Do you know the top reason non-donors give for not donating?

“There’s no point to giving.”

They believe – and not without justification – that no matter how much they give, the world’s problems will not be solved. So the only real outcome of giving away money is that they have less money.

You and I … and millions of donors … know that thinking is at best incomplete. We know that even if we’re tackling a really huge problem – like world poverty or climate change – giving makes a difference. We also know that nobody is the only person giving. It’s as many of us as possible all giving that makes a bigger difference. And that’s how we make progress toward solving the problem.

But it’s hard to shake the “there’s no point” feeling when it comes to giving.

Effective fundraisers help donors overcome that haunting question by putting meaningful action in front of them: Meaningful ways to make things better for amounts they can afford to give.

It happens with donor offers. Like “Deliver meals to older people in their homes for $7.” Easy-to-understand, clear-to-visualize, emotionally satisfying, and scalable (you can ask them to provide more meals according to their giving level).

This helps donors move beyond the overwhelm and abstraction of gigantic problems and gets them thinking about solvable problems.

And it really works!

Now let me tell you something that may surprise you:

Even major donors struggle with “there’s no point.” Those with the capacity to give six and seven figure gifts sometimes ask themselves if their giving really matters.

This may be hard to believe, because you know that those very large donations can be transformative. But the perception of money is endlessly elastic. No matter how little or much you have, it can seem insignificant.

That’s why major donors need donor offers just as all donors do.

There are a few differences when you craft offers for major donors, and knowing them can really improve your major donor fundraising…

Scale up existing donor offers

If an offer works for general donors, there’s a good chance it can also work for major donors.

The “Deliver meals to older people in their homes for $7 offer above,” instead of suggesting meals for five, ten, or twenty people, might work at larger numbers, like 100 or 1,000 or even more.

But be careful. Simply scaling up to huge numbers of people might not quite work. Would an offer to provide meals for 100,000 people here in the community be believable for a donor you hope could donate $700,000? Maybe not.

It might work better to scale up in larger increments. Like “Meals for all the people on our service in town for one day, one week, one month” etc.

Fund a whole project or program

With some high-capacity donors, you can lift your vision higher, beyond helping individuals. You can ask donors to fund a whole program (or a large portion of one, like half). You still have to give a picture of the problem they’re helping solve on an individual basis, telling the same type of story you tell other donors. But for these donors, the solution is to make the whole program work.

When you do this, you need to give more information. Almost a business proposal, with cost breakdowns and time horizons. Many major donors will not really pay much attention to that material, but they need to know it exists. (And some of them will pay a lot of attention to it!)

Capital-like expenses

Capital campaigns are great at rallying donors (mainly high-end donors) around building something that will make a difference in the future. Capital campaigns are their own fundraising approach that take a lot of time and effort, but you could ask larger donors to do something future-oriented smaller scale. Like “Refurbish our outdated industrial kitchen so we can reach more people more cost-effectively for years to come.” The cost for that might be $150,000 or more. Enough for one donor or maybe a small group of donors.

Fund “overhead”

Hear me out on this. I know “overhead” is considered a sort of dirty word in fundraising, but if you have a high-capacity donor’s ear, and you know they have an “investment” orientation for their giving, you could ask them to fund overhead costs.

For example: “Fund our fundraising for a year.” That would be a real loser in most fundraising situations, right? Who wants to pay for fundraising to happen?

But to the right donor, this offer could really sing. After all, the return on investment for every dollar spent on fundraising is $10 or more for the cause. It’s one of the highest-impact things your organization does. It’s not for everyone – not even for a lot of high-level donors. And it’s not something you can sell with direct mail.

Be the match

Matching gift offers are a powerful motivators for donors at every level. But where do you get these matching funds? Ask your top donors for them! The opportunity to leverage their giving is exciting to them too.

You still need to be raising funds for something concrete and specific, as always, but in this case, you sweeten it: You ask these donors to create the fund that will match gifts from other donors. You position it as leadership – which it really is. Their donation will motivate more people to give more. It’s another way to invest.

The two-part Moceanic course, “Growth Giver Workshop,” goes into a lot of detail on how to do this. It’s available to members of The Fundraisingology Lab.

Don’t be vague or abstract

It can be tempting to make major donor offers less concrete than typical fundraising offers. This is a common mistake in major donor fundraising; being more broad and looking at the cause in a “wider” way may seem to be “bigger.”

It’s not. It’s a major gift crusher. Just as it is for all donors. Major donors hunger to make specific things happen, just as your other donors do.

The only difference: They can afford to make bigger and more complex things happen. That’s how you make major donor fundraising work!

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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