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well Rachel you still with us I am can hear me okay I can my watch clock you want to go ahead and get started absolutely cool let's do it well good afternoon everyone if you're on the East Coast and good morning if you're on the west coast or somewhere in between thanks for being here for today's webinar moving a first-time donor into a major donor and my name is Steven Shattuck and I'm the VP of Marketing here at bloomerang and I'll be moderating today's discussion and just so everyone knows before we get started it's 1-3-1 to know that we are recording this presentation and I'll be sending out the recording and the slides a little later on this afternoon just as long as the technology gremlins stay away I think they will this time so look for an email from me a little later on this afternoon with those resources and as our guest is presenting please feel free to use the chat box right there on your screen send any questions and comments our way we'll both see those during the presentation and we're going to save a little bit of time at the end for Q&A so don't be shy you've got a great expert here for an hour to answer any of your questions so do utilize that chat box as you're listening and just in case there's some people new to bloomerang we do do these webinars once a week so welcome if this is your first presentation I just want to let you know that bloomerang in addition to be to being a provider of a lot of educational resources like today's webinar we also make some really great donor management software so if you're interested in that you can check out our website for more information there I'm not going to give too much of a commercial here for you but just wanted some new folks to be aware of that in case you didn't know who bloomerang was so now you know and now I want you to meet our guest she is rachel muir CFR e hey Rachel how's it going hi there awesome thanks thanks for being here for those of you who don't know Rachel rachel is the vp of training over at pursuance she's just a great speaker a great blogger a really really awesome person in general I'm just going to brag on her for a little bit before she get started Rachel actually this is really great when she was just 26 she started her own nonprofit called girls start and it was a nonprofit organization - or math science engineering and technology she started that in the living room with her apartment with $500 and just a credit card and several years later she had raised over ten million dollars and was featured on Oprah CNN and The Today Show so who you're going to listen to today isn't just kind of a pundit who's just sharing opinions this is a person who has done it and it's done a lot of great things she's been a winner of Oprah Winfrey's use your life award she's a three-time finalist for armsan Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and she was named outstanding fundraiser executive of the Year by AFP she was also named one of Fast Company magazine's fast 50 champions of innovation so yeah someone just said she's also a great advocate of stem Rachel you're just an awesome person in general I'm really excited thank you yeah yeah this is gonna be really cool and I'm not going to take any more time away from you why don't you go ahead and get us started absolutely thank you so much for having me we're big fans of bloomerang and I've got a huge heart for all the small nonprofits and we've got a lot of small nonprofits on the call that was my background starting and running girls start so welcome everybody it's Steven and I are both so thankful that you are joining us today I want to let you know that we're gonna I'm going to be answering questions at the end I've reserved at least 15 minutes for your questions but please feel free to chat in questions I'm not going to promise you that I'm going to answer before the end but I will scroll through and try to catch as many as I can so if something comes up for you while I'm going through stuff please don't hesitate to type it into the chat box I would really love to get to know you a little bit better so one thing I'm going to invite everybody on the call to do is type into the chat box I want to get a sense of everybody's experience in fundraising so I'm going to give you three different options I'm going to say a newbie is someone who's been fundraising for two years or less an intermediate spend fundraising for maybe three to seven years and we'll say we'll say an expert so anybody who's been in the field for over eight years so if you mine's awesome thank you guys so much we just want to kind of get it's great lots of intermediate lots of experts as well fantastic this is just really helpful everything that you're going to see today it's going to be applicable whether you're brand new to fundraising and today is your first day and congratulations it's going to be a great one or whether you've been in the field for a long time but thank you for typing in your expertise I really appreciate it it helps helps me get a sense of who's joining us and what their background is like and also if you're tweeting today go right ahead that's our hashtag at pursuant I'm for our handle and boomerangs handle and then the hashtag today for today's webinar is bloomerang so tweet away if you want to tweet we'd love it and so here's the agenda about what we're going to be covering today we're going to kick it off with how to upgrade donors how to move first-time donor to a major donor I'm going to move into building a major gift portfolio and give you guys some basics for how to do that how to stay organized building a major gift portfolio and really where to start then I'm going to give you some metrics some best practices and metrics on managing your portfolio I'm going to show you some really great examples of very simple cultivation plans you can make on your own just using Excel you could even use a word document but some simple cultivation plans that you can use to stay organized and get results cultivating your donors and then of course at the end I'm going to be answering your questions and I'm really excited about doing that so this is a little bit about what we do it pursuant we are a full-service fundraising agency and pursuant are really a merger of all these services that you see here to derive results for our clients our goal is to help them move their donors to their highest philanthropic potential so that's just a range we're not a software company we're services company and this is just a range of some of the services that we provide I'm going to show you guys a few screenshots during this presentation as well of some white papers that we have those are free resources for you to download we've got some great white papers that you're going to see on managing a major gift portfolio and I want to just give a really quick shout out if anybody on the call is planning a capital campaign looking at launching a capital campaign or or may even be trying to finish a capital campaign we've actually got a webinar next Thursday on that topic how to start or finish a capital campaign that's a free webinar so if you if that's something that you've got coming up you can visit pursuant comm and you can sign up for that it's a free webinar so great we are going to start off here with how to move a first-time donor to a major donor and it's actually a lot easier than you would think and the biggest step and the most important formula this is this is the magic formula all right moving a first-time donor to a major donor and really ultimately retaining all of your donors is actually what's right there on your shampoo bottle you know we always say lather rinse repeat and I always chuckle because I think who's actually repeating but it's asking thanking and reporting back to your donors you want to think and you want to report back before you ask again that is the key foundation to you moving a being able to move a first-time donor to a major donor we know that first-time donors are testing the waters with their gift their they we know that they're from all the research that's out there we know that they're under giving with their first gift but they're testing us and they want to see what are we going to do when they make that gift how are we going to respond and it's up to us to thank them and let them know in a meaningful way that their gift was meaningful so that we can encourage them and get them to make a second gift and a third grift and upgrade them to eventually making significantly larger gifts and major gifts which you'll see we're going to talk about also in this presentation so this is kind of an outline of the donor experience they want to make a difference so if I if I had animation just this chart would really start with hey you made me aware about your organization you asked me to help you said it would make a difference I believed you I trust that you I gave what I could you told me my gift made a difference so I want to help again but what happens is somewhere in this experience sometimes donors go Array go awry things go awry and the reason why they usually do is because our donors don't know that they made a difference and that's why they're giving they want to make a difference so they're going to go somewhere else to do it so this is one of the first tools I want to give you guys and and the bottom line is that it's up to us to make our donors feel like superheroes and what we need is a baseline plan so that you can make every donor feel heroic and you can make every donor feel appreciated and acknowledged and Bank and a part of your organization so my encouragement to you is to create some business rules to make it seamless and and really help you make that process as easy to implement as possible and as scalable as possible we did a lot of this at girls start and I'm going to share some of my tips and tricks and which include this next slide for you so this is actually this is an example that I made for Goodwill for my friends at Goodwill and probably the first thing that you're going to say when you see this is wow you have all of this recognition all this cultivation happening for every single person no matter what the size of their gift amount well let me tell you something about goodwill this organization was actually just starting a major gifts program they were actually at the beginning this particular goodwill branch was at the beginning of starting their major gifts program so they had an opportunity and their primary investment was upgrading first-time donors getting to know them so that they could move them up the pipeline now my friend Shannon Doolittle would say saying thanks is a privilege and she's right saying banks is a privilege a lot of organizations especially larger organizations would say this and say oh I don't have time I just don't have time to do all this well we need to make time today donar and you can think of business rules that apply to you that are specific to you for goodwill some of their cultivation steps like inviting folks for their annual events that was specific to them inviting folks for a tour those are things that are specific to them you can think about what is specific or meaningful for you maybe you don't have a physical space that donors can come in and see but maybe you can have a webinar where you've got your CEO seeing or you've got other other things maybe you're able to show some video clips of your work if you're a global organization but you can think about what are the things that you do and what's meaningful to your organization and I recommend just putting these down on paper so that you know and you've got actual internal business rules for how you want your donors to be treated so that someone within your organization whether it's your development director your development assistant your gift acknowledgement person you've got someone who's making sure hey this is our process and this is how we plan to recognize our donors for our gifts a girl star we achieved a lot of descale ability and many things including especially handwritten thank-you notes by we would make a lot of them in advance we had cute stationery made digital printing so inexpensive we would shoot out lots of color photos on the color printer we'd cut them out we glue them in the cars we have volunteers do all of this we'd have girls occasionally write thank-you notes at program events and we put we put a copy of that in this card we would change it out every month we change out our copy on our thank-you cards but we had a lot of this stuff pre-made so sitting down to write a thank-you card didn't interrupt everything else in our day it was something that was easy and it was something that it was seamless so my first piece of advice to you in moving a first-time donor to a major donor is create some business rules for how you're going to steward and acknowledge your donors and create some minimum amounts where you're comfortable and used good that everyone's getting a thank you I would tell you guys on the call today that an auto and email autoresponder doesn't count as a meaningful thank you now if you went in there and you really worked on that copy and you made it stand out and you made it meaningful then kudos to you that's that's much better but I'm working the organization and said well we've autoresponder test your email autoresponder test your experience at your organization right you're right a gift and see what happens are you thanked are you appreciated what happens because this is a huge huge step in that donor moving forward to make a second gift and these are this is an easy tool that you can implement and use yourself this is just an Excel to just identify what are some key opportunities that we have to cultivate our donors and how do we want to make some establish some real business rules that we're going to follow as an organization to upgrading your donors and the real key for you and upgrading your donors is really knowing what their interests are so for the donors that you have in your portfolio do you currently know why they made their first gift to you do you know what they're most passionate about or what their top philanthropic priorities are I love asking people what the best gift I ever gave was and why and what I love about asking folks that question is the way that they answer that question tells me how they want to be stewarded and I can make sure that I'm stewarding them appropriately and meeting or exceeding their expectations but another one of my all-time favorite questions to ask donors is what do they love about what they do this one is an opportunity to have your donor tell you so much about themselves and what they care about in their life and all of these things are opportunities for us to do build deeper more meaningful relationships with our donors asking your donors what they want to pass on to future generations or what changes they think would make the world better place how how do they involve their children in their giving questions about your performance with them if you've done a good job communicating the impact of your donors gift are there ways that you could make your donors experience more meaningful these are all meaningful opportunities for you to learn more about really what makes your donors kick how they want to be significant and it tells you where you can intersect with them finding out what matters to them tells you that so Julie asks a really good question how and where do you ask donors these questions and I'm going to talk with you about that next I'm going to actually introduce a process for you to find out more about your donors interest so and-and-and-and I'm going to talk about this as well when we talk about building a major gift portfolio because one of the first things that you want to do is if you've got donors on your caseload that you don't know why they gave you don't know what made them give this is an opportunity for you to find out more about them I'm going to give you some tools to kind of roll out the red carpet to your donors and kind of give you an excuse to reach out to them and have a reason to reach out to them to ask them those questions so that's a really fantastic question and thank you for asking that Julie so pick out what matters to your donors it gives you that chance to build that relationship reveal their interests and upgrade their giving these are some tools that are free for you to just learn more about your donors so this is like legal stalking the first one is obviously a Google search in addition you can set up a Google Alert for your donors name that way if something happens you're notified I recommend adding your donors to your LinkedIn Network I've had people ask me you know well should I add them to my LinkedIn Network Rachel or should I add them to my organization's LinkedIn Network I would recommend you add them to your linkedin network because unless you're also managing your organization's LinkedIn presence you're not going to be noticing what updates are happening with them so for that reason I would recommend adding them to your network and I would also recommend that cookie cutter copy that LinkedIn suggest to make it a little bit more personal low-hanging fruit now these days I didn't have this when I was a fundraiser because a girls start Twitter and it started yet when I started go start but following your donors on Twitter following your donors on Pinterest these are easy non-intrusive ways for you to learn a lot more about what matters to them I'm a fan of liking their amateur donors soccer nice one nice one Steven I'm a fan of liking their company on Facebook and and I say their company and I think I think to follow them personally on Facebook is a little bit more intimate but liking their company on Facebook allows you to get news about their company in your feed and that just gives you more opportunities to connect with them and congratulate them on their success or progress or changes or updates that are happening Zillow of course real estate what does that look like for them political moneyline with their political contributions gives you just more insight into their lifestyle they're giving to political candidates and the last one is probably the most important one but examining but but it's often the most neglected and that one is examining their interaction and their behavioral data so for example there's what are your donor is clicking on in your monthly e-newsletter what events that you have are your donors going to what opportunities are your donors volunteering for there may be a lot of information that you already have you may not currently be mining that could give you great insight into how your donor what your donors care about what programs they care about and what matters to them and is important to them so those are some free tools ma ice-t you in this process is to be curious and be strategic you know when you're on a flight and you're you open up that in-flight magazine and you see those ads which have been running since I can remember being able to read that say it's just lunch and it's an it's an advertisement for it for a dating service and it's called it's well it's not just lunch it is anything but just lunch your time with your donors is extremely precious so I want to encourage you to be thinking about what's most important to them who should they meet in the organization what should they experience are there particular programs that interest them what must they receive in return for they give before you have a meeting with your donor be thinking about all of these things I see some great questions coming in I've got a great question from Greg about how you identify that best 50 or so to follow we're going to talk about that later when I talk about you're building a major gift portfolio and that also applies for you quirky how do you do this for a large database but you're going to see I'm got a formula for you to use to pull your list and start identifying who are the donors that I want to focus on to really to really learn more about their interest so so I'm gonna next I'm going to be talking a little before and talk about bullying folia I'm gonna be talking a little bit about how to this is especially important for you if you are nude an organization and you do not know your donors at all how do you just have an excuse for opening up the door and finding it more out your donors interest so starting that process I would recommend that you start with your donors this we're not trying to boil the ocean here and focus on the entire universe of anyone who not only is giving but may ever give in the future so we're gonna start with a manageable amount we want to start with your donors new donors donors you don't know very well doesn't is that you know but you feel like you could upgrade them or conversely and lastly donors that you think you should downgrade maybe you've been cultivating a donor you haven't been able to upgrade their giving and you're wondering gosh should I really be investing my time here is this an efficient use of my time so those are the groups kind of the least important being donors you think you should grow downgrade but the most important being those top three that I would recommend you focus on so this is a this is kind of a format of what this looks like determining interest so this is a low-tech kind of manual way especially for smaller organizations to approach determining donor interest now we do a lot of disapper suet and we've had a lot of success looking at donor interest by creating the videos and really understanding more about what donors care about from where they click and what appeals to them from where they click in the video and what they watch and how long they watch it for so we've had a lot of success and gotten a lot of scale and efficiency and impact by doing this through a video format but you can do this manually through actually through the mail as well and so this is if you were to do that this is what this might look like you send them a letter or you send them an email I'm a fan of doing this by mail and not by email because I think that it adds a level of it elevates it if you're doing it by mail we get emails all day long but the you know we're not getting as much stuff in the mail so I would recommend doing this by mail as opposed to Janice by email but for some folks who may only have an email address and that's all you have to work with but you want to make this feel as personal possible use your letterhead of course but this is really a combination of sending them a series of letters making phone calls making emails and then if they don't respond to you kind of like quote-unquote like blessing and release them letting them know I've tried to reach out to you I wanted to find out more about I want to tell you more about your gifts at work and learn more about what made you give to us I haven't heard back from you here's my number please comment your convenience I look forward to hearing from you and then and then a final note so I'm gonna show you some examples of what this can look like for you this is an example from an organization in Dallas it actually came to my training and when this woman started out she sent this letter out to her donor so she was new and her job and she wanted to really get to know her donors and what made them give to Bryan's house what inspired them to make that very first gift to Brian's house so this is a very interesting way to start the letter she talks about Fred Rogers but that but we'll get to the highlights here she introduces herself she lets people know that she just became a member of this great organization and let's know hey you're important you're an important part of our neighborhood here and I want to know why you chose us as the place for you to share your gifts and talents and then she thanks them again for their gift at the end so this is a great just way to open up the door I've heard org about organizations during this who received gifts from this even though this wasn't a solicitation not it isn't that often that a donor gets a letter from you that just says hi I want I am here to let you know how your gift is making a meaningful impact in our organization and I'd love to talk with you about that it isn't that often that a donor gets not usually what they're getting is an appeal letter from us so this has an opportunity to really stand out it's another great example and and kind of the theme of this one is every donor has a story to tell and I want to know your story and and this this particular person kind of framed this as this is a new program we have in our organization our new program is for me to reach out to you and find out your story so there's all different ways that you could do this but the bottom line is that you're you're sending some formal communication to your donor to just let them know I want to know I want to tell you how you're making a difference and I want to know what inspired you to make your gift and this is this is just a way for you to open the door not every donor is going to respond to this but the great thing is is that many of the donors who want to have a deeper relationship with you will respond to this and that's really the whole point of doing this if you are to do something like this I recommend doing this and reasonable batches so that you're not overwhelming yourself because the last thing you'd want to do is send out a lot of letters to your donors telling them that you're going to call on them and then get swept up in like your end of your fundraising rush or anything else a big event that you have going on and not be able do that follow up so do it in a meaningful pace and quantity so that you're able to give your donors that kind of fantastic Bob and Judy I love what you asked as Judy says it sounds like you're not making it ask for this meeting is that right exactly this is a meeting to just find out what made you give that gift and how are we doing letting you know how your gifts are making a difference this is an opportunity to just find out more about your donors interests and if you have objections you're done in taking this visit with you you can use that Judy you can say I'm gonna find out what inspired you to make your gift I just want to hear your story I'm gonna give an example I'm gonna pick on Steven and I'm going to pretend like I'm a fundraiser for where I went to school I graduated from the from UT Austin University of Texas at Austin so let's just pretend like is graduated from UT and I'm I'm a gift officer and I'm calling on Steven if I were to call and save it and say hey Steven I want to visit with you and take you for coffee and I want to tell you about all the great things that the university is doing well that kind of sounds like I'm gonna be talking at Steven and he may or may not respond to that but if I say Steven I want to hear what your experience on our campus was like and I want to find out what advice you have for incoming freshmen I'm really engaging this team and I want to hear his personal story and that's something that we all we all like face it we all like to talk about ourselves and our donors do too and you want them to talk about themselves because you want to know what inspired them to make that gift and what is what is important to them what are their philanthropic parties that's what helps you determine where you fit in their philanthropic parties and knowing about their interests is what allows you to move yourself higher and higher in their philanthropic parties so I had a few folks asking me a little bit about building a portfolio and I'm going to talk about that now this is how to not start a lot of times we can think that the grass is greener that the you know the grass is greener on the on the other side and I would encourage everyone you really want to start with who's currently giving to you it can be tempting to to start with who are the most generous donors but if they aren't interested in your organization and your mission then you can spend a lot of time barking up the wrong tree I'm from Austin Texas and everyone in Austin Texas once Michael Dell to be in their major gift portfolio of course but my and Michael Dell is passionate about many things we were lucky at girls start that stem was one of his passion science technology engineering and mathematics vaccines for kids in third-world countries may not be one of his priorities and if that was what your organization's mission was you could be wasting a lot of time spending time trying to pursue him so you only have so much time in a day and I would encourage you not to neglect those smaller donors to chase potential whales who may not have that interest or that Finity to your cause so we're going to talk about what the priority what your primary should be in identifying prospects and that and we can think about it a lot of times you hear Li a linkage interest affinity another easier way to remember it I think is ABC access belief capacity so the first thing here you'll notice is access he is for access right start with who you know not who's rich but a lot of times people start with capacity they start with C they start with the very very last one you need to have access to this person they need to believe in your mission and they need to have capacity it doesn't matter if Richard Branson has daughters if Richard Branson is not passionate about encouraging girls and math science engineering and technology it doesn't matter how wealthy he is I'm not going to be successful getting him engaged and more moreover and foremost if I have no access to Richard Branson then I'm really spinning my wheels I mean the first thing that I need to have is access to Richard Branson and and you know it's easy sometimes I know because I've been in your shoes your board members or your CEO can say hey we'll just ask so-and-so and if you don't have as if it's just that easy to just ask that person but if you don't have access to that person then you don't have the ability and capacity doesn't equal interest just because they have a lot of financial resources it doesn't mean they're motivated to give those resources to your cause so you're going to talk a little bit about who should be in your portfolio so this is a great question that someone brought up earlier who should be in my portfolio and that's what we're going to tackle next so my and I'm going to give you some actual formulas for you to use to so my advice to you is is really start by shopping in your own closet you likely have some great prospects that are hiding out in plain sight we see this all the time with our clients where there are great great folks with really significant capacity that might be kind of hiding in your file and really giving really small amounts and no one's really reached out to them so start with who is currently giving to your organization first this is this is really the the best place for for ground zero starting out this is a formula that I would recommend the first thing is look at their past giving so another way to say largest loyal and upgrading is recency frequency and monetary value so you can take your database whether this is in a fantastic software product or whether you've got this one Excel spreadsheet however you have it pull the last couple years I was in the last two years maybe the last three years depending on the size of your organization and depending on how in touch or out of touch you might feel with your file might that might dictate how far back you go two years of good three years is great look at who's been giving to you over time because you're really looking for patterns what are large significant gifts who've been giving smaller amounts but giving very consistently and what are gifts that are going up over time the second thing when you pull this list is look at cumulative amount if you if you just do a search for gifts of all gifts of $5,000 then you're gonna miss out or all gifts of $1000 you're gonna miss out you may have some donors that are giving to you monthly or that are just supporting many different projects and they might total up to be what your organization would consider a major donor but they don't appear to because you're only doing a search on a thousand dollars or more so look look for a cumulative amount when you're doing this search screen for capacity of course there are paid tools that you can use to screen for capacity there are a lot of paid tools out there there are free tools as well I talked about some free tools earlier but screening for capacity just gives you a little bit of an upper hand and really being able to see you may have a donor that you don't think has capacity but that really really does so kind of like a millionaire next door type scenario where they have assets you don't know about people can be really good about hiding their assets we like to look at income producing assets pursuant that something significant to look at because you've heard you know the term I think it's House House poor so people may appear to have great wealth but if a lot of if they don't have a lot of income producing assets it may tell a different story in terms of their capacity to make gifts so the screening for capacity gives you some added insight and then finally examining their behavioral data how are they interacting with you what interests are they showing what are they clicking on what events are they going to you know how how are they engaging with you so that was my advice for you in terms of how you can really like it really kind of pull pull your file and really see what's in there and prioritize you know you can you can make some decisions once you have this information to really estimate eyes okay these are these donors are upgrading these donors have been given very generous gifts pre recently these donors are strongly over time these are all three segments that I want to focus my energies on and prioritize these folks over here or laps these folks laps 24 months ago these aren't my top priority I'm gonna focus on these folks and I'm gonna get to these laps folks and figure out their story and figured out what figured out what happened but first I'm gonna prioritize this because you may have some hidden gems that you're not aware of in your file so let's give you guys some advice for managing your portfolio and what kind of metrics you should have in your portfolio and when I talk about portfolio metrics the first piece that I want to share is what makes a great gift officer so the right attributes are that they love people they're very self-motivated they're confident they're organized and they are not afraid to make the ask if you have a gift officer who is always in the office always chasing new donors these are some warning signs for you you shouldn't see your gift officer in the office for the hours a week they should be out in the field doing solicitations a good major gift officer is I mean great major gift officers these are some of the most positive people you will ever meet in your life and they it really requires a lot of self motivation a lot of confidence a lot of organization to be a really fantastic gift officer and I've heard horror stories of employers who have demanded that gift officers you know be in the office 40 hours a week and you know really costly gift officers a lot of what they're trying to achieve to be successful so those are some traits of a fantastic gift officer that I would throw out there to you guys the other portfolio metric that I would want to share and I've got some more coming up but it is not humanly possible for a full time major gift officer to manage more than 150 donors in their portfolio now that's someone who's doing this full-time this means there are full-time major gift officer they're not also the volunteer director and there also the grant writer or they're not also the executive director so if you have less than 40 hours a week you can't manage 150 donors if you've got less than 50 hours 40 hours a week maybe you're managing like exactly let's pretend like you've got 20 hours a week to devote to major gift fundraising so maybe you're managing about 75 donors in your portfolio if you've got ten hours a week maybe it's more like 35 if you're an executive director it could be an even smaller number if you were managing a board and your board fundraising prospects I never gave my board members more than three prospects to manage at one time so 150 is the absolute maximum if you were working full-time doing that so so that is my my advice to you in terms of your gift portfolio now I've got some metrics I'm going to share with you on best practices for performance for a major gift officer and I want to tell you this is for someone who's a full-time major gift officer and even though these are the goals in reality it doesn't actually quite look like this and the reason why doesn't quite look like this is because usually the gift officer is pulled into a lot of internal meetings that they have within the organization I know from my own experience was certainly true and that's another another reason why it's so important to have really good communication and understanding between the major gift officer in the CEO and that the CEO really understands the role of a major gift officer but some best practices and this is you know for someone who's managing doing this full-time 125 250 people in their portfolio 12 to 15 face-to-face visits a month 2 to 3 being solicitations about a close ratio of 50 to 70% and you know to to the visits before they ask certainly could be smaller fewer visits especially if it was first time visit a first-time ask or or maybe you were doing solicitations for giving circle or you know look like a smaller kind of club like a middle giving Club I've got a question from Andrea how do I get major gift experience if I can't get out of office due to managing other fundraising areas that is a fantastic question and you know major gift experience is something that it is really hard to get because you don't just you don't just see people you know I used to joke at girls start at well I wasn't really that funny but of course you don't see a lot of Women Engineers on TV and you don't see a lot of funders on TV either you don't get a chance to see a lot of solicitations there's a lot of great resources that we haven't pursuant there's a lot of great resources that bloomerang has there's a lot of great educational tools I've got a plug at the end for the classes that I do I do classes every month at pursuant and practice it's really practice it takes a lot of practice to really really have have a solicitation and have a lot of these skills become part of your muscle-memory Andrea so that's my advice to you is really take advantage of these resources and take advantage of training especially live in-person training where you get to really practice making solicitations in a peer group with with your colleagues so or your peers and your in your field so those are some those are some best practices for a major gift officer managing their portfolio again that is for someone who is doing this full-time I really really want to stress that and I mentioned this I mentioned our website we've got a lot of great resources this is a really good white paper on gift officer accountability so if you want to dig a little bit more into metrics and what is appropriate for a gift officer I really recommend this white paper don't forget to and you go to the site if you're to get a capital campaign coming up I encourage you to sign up for that webinar so I've got some other great items for you that I want to share with you cultivation plans so I am a huge fan of setting ask goals for your donors Yogi Berra said this if you don't know where you're going you're gonna wind up somewhere else and that is certainly true in the demands of fundraising for a nonprofit organization so I recommend that you set a revenue goal for every donor that you have in your portfolio you need to set a goal for where you want to take that donor you need to have a plan for how you're going to cultivate them what you're going to ask them for and when you're going to make that mask so I've got a really good screenshot here of what that could look like this is just an Excel this is assumes I am cultivating the cast of peanut so I've got Charlie Brown and peppermint pattie and Snoopy and Woodstock here and I talked with you earlier about looking at pulling up pulling a file of your donors and looking at what they gave prior so I would recommend that in your in your tool that you're using to manage your portfolio and this is just Excel but in your tool that you're looking at what did they give last year and what is your goal for this year we're huge fans of retention and bloomerang is huge fans of retention you this is absolutely critical for you you need to know what your donors gave prior and you need to be having an actual executable plan if you want to if I need to know if I'm going to be soliciting Charlie Brown in June for a twenty fifty thousand dollar gift what am i doing between now and June to cultivate him to that gift and engage him more and show with them how deep the need is I'm assuming here also this in this example I am an animal care organization and I've got some people that are really passionate about dogs and other people who really like cats and if anyone on the calls and animal care people know that cat people and dog people have very specific interests so I want to make sure that the cat people see kitty cats and that the dog people are seeing puppies and dogs and not cats and so so I've tailored all of their communication based on what their interests are in addition to knowing what they care of what programs they care about your organization how do they want to be communicate with do they prefer email do they prefer phone do they prefer face-to-face visits these are all important things for you to ask you're finding out more about your donors interests so I want to ask answer some of your questions and I saw a lot coming in and a lot of just chatting to Ellen asked how do you conduct a math inquiry of communication that preferences so that's what we've been eight what we've been seeing a lot of success with it pursuant is using video as a tool for really finding out more about our donors interest and then kind of kind of moving on from there sometimes when I share when I talk when I share this insight with folks it can be tempting to for folks to say oh I'm just gonna do a big email blast I'm just gonna email my whole file I'm just gonna ask donors all my donors my file why they gave to us why they care so think about how you're approaching this with your donors you want to be handling your donors with care you want this to feel like an extension of a meaningful relationship so giving them something that is rich and an experience and obviously of videos a really rich experience giving them like a formal letter that really lays out how thanking them for their gift and how you want to serve them and what what made them make their gift and and you know how you want to communicate to them how they're good just making an impact these are all ways to do that sending out like a survey monkey that asked them do you agree with our mission what are what is our number one most important program to you that is is a different experience so so I would encourage everyone on the call to to think about that because these are these are people that you want to be deepening your relationship with and you want to be really really appropriately engaging in the invitation let's see here so I'm looking at a lot of these questions I cover the entire nation says Billy how do you effectively set up face-to-face meetings when it's across the country I've worked with a lot of gift officers who have been all over the country Billy so I completely understand and and I and and the gift officers I've worked with have had a variety of challenges and they've tackled it from a variety of different ways now my advice to you is to tear your portfolio you want to be looking at who are my top donors and how am i nurturing those relationships and how am i upgrading those relationships and I wouldn't really start from there I've had gift officers who have really tried to just look at it from an the most economical I'm gonna be in this area so I'm going well I'm gonna be miss area but they really look at it from I have the largest amount of donors in this metro area they're giving the smallest amounts I think I'll go there so I can see the most amount of donors in this shortest amount of time and and that was done at the expense of seeing the highest value donors and visiting with them so I'm really start with there's an economic cost assisting with your time cultivating your donors your highest donors and require more care and feeding and attention from you so my advice would be to start with them the good news that I would give you is I hear this from fund raisers a lot where they tell me you know it's funny I was coming in to a fundraiser in Dallas recently and he said it's funny Rachel I can get a meeting in New York and and in like I can hear back and get a meeting booked in a day or two it takes me months literally months to get a meeting in Dallas but when I go to New York I'm telling people I'm gonna be in your area I'm gonna be here for these three days when can we sit down for 30 minutes these are the two days I've got available and it's a really different experience for them and it makes them a lot easier to say yes than it does for people who live here in my community with me who can put me off anytime so that is one thing that you've got going for you that you may not feel like it all the time but I definitely have have that so I'm gonna be scrolling through looking for some more great questions and there have been so many I love what lisa says key is to make sure your stewarding and building relationships between the ask absolutely I couldn't agree more Martha as in a one-man shop does it make sense to consider well-trained board members and Edie to be the major gift officers so yes you're absolutely I used to be a one-woman shop myself and I was definitely the chief fundraiser and executive director and you know facilities manager and volunteer recruiter and marketing director so I completely understand Martha it does make sense I would say for your board members it's fantastic to have more members out doing solicitations that's wonderful and managing prospects but yeah I think it's fine you're not I'm I doubt you're gonna have time to manage 150 prospects like donors I'm sorry I could be wrong about that but I would say for you but maybe a realistic portfolio might look something like 30 to 35 people in here in your file I'm not sure that they'd be managing because I don't you really only have so much time in a day this is a great question from Andrea I love this question my job title this is Andrea Bell my job title is director of major gifts and I think that may be a bit scary to a friend's level supporter who I hope to qualify how do you get a listicle it's funny because um I was recently doing a training and I had someone give me two different cards because her executive director it didn't feel comfortable with the the title major gifts officer so she had another card that said something like community outreach manager or something like that I don't think that it is a problem I think that it's fine I've actually found it more confusing when I've been solicited by people who didn't have a title of director major gifts but instead had a really vague ambiguous title because had no idea what they were there to do I had no idea if what we were talking about was a partnership or some kind of collaboration and I was actually ended up being surprised when they solicited me had I had they had an appropriate title I would have known I had a little bit more insight about what is happening so I don't I don't think it's a problem I've had people you know even when asked getting the visit joke and say oh oh I don't know about I don't know that I'd be considered major and you know it's a response like that you can just chuckle and say you are making an impact at our organization and I want to let you know about how your guests are making difference I want to learn more about you and bring you closer to the organization so I wouldn't I wouldn't perceive it as an obstacle I wouldn't really use it as an opportunity to let that person know that you appreciate them and you appreciate their giving and that it is through the generosity and the compassion of the community of the donors in your community that you're able to do the great work and that you appreciate their giving so that will be my advice for you how can I expand my list Beverly asked how can I expand my list of donors what tool would you use to ask for donations there are so many great ways to acquire new donors I mean there there there's viral online acquisition that you can do there's of course always a lot invested into direct mail acquisition that you can do there are so many tools that that you have available to you it really depends that's a hard question to answer generally because it would really depend on your organization I would really encourage you to we've got a we've got the October webinar is going to be a couple comments we actually have a fantastic webinar that's going to be coming up and we're gonna start advertising it next week the end of next week and it's going to be on online acquisition lots of fantastic case studies on online acquisition so that's a really really great topic and a really great question so I've got seven more minutes here and I'm gonna keep going through these great questions how do we increase the number of volunteers who also donate that's a really great question that you asked Marci a lot of people can feel intimidated and even boards or CEOs can discourage the development director or the major gift officer from approaching volunteers and asking volunteers yes but I've volunteered our wonderful prospects for giving and I would I would solicit your volunteers and invite them to consider making an even bigger impact in your organization by by contributing financially as well to your organization you can you know you could do a special appeal specific to them to really thank them you could do a volunteer appreciation event where you've got some great testimonials and you talk about a fundraising goal that you have and you invite them to participate that's that's another great advice that I would give to you let's see um hunter a one-time capital campaign donor to become an annual fund donor restricted versus unrestricted that's a great question Jennifer and I hope that you sign up for the capital campaign webinar next week because we're going to be digging into that topic in depth so how do you move someone from making or stray to give to an unrestricted gift this is kind of a million-dollar question is fundraising because everyone everyone wants to nail this and but I have to be respectful here and tell you that there's a reason why donors love research at giving because then there's something tangible that they can be associated with that they know they had an impact so my advice to you to everyone is to always even if it's an honor sir to gift trying to be as specific with the meaningful impact about your donors gifts at work as you possibly can be because it's that it's those real tangible stories and doesn't have to be you know 50 meals or 100 sweaters or eight vaccinations or 30 blood tests but those meaningful stories behind their gifts at work are really the fuel that satisfy our donors and keep them giving so when making an unrestricted ask that's really a whole nother webinar but I'll give you I'll give you the shortest answer I can when making an unrestricted ask I but really encourage you to really lay the laser ground unrestricted giving is supporting the organization so I'm gonna give you an example let's say that you are doing surgeries for kids in developing countries and people are paying for those surgeries but there is a bigger bigger opportunity there where you're trying to not it's not just rehabilitating that child or not family to get them back on track and they mean more than just that surgery or be and they need medical care and they need education and schooling and and so the more that you're able to paint that whole picture you can I recommend using phrases like you know where you're where you're we want to use your gift where it's most needed and then maybe you give an example of what you were able to achieve internet with with some emergency funds that you had available for unrestricted gifts so those would be some some quick advice I would have about about unrestricted unrestricted giving for you guys I'm a few more questions and I want to let you know that we do costume training custom training to this is a schedule of some of our upcoming classes if you would like to join us we do these classes in Dallas they're all day classes and we'd love to have you join us we've got one in particular that's coming up and it is on November 12 and we're actually doing a really special offer where your hotel is free and this is what we're going to be focusing on that day it's how to build of I'm a fundraiser in a day it really covers everything from building a major gift portfolio upgrading donors artists or retelling lots of practice on making a solicitation and how to build donor loyalty so I'm going to take just a couple of more questions do you have any sample letters that do a great job I don't want in this slide deck but I'll tell you one really really verbally really quick this is one of my favorites this is this is this if let's pretend like Stephen wrote a check to the Ann Richards school for young women leaders and I was a gift officer at the end Richard school for young women leaders which happens to be a real school here in Austin Texas pretend like Stephen wrote a thousand-dollar check I would write Stephen back and I would say dear Stephen this screams and squeals of the girls in room 401 when they found out thanks to your generous gift they were going to get to go tour the nation's capital were positively deafening thank you so I have made Stephen feel like is in the room he is hearing all of these kids of these girls screaming and squealing over getting to see the nation's capital and it's and I didn't start out with a thank you those are those are some that's one example of a great thank you that I would recommend that you consider doing and I would encourage you to go out every month get a cup of coffee go to a coffee house and just kind of let your creative juices flow and come up with different unique ways to thank your donors start with this story don't start with thank you start with a story that makes them feel like they're there in the room with you so I want to leave you guys with this thought we don't convince donors we help them realize that they already care and the more you're able to find out about your donors interest the more you're able to connect the dog with them and help them realize that they already do really care a great deal about your cause so one more I love this one from Mercy insurance my my contact information while I answer this where is the best place to meet a donor I have heard their home I would absolutely agree with you 100% my favorite place to meet a donor is in their home my least favorite place is over over dinner or lunch because I'm gonna be interrupted by a server and I won't be able to I might be interrupted right when I make the solicitation and it could be distracting so I my favorite place is definitely in their home their home offers you so many clues to what they're passionate about and what they're interested in and I wouldn't pick any other place but my home is definitely the favorite definitely a favorite place so I wanted thank you guys all for joining us today I hope that we will get to see you again we've got some great I've pointed out some really great resources that you can download for more learning and and I hope that we get to see you again thanks Rachel that was awesome thanks so much for sharing all of your knowledge and I can't remember her a webinar where more people were engaged and sharing some really great comments and questions so thank you all for listening and and being good sports and and sending your thoughts over really great to have you Rachel for an hour just want to let everyone know that we do do these once a week we've got a really cool one coming up next Wednesday we usually do Thursdays but we're bucking the trend a little bit because Thursday is actually a Jewish holiday so we're going to be here Wednesday with Susan Axelrod and she's going to talk about how to get your nonprofits leadership be a little more confident in fundraising so if you're a CEO or an IDI or if you're someone who works with a CEO or an IDI and you might find that a presentation very interesting Susan's great the only way I can describe her is just lightning in a bottle she's just super energetic it should be a really good presentation so check that out if that interests you I'll be sending out the recording in just a couple of hours just as soon as it's done uploading to YouTube so look for an email from me Rachel thanks again this was awesome you're welcome all right everyone have a great rest of your day thanks for hanging out with us and we will talk to you you next week hopefully have a great rest of your day