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"The Gift That Got Away: Closing Major Gifts"

May 11, 2010 - Program Summary

Sometimes even the best-planned and best-executed strategies are not enough to close a major gift.  Sometimes things just go wrong, resulting in "the gift that got away."  How can we prevent this from happening?  Or, if unpreventable, how can we learn from these episodes so that we can avoid similar occurrences in the future?

Patti Keenan (Chief Development Officer of the YWCA) and Margaret Dimock (Regional Director, Leadership Gifts, MIT) addressed this topic in a fascinating session, talking about their own personal brushes with failure (and recoveries from same). They acknowledged that so much of major gifts work cannot be predicted or scripted; but they did reinforce the keys of working effectively with prospects via the acronym LISTEN:

L – Listen – Listen to them, let them do most of the talking.
I – Interest and Integrity – Their interests are primary. While you lead the conversation, focus on their areas of interest. Your integrity is key. Prospects can see through someone who is faking it.
S – Spouse – Involve them in the cultivation and solicitation.
T – Totally fearless – Be totally fearless when it comes to the ask.  Their response is not about you, or how much they like or don't like you.  You need to be fearless to represent your organization well.
E – Enthusiasm and optimism – Let yours ignite theirs.
N – No – Can happen, it is not necessarily the final answer.

Be creative in new approaches, learn from declined/rejected asks and proposals, and move on. Sometimes, with that prospect, you just have to let go. Perhaps make a note to try to see them in a year or so.  Remember, times change, and so do people.

The audience broke up into groups to discuss their own experiences and later reported on what techniques had helped them to save a gift. A quick sampling:

• The bad economy has been causing a number of donors to back off from fulfilling pledges. One way to counter this is to offer planned giving opportunities, such as charitable gift annuities.
• One officer spoke of a donor who was definitely interested in giving and knew what she wanted to support, but for some reason she could not commit to a deadline for the gift and any discussion of timing caused her to be nervous.  So the officer turned the focus away from timing and instead focused on details regarding the gift itself. Nailing down the details of the nature of the gift made the donor feel more secure, and eventually opened her up to discussing the timeline.
• It's great to strategize how you are going to make an ask, but sometimes your plan can go awry.  One officer spoke about a donor lunch that was not going how she had planned (she had planned to give a wonderful presentation and then make an ask, as a culmination of several visits regarding a gift, but the donor ended up doing most of the talking instead).  Silently, the officer told herself to relax, let the donor talk and "get over yourself!"  The conversation ended up achieving the same thing that the officer's original strategy, and the donor ended up making the gift. 
• "Peer confusion" is a dangerous thing. Remember – you are NOT a peer, or a "buddy," of the donor.  Be formal and respectful at all times.
• Your donors need to know the expectations your organization has for them so that they will know what to give.
• The better you engage board members the more likely they are to give, and give generously.  One way to engage them is to take them out to lunch and ask them, "What do you want your year at [ie: the YWCA] to look like?"  It gets them to consider their current involvement and to imagine what it would be like to be involved at a higher level.