David Lively and Naveen Vinukonda recently published a great article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the high cost of turnover in development staff and leadership. If you haven’t read it, it’s one you don’t want to miss.
However, buried in all the great information regarding how long it takes to get traction as a major gifts officer or director was a nugget that made my eyebrow go up:
“…Closing transformational gifts is often due to luck as much as skill and hard work….”
With more than 30 years in the field and experience working with many high net-worth families and individuals, I couldn’t disagree more regarding the role of luck.
Transformational gifts require the organization and fundraiser to play the very long game. These gifts seem rare because most organizations don’t have the capacity or discipline to stay focused for years rather than weeks or months. The organization and the fundraiser have to share several important attributes- tenure, stability, trustworthiness, and most importantly, genuine commitment to creating the best possible outcome for the donor, their family, and the organization.
Charles Collier was a legendary fundraiser for Harvard. He, and Harvard, were able to check all the boxes. He had an exceptionally long tenure at a top institution. But most importantly Harvard’s leadership gave him the freedom to engage deeply with a handful of families, each of whom made a transformational gift to Harvard. Luck had nothing to do with it.
In my career, a strategy of staying close to the top estate planning and financial planning professionals in our region allowed me to build trusting relationships with these professionals, who often have an outsized influence on major gift decisions. Consistently communicating, welcoming, inviting, and thanking prospective major gift donors- and their advisors- meant I wasn’t always lurking in their rearview mirror, wanting something from them.
My commitment to stay in positive contact with a top legal advisor led to a four-year, constantly deepening relationship with a prospective donor. In the end, a series of ever-increasing gifts culminated in an estate gift that exceeded $20 million.
So, before you throw up your hands and decide this could never happen for you or your organization, take a hard look in the mirror. Are you creating the environment that will make it happen? Play the long game and invest your time wisely. Put the processes and culture in place that take luck out of the equation and put you and your hard work and skill in the driver seat.