You’ve heard the fable about the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg. You know, the farmer who had a goose lay a pure-gold egg every day. At today’s prices that’s worth more than $14,000 a day. Pretty sweet money.

But money does weird things to people, and the farmer started to think those daily eggs were not all that much, and it was a pain to deal with them day after day. He wanted more, and he wanted it now!

So he cut open the goose. And there weren’t hundreds of golden eggs in there. Just goose insides.

You know the moral. But have you heard about Farmer 2, just down the road from the greedy farmer? He also had a magic goose. It was from the same brood as the first farmer’s golden goose.

But it didn’t lay golden eggs. It laid regular old eggs. It was one of his best producers of eggs, but Farmer 2 knew this goose had the capacity to produce golden eggs. And he really needed the extra income.

So he did some research on magic geese, and learned that sometimes, geese can be induced to produce golden eggs with certain special care: A special goose-house to live in, and a diet of high-nutrition goose-food.

Farmer 2 knew this was going to cost more than the typical cost of raising geese, but it was clearly going to be worth it.

So he built the special goose-house, put the magic goose in it, and went back to his other duties.

He was very busy. So he really didn’t have time to give the potential gold-egg layer its special food.

It quickly stopped laying eggs. Then, because it was hungry all the time, it escaped its special goose-house and went to live on Farmer 3’s farm. Where it (and Farmer 3) lived happily ever after.

Farmer 2 had no idea what had happened. And still had no golden eggs. But now he didn’t even have a potential source of golden eggs.

Something very similar happens in fundraising.

The potential golden goose for us is donors with the ability to give extraordinarily large gifts.

We want to find and cultivate them!

But, in our zeal to make it happen, we make a similar mistake to Farmer 2.

We move donors we believe have the capacity to give very large gifts into a special category that gets special treatment: Usually some form of personal connection with a major gift officer.

For some of those donors, this works very well. Very, very well. The personal relationship with a major gift officer works wonders, and they lay a lot of really big golden eggs.

But it doesn’t always work.

And when it doesn’t work, the loss to our fundraising can be deep.

Here’s why this happens so often: Major donor personal relationship fundraising is a proven way to maximize donations from high-capacity donors.

There are three common problems though:

Problem #1: It’s not the right way for all of them

In fact, the major donor treatment is wrong for a majority of high-capacity donors. That’s right: It’s a less effective way to fundraise from them. They don’t want that!

There are many very significant donors who never talk to a major gift officer. That’s fine with them. It should be fine with you too.

So before you decide someone should get major donor treatment, make sure they are likely to respond. That means you need to actually talk to them and find out. This can take awhile, and if all you do is just ask them, you might not get the right answer. They may not really know what they want from you!

If you simply can’t get in touch with someone after many tries, you should probably take that as a “not interested.” Maybe try again in a year.

Problem #2: You need to actually do the treatment for it to work

This is the distressing part. Some organizations will do a wealth-screening on their donors. They’ll find that they have a handful who are very wealthy, but not giving you high-end gifts. So they’ll dump all those people onto major gift officer caseloads. As if high capacity is the same thing as high connection to the cause.

Now, your major gift officers have too many people to effectively cultivate. So they end up either under-cultivating their entire list, or they just neglect some of them altogether.

The generally known limit for an effective major gift officer caseload is 150 people. Ask them to go much above that, and something will break.

Problem #3: Direct mail is not the enemy of major donor fundraising

Here’s what makes Problem #2 even worse: The assumption that high capacity donors hate direct mail and should immediately stop giving it.

That is a huge assumption to make. And one that is often dead wrong.

Most major donors on most donor files (like more than 90%) start out as direct mail donors. They rise to major donor status precisely because direct mail works for them!

Some high-end donors may hate direct mail. Just like some of any group of donors. If you have a relationship with a donor and you know they really don’t want your direct mail – then you consider removing them. But you should never turn off the DM stream unless you have a specific reason to do so. Don’t decide for them what they will and won’t respond to.

If your organization hits Problem #2 and overburdened major gift officers are under-cultivating some of your major donors … if they continue to get direct mail, at least they are hearing from you and have a channel for giving. If you automatically turn off direct mail, you will go silent on them.

They will fly away to somewhere they can continue to make a difference.

I think we sometimes get bedazzled by the potential of high-capacity donors. If you have a donor family that gives you $100 a year – but you know they give two other charities in town six-figure donations every year … maybe it’s because you haven’t yet talked to them and made your case. Or maybe they only have $100 worth of passion for your cause. That’s their choice to make, not yours.

Major donors are different from other donors in one main way: They have more money. They don’t necessarily care about you more. They may not have the time or interest to become your pal.

Like all donors, the amount wealthy people give to your cause lies where their capacity intersects with their passion.

You’ll maximize giving by remembering that.

Are you ready to take your organization to the next level? Do you look at the most successful nonprofits and wonder how they got where they are? It’s simpler than you might think. Get your FREE copy of Sean Tiner’s ebook, 4 Little-Known Strategies the World’s Top Charities Use to Smash Their Fundraising Targets and Skyrocket Their Donor Value. You’ll be amazed at the results you get from these tips.

Please share your experience by leaving your reply below. We’d love to learn from your experience.

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