I just received the Fall edition of Solutions, the newsletter of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
[Admission: I used to work there.]
An article titled Honoring A Quiet Hero jumped out at me.
It tells the story of an EDF donor, Anita Goldner, who had made small annual contributions to EDF for 25 years. When she died at age 58 from cancer, she left a gift of $1 million to EDF. According to EDF, the gift “came as a complete surprise to all. No one knew she had named EDF as a beneficiary in her will.”
This story, which most fundraisers have heard their own version of, raises two points.
First, you always wonder when your hear these stories, how could no one know the donor’s commitment or potential? The truth is, in the past, the tools and data didn’t exist to spot potential major donors like Anita from amongst thousands of modest donors to an organization, unless perhaps they displayed obvious wealth. [Anita didn't ... she taught college math for 30 years.]
The gifts just ‘happened’.
But now the analytic tools do exist, including some developed by my fellow-travelers at DonorTrends. Sure, they won’t identify all the prospects, but without question they will significantly improve your ability to target and cultivate.
Second, savvy development officers realize that the “small donor” pool supporting their organization is not a competitor, and not the poor country cousin. Instead, they recognize and nurture it as their seed bed. That was the case at EDF, with Paula Hayes as head of development. Paula always supported investment in the EDF membership program … because she knew how many major gift and bequest prospects were generated from that membership.
Does your development director appreciate that point? If not, tell her this story.
Tom
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Also, I wonder: can we just accept the fact that some donors would like to stay under the radar until they’ve died? In the fundraising world we whip ourselves into a frenzy to find these people, and for what? If they had found her using sophisticated tools and approached her, how might she have received it. The presupposition is that she would gratefully give that $1m while she was alive.
But what if she would have considered it an invasion of her privacy? What if she doesn’t want all the attention and honor and glory? Is that caring for our donor in the right way?
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t always try to seek out shy donors, or donors who are waiting for us to come to them. I also wonder if we don’t get panicked over all those hypothetical donors we should be attracting right now using fancy analytics AAAAAAHHHHH!