Try this at home: Donor Cultivation Events that Deliver

This is the second post in a 2 part blog series originally appearing on Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog on November 7th and November 8th, 2013.

In yesterday’s post I shared 5 questions you should ask yourself to develop a donor cultivation event:

1)      What are you already doing with clients that would be meaningful for your donors to see?

2)      What high value “VIP” volunteer opportunities can you create to allow donors to feel a part of your mission in a fun, engaging way?

3)      Who is your audience: major donors, midlevel donors, prospects, board members, media, stakeholders, etc?

4)      What is your event concept and event plan from start to finish?

5)      What is your follow up plan for everyone who attended?

Today I want to inspire you with great examples of donor cultivation events I’ve personally done to get your creative juices flowing!

I founded Girlstart where we empowered girls in math, science, technology and engineering.  We served girls at our location, local schools, universities, and on occasion field trips.

The low hanging fruit for us was summer camps held at our location.  Each Friday when the girls “graduated” from camp we invited “celebrity judges” to review the campers work (websites, robots, videos, business inventions, etc) and award prizes.  We had reserved parking, a set start/finish time, and assignment for judges with the option to interact with the girls as much or as little as they felt comfortable doing so, such as asking them questions about their invention, introducing their career, etc.  Our judges loved it and we made camp come alive for them by engaging them in a camp science experiment, such as sewing stiches on a chicken breast in a mock surgery, or testing “mystery powder” found at the scene of a caper.  Each guest got a personalized invitation, reminder calls, a staff or board member to escort them personally through their visit, a follow up phone call and handwritten thank you card for attending.

Once we mastered that we were ready for our next trick: inviting our donors on a field trip.  Every year for our Take a Girl to College Day we had 100 + middle school girls come to the University of Texas campus to experience a day in the life of a college student.  If these girls went to college they would be first generation college students.  It was a meaningful experience to behold and we soon welcomed donors to it with valet parking, a green room with refreshments, time to mingle with other supporters and board members, and an orientation from a program graduate.  As the girls got off their school buses college admissions counselors (our donors “cast” in a VIP acting role) congratulated each student by name to tell them they’d just been accepted to Harvard, Yale, MIT and more and give them their (scripted) orientation.   This event was a huge hit and our sponsors especially loved it.

My last example is an event created specifically for my top tier major donor in my portfolio.  I had a 6 figure ask goal for his capital campaign gift.  After learning in one of our visits that he was a futurist, we created an ad hoc high tech advisory council to advise us on building our future computer lab and asked him to chair it.  He filled it with high tech C-level friends, we met over lunch in our space and engaged attendees with in-person testimonials from graduates and solicited their advice on cloud computing trends that might impact our technology planning.  Several months later we had the gift!

As I said in yesterday’s post, even if your clients are remote you can still creatively engage your donors.  The only limit is your imagination!

Why I Love Donor Cultivation Events

This is the first post in a 2 part blog series originally appearing on Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog on November 7th and November 8th, 2013.

Successful major gift fundraising demands a strategic cultivation plan and goal for each donor in your portfolio.  I love donor cultivation events because they connect donors to your cause and dovetail into the incredible work are already doing with your clients.  Yes, that means if you plan them right they are efficient to boot!  What’s not to love?

The most obvious donor cultivation event is a house party or open house cocktail reception with a welcome from your leadership (Executive Director, CEO or Founder), your volunteer leadership (Board Chair) and finally, a brief but meaningful testimonial from a client you’ve served.

A more complex but face-to-face with your mission event is what I like to refer to as a “VIP volunteer opportunity”.  Essentially, mid and/or major donors are invited to high-level mission interactions (think service experiences) that will leave them feeling emotionally gratified and closer to your mission.  Creating an event like this is a multi-step process.  Here’s a few questions to get you started:

1)      What are you already doing with clients that would be meaningful for your donors to see?

2)      What high value “VIP” volunteer opportunities can you create to allow donors to feel a part of your mission in a fun, engaging way?

3)      Who is your audience: major donors, midlevel donors, prospects, board members, media, stakeholders, etc?

4)      What is your event concept and event plan from start to finish?

5)      What is your follow up plan for everyone who attended?

Once you have completed the first three steps it’s time to unleash your inner wedding planner.  You must produce every moment of this experience from start to finish AND have a killer follow up plan to move these attendees to the gift.  Think valet parking, a green room where they can mingle with other donors and enjoy refreshments, a welcome from a board volunteer, an orientation with a testimonial from a client if possible, being attended by a staff member or board member throughout the experience and a warm thank you and follow up to learn what they thought afterwards.

If you are a virtual or global organization don’t lose hope.  You can still engage donors in your mission.  Maybe you have a select group of major donors join an ad hoc committee to read scholarship applications.  You only have enough underwriting to fund 20 scholarships but reading those 50 heartbreaking applications inspires them to help fund the remaining 30!  The secret is in leveraging what you are already doing with your clients by adding a high-touch tightly managed donor element.

Still not convinced?  A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending Penelope Burke’s session at BBCON (hyperlink http://www.bbconference.com/) She did a recent study on this very topic.  Among donors who went to donor cultivation events on a scale of 1-7 with 7 being the most satisfied, donors ranked themselves from 5-7.  88% said what they liked most was meeting leadership and 83% liked meeting other donors.  33% of donors who attended made an unsolicited gift.  35% of solicited donors who made a gift credited the event with why they made the gift!

With donors giving more money to fewer causes, donor cultivation events are an excellent opportunity to make you their preferred charity.

Are you cultivating the right donors?

This blog post originally appeared on the Greenlights blog on August 5, 2013. Fundraising has only gotten harder.  We have more channels than ever before to communicate with our donors.  We’re still slowly climbing out the recession.  Finally, we are inundated with a huge array of strategies, tools and options for fundraising – galas, grants, direct mail, major gifts,  peer to peer, online fundraising, crowdsourcing, social enterprise, text to give, and planned giving just to name a few!

In all this noise it’s easy to get distracted by bright and shiny new toys.  Far too many times that bright shiny toy could be a prospect who may never give.  In fundraising, there is no silver bullet or magic formula. It comes down to knowing and nurturing the donors you have. The secret is to love the one you’re with. In reality we can spend far too much time chasing the bright shiny new prospects and not cultivating the donors we should be.

When I was running Girlstart people encouraged me endlessly to pursue a certain local billionaire.  Luckily both his corporate foundation and his private foundation were aligned with our mission and they supported us.  But pursuit of that funder might not have made sense for an organization serving multicultural refugees or providing vaccines in Africa since those causes were not part of their mission.  Organizations need to invest their time where it can yield the greatest fruit and not spin their wheels pursuing people with the capacity to give, but not the inclination.

How do I know who the right donors are?

There is a real economic cost associated with cultivating each donor on your caseload.  Many fundraisers can invest time and energy cultivating the wrong donors.  They might be individuals who are extremely well connected and influential but do not donate to you or they may be people with infinite capacity and no affinity for your cause.  To determine who should be on our portfolio you need to look at their passion for your cause and their capacity to give.

Take a moment to think about the donors in your portfolio. When I say portfolio, I’m talking about the numbers of donors (individuals, foundations and corporations) you are actively cultivating.  How well do you know them?  Do you know what your donors are passionate about?  What makes them give?  How they prefer you communicate with them?

If you don’t know these facts about your donors you must find out.  You have to reach out to your donors to find out more about their interests and determine how to best cultivate them.  Not every donor wants to have a more intimate relationship with your organization.  Some simply want to make a year-end gift and aren't interested in being treated as a VIP or insider.  Your challenge is to know your donors well enough to know their preferences and then execute on them with a revenue goal and cultivation strategy for each donor who makes it into your portfolio.  Knowing what your donors care about, why they give to you and what their larger interests are helps you determine your strategy for cultivating them.