

Every major gift prospect should be seen as a campaign in and of itself. It is not a cookie cutter exercise.

Now that’s a really brief overview of how you might get started with a major gift program identifying and beginning to cultivate. If you’d like to talk about any of this or have any questions, you are welcome to contact Lawrence Pierce-Durance through his website – pdsolutionsfundraise.com and there will be no charge, really!

You can also connect on:

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Lawrence Pierce-Durance- Fundraising Part IV

Good afternoon.. This is Lawrence Pierce-Durance and this is the fourth in a series of short videos for YouTube on major gift programs for small and medium sized nonprofits.

This video and the three earlier ones can be found on YouTube by simply searching Lawrence Pierce Durance name. Today’s topic is the role of Board members and senior volunteers versus the role of staff in major gift fundraising. The different roles can be a confusing area for some small and medium sized nonprofits.

Here’s a basic premise to keep in mind. Major gift programs, notably the planning and actual solicitations, should be Board led and staff supported and not the other way around. Why is this important? When Staff are out raising major gifts they can be as committed and as passionate as anyone about their organization.

But Lawrence Pierce-Durance says at the end of the day no matter how much passion and knowledge a staff member brings to the table, staff are paid to do what they do. That is not meant critically, it’s just fact. On the other, hand with most Board members and key volunteers they don’t have a vested interest in your cause beyond caring and supporting the programs so the organization does not just survive but thrive.

What this says, in terms of perception, more often than not those key volunteers are seen as stronger advocates for your cause. That may seem unfair, but Lawrence believes it is true. Think about this statement. When a volunteer says “Will you join with me in making a major gift?” ..that is a very powerful statement!

Now let’s look at a couple aspects of what Board members have responsibilities in major gift programs and the role of staff.

First, Board members have a responsibility to help identify major gift prospects. Staff member is to nudge those Board members to be thinking about possible prospects.

Second, Board members have to take the lead in helping to think through strategies for cultivating major gift prospects and to be involved as appropriate.

The role of the staff is to join in those discussions on cultivation strategy and to facilitate meetings where that kind of discussion goes on.

Lawrence Durance believes the third responsibility of the Board is the one that’s probably most common to all of us. Board members have a responsibility to “open the door” with potential prospects with whom they are personally connected and have some influence. The staff role is to help ensure the right person or persons are going through the “opened door”.

Lawrence notes the fourth role of Board members is to be involved in soliciting major gifts. The staff role is to help determine whether the solicitation should be by a Board member alone or perhaps a team; and help determine the solicitation timing.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance believes that every major gift prospect is a campaign in and of itself and individual strategies for cultivation and solicitation need the thoughtful time and efforts of both Board members and staff.

Now there’s an area that Lawrence Durance differs with some of his professional colleagues in drafting the annual plans for the major gift program. Some of his colleagues will say this should be staff driven in determining the goals, etc.

Lawrence Pierce-Durance comes from the other side and thinks the key elements to your plan and goals initially should be driven by Board members. Staff need to get their input of what they think should be the dollar goals and how many prospects could be handled and what the focus of program support with major gifts should be.

And if that discussion goes all over the map that’s OK. Staff can then go back and put together a draft of a plan based on the discussions with Board members.

Lawrence firmly believes there will be more ownership and real tangible support from the Board if they have been truly involved in developing the plan.

Finally, it is most most important to remember and remind all that the ultimate financial or fiduciary responsibility for the organization rests on the shoulders of the board not on the staff not on other volunteers not on a foundation not on a donor. Staff have to be a teammate in fundraising and they do have some special responsibilities.

Lawrence Durance believes one of the most critical responsibilities is for staff to help educate Board so they know how to “tell the story” for supporting the organization. They’re not used to doing that and may well need staff or consultant guidance to articulate the case for support in a clear, compelling and concise fashion.

Second, staff need to keep accurate donor records. And third, staff have the responsibility when prospects are identified to do the homework to do research.

The bottom line is it’s a team approach between the Board and staff in developing and implementing a major gift program. But the ultimate responsibility rests with the Board.

If you would like to contact Lawrence Pierce Durance, please feel free to do so by going to his website – www.pdsolutionsfundraise.com where he can be reached by email or phone. There will be no charge. If he can be helpful, he wants to be.

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Lawrence Durance Fundraising Part II

Good afternoon, I’m Lawrence Durance my name and how to get hold of me as it should be in the bottom of the screen. This is the second installment of a series of five that are dealing with major gift programs for small and medium sized nonprofits. Our first session that I had a week or so ago on YouTube was do we really need a major gift program?

And today we’re going to turn our attention to how do you develop a case for support for a major gift program for your organization. And we’re going to work through and see what difference it makes on how you do them. Now see if this fits you at all.

When I come in organizations and I asked to receive their case for support. Often what I will hear is we have a draft of our case was done by Stafford grant writer someone probably pretty well done. It was taken to the board. The board was asked to look at it. They did. They were asked to approve it. They did and they voted on it and often unanimously approved it and put it aside. That was the end of it.

You have a case on file but you don’t have buy in or ownership. And the reason you need buy in their ownership with major gift programs is that helps to motivate them to make major gifts not when they’re just handed a case for support. So how do we go about doing this? Get ownership. I want to first note to you an ad each is true in fundraising in my work. Developing your case for support.

Should the board lead and staff support it not the other way around. That’s easy enough for me to say; but how do you make that happen? I’m going to give you a way that I’ve seen at work with a number of organizations and see if that fits for you or some modification.

You bring together for a half day session or plus a plus session. And the purpose of the session is to look at and examine the future of the organization. And you invite your board they are the host. You have key senior staff and other stakeholders especially major donors and major give prospects and now you’ve got to be grouped together. What I suggest to you in the first instance is that you break him into small groups.

That way everybody will participate. And when you got broken into small groups pose this is the first question. If your organization were to disappear tomorrow what difference would it make if any? To the community you purport to serve. There’s no right or wrong answer to them.

Ask the groups to write down what their thoughts are individually write them down write them down then bring them back together once they’ve had time to do them and have them report out so everybody can hear what everybody else said. Have a staff person making close clear notes of what is gone on and watch for the threads that come through the common issues etc. then send them back into their small groups again and ask him to address this. We want for our organization for you to come up with.

We believe that statements we believe that no child should go to bed. We believe that every person deserves a hot meal a day whatever it is you believe and each group should come up with I would say I based my experience three four five. We believe that statements again.

There’s no right or wrong answer you just get the input them bring back everybody together and have them report out. And again the staff person take notes at this point you want to take a bit of a break. And the staff person or to keep you know that they will go away take the information has been presented and put it into some logical form on why you should exist what would happen if you disappeared.

What he believed that statements then come back after your break present that to the group. Put it up on flip chart have a printed out etc. however you want to do it and ask people for comments input. Does it accurately reflect where we are? That’s the end of what you’re going to do from that day. That takes a while to get through.

You may have other work you’re going to do but in your case that’s what you’re gonna end up with. And then the staff should be charged to go out and pull together a draft of their case. And then just share that back with the group at a later date and you have the makings and a framework for a vision for the future based on what this group’s done and now the staff completely and the needs we have. What kind of money we need to make this come about etc. etc.

Then I would suggest to staff to the chief executive send that out to everybody who participate this draft you have and let them comment back individually. And I won’t go into it here but I suggest doing that in writing don’t bring them back as a group to critique it but let them comment on the draft that you’ve done. And then you tidy that up and then take on board.

The common issues and concerns people have you now have a draft of the case and you have some ownership and some buy in and by buy in I mean these people will step up and they’re more likely to make significant gifts because they have been a part of coming up with what are going to be the issues in the direction of the organization.

Some boards feel threatened by this because they feel like it’s a board responsibility. And my comment to that is if you’re going to pay for everything. That’s fine. But if you need others to step up and make significant commitments they need to be able to have some. Piece of the action so to speak. So what do you do now?

Once you have this and you’ve got a draft I think you’ve got the makings of how you put together a case your case then can be used in brochures. It can be used in videos it can be used in social media etc. We’ve got a working viable case for support. Now what I suggest to you for homework out of the session is you go back take a look at what you have for a case. How did it come about?

Chief executive and board chair talked to each other. Is there real buy in? Is there ownership? Will board members keep prospects? Step up and financially support this with meaningful gifts. The answer is yes fine if the answers we don’t know or we’re really doubtful. Then you need to do something about that.

And you can either take on perhaps a little exercise like I’ve mentioned the workshop have a workshop or something else that fits you better. But the answer is not I don’t like what Lawrence Durance presented and we’re not going to do anything. The answer is we don’t like necessarily what we saw on YouTube but here’s where we’re going to do instead.

And at that stage of the game you’ll have a chance to pull together a case that makes sense that people can buy into maybe you don’t have a case for support. You still have to go through the same type of exercise. So at the end of the day what you have hopefully is a case that’s vibrant, alive. It’s clear, it’s compelling and it’s ready to be supported by your major donors. I hope this is helpful.

Now next week we’re going to turn to another topic. I have to take a peek at what that is. Oh we’re going to focus on. The question or comment I get from organizations look we haven’t focused much a major gifts in the past. We even doubt whether we have any major gift prospects much less donors. How do we find major give prospects and turn them into donors? But how do we find them the first instance? That’s it for the day. Have a great day. Thanks

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Part 1. Major Gifts Fundraising by Lawrence Pierce-Durance

  Lawrence Pierce-Durance a.k.a “The Fundraising Dr.” 5 Part Video Series Discusses Major Gift Programs For Small and Medium Size Non-Profits with Budgets of $300,000 – $3 Million.

In training some 1500 nonprofit senior executives and boards, raising significantly more money almost always is the key issue facing them.

You’re watching the first video of the series where he takes the most common issues and questions that come up and then he’s going to touch on them for you the way he has seen it helpful with non-profits.

The first installment is going to deal with the statement… See if this fits you…

“Our organization has a small staff and it’s overworked now. It is unfair to ask them to do more…Really how important is a major gift program?”

That’s really where most organizations start with Lawrence but first and foremost. If things are going pretty well with your organization, If in fact you are receiving enough support generally to fulfill your mission to the people you serve then don’t mess with what Lawrence Durance is about to tell you… If it works don’t fix it!

But by the time Durance “The Fundraising Dr.” gets called in organizations have discovered they need more resources and if they need considerably more resources they have reluctantly come to the conclusion that more of the same won’t get it done and Lawrence believes major gifts can be a significant part of the answer.

Here’s an axiom in fundraising to help wrap your head around why major gifts are important. It’s excepted in successful fundraising programs with non-profits that where they have good non-profit, good fundraising program 80 percent of the money will come from about 20 percent of the donors that’s a fundraising fact of life.

In fact it’s a conservative fact of life that Durance has noticed in the last 10 to 15 years it’s more like 90 percent of the money coming from fewer than 5 percent of the donors. Those are the organizations in which I have first hand experience.

So if Lawrence Pierce-Durance the fundraising doctor gets called in to help he’s going to do a fundamental test just like a regular doctor would do but instead of checking your blood pressure and your meds, Lawrence Durance is going to…

Talk with Senior Staff and key board members and ask this simple question “What percentage of your fundraising time is devoted into your organization on the top 20 percent or so of your prospects?

Notice Lawrence did not say “how much time you are spending.” There are a lot of people who will say; you should spend so much time on fundraising…I’m not there. I’m asking of your fundraising time…how are you spending it?

And here are the answers Durance gets:

Few if any are spending a noticeable percentage of their fundraising time working to identify, cultivate and solicit the topic of their market.

What they are spending their time on is special events, grant applications, annual funds, donor acquisitions, mail appeal, etc.

So when we get that question answered, that they’re not spending much time on major gifts, I then say to the organization…this does not make you a bad organization by any stretch of imagination, but if you need significantly more funds; you’re gonna have to get in the game. The game is Major Gifts. That’s a hard fact of life for some. Some come to it joyfully and some come to it reluctantly. But you have to be in the game if you wanna have significant results.

So here is what I’m going to give as your first task. You need to go back to your organization, you need to think about how you can educate your staff and your board on the importance of major gifts. I would say what you wanna do is educate them to the importance you need significantly more money to get the job done to fulfill your mission.

On our next installment, we’re gonna be dealing with your case for support; why people should give you money. In particular, we’re gonna look at how do you make a case for support for major gift prospects in particular? Be consistent with your overall case for support.

In future installments, we’re gonna deal with how do you find major gift prospects if you don’t have them. We’re gonna talk about how do you find the time to do it? For now, take a look at how you can move on this first step.

If you want more information, go to my website and if you want to talk to me personally, you can contact me through that website. Have a great day and I look forward to visiting with you next time.

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from Lawrence Pierce Durance http://lawrencedurance.com/part-1-major-gifts-fundraising-lawrence-pierce-durance/