How to Start a Gift Club From Scratch

How to Start a Gift Club From Scratch

Design a bridge that leads to greater giving

Launch this essential fundraising pathway that lets donors travel from membership to major giving.

A well-managed gift club provides its members with more personalized updates and activities to build their loyalty while discovering which donors may have capacity to make larger gifts. Set Giving Levels To identify the giving levels for your new gift club, look for natural patterns of giving. Most database/CRM systems will show a breakdown of current donors’ giving levels. Giving patterns tend to be based on both donor preferences and on what fundraisers ask for.…

A well-managed gift club provides its members with more personalized updates and activities to build their loyalty while discovering which donors may have capacity to make larger gifts.

Set Giving Levels

To identify the giving levels for your new gift club, look for natural patterns of giving. Most database/CRM systems will show a breakdown of current donors’ giving levels. Giving patterns tend to be based on both donor preferences and on what fundraisers ask for. For example, if an on-air drive offers thank-you gifts at the $120 and $240 levels, you’ll likely see more donors giving at those levels.

There is no right number of gift club members to have in your file; it is far more important to set retention and growth goals for the levels you choose. Even if you start with just a handful of gift club members, set ambitious goals for the percentage you want renewed each year. Renewals signal donor loyalty, and a thriving gift club program should develop an increasing relationship with a donor in order to deliver them into a major giving portfolio, should the donor have that desire and capacity.

Pay close attention to the ROI of these programs to ensure that they are being sufficiently resourced with both staffing and budget. If your club is growing and you find that it is difficult to provide the benefits to all of its members, you should revisit your levels to see if a change needs to be made to increase the entry donation amount or to re-balance the benefits.

Plan Your Staffing

Set a realistic target for how many new gift club members the station will gain each year and ensure that there is a staff member who is responsible for that growth target.

When the total numbers of gift club members are small, they can easily be included in the existing work of a development staff member. Gift clubs can be managed by membership staff or major gift officers depending on the staffing choices of your station, but it is most advantageous for major gift officers to be focused on the relationships needed for larger gifts instead of the mechanics of running a club.

Grow Your Gift Club From Membership Using Upgrades and Renewals

Most organizations are growing overall revenue not from new donors but from bigger gifts from current donors. When starting a gift club, it’s important to present the opportunity to donors to “stretch” their giving along with believable reasons why doing so is important and worthwhile.

Look at donors who gave $500 or $750 a year (if your gift club starts at $1,200 as many do). They are great prospects to be moved into a gift club membership. Approach them with a personalized solicitation to upgrade their membership. Remember, it’s not realistic to have an individualized plan for each of these prospects as you would in major giving.

Look at the top 10% of your contributions within membership. If some of these formerly-generous donors have not given recently, this may be a good opportunity to reconnect with them to find out why they stopped donating at that financial level. The information you receive may help you think about how to structure your solicitation and other communications with this group of donors.

Pull a list of donors who have given a gift during at least seven of the past ten years. You may need to set a dollar amount qualification here to keep the list size manageable but resist the temptation to set it too high. What you are looking for is a set of donors who might be capable of giving $1,000 or more if they were asked to invest in a meaningful way.

Upgrades within the gift club are just as important as in membership. For those donors who are at the entry level of $1,200, create a plan to move them to higher levels of giving, $1,500 or $2,000.

Plan Communication and Activities

Connecting with gift club members largely happens at the group level, but your engagement should still feel personalized and special. Use this exercise to think deeply about the programs, projects, or partnerships that will truly engage your gift club donors. While you may not promise many specific benefits to gift club members, you should create an annual calendar that includes something for your gift club members each month, including:

Station tours, lunch with the GM, other special events
Build donor affinity while allowing staff to hear from and talk to many donors at once.

Reports from volunteers or staff
Send a “From the desk of…” letter or email to gift club donors highlighting new programs or exciting developments. Share station impact reports.

Branded newsletters
Create a club-branded version of your newsletter for gift club members and add a special note at the top just for them.

Promote On-Air

New gift-club donors often come about not from prospecting but from donors surprising you with a new or increased gift, often during an on-air campaign. In order for donors to realize this club exists and is a gift to aspire to, your station must promote the club on the air, during drives and year-round, and talk about the impact these donors make.

Incorporate, Don’t Separate

Avoid the dreaded “development silo!” Ensure that staff across your organization understand the strategy for gift club members and are empowered to contribute to the success of the program.

Connect with colleagues in membership so they can help you identify and follow up with possible prospects. For example, if a donor makes surprise one-time $1,000+ gift (often called a “raise-the-hand gift”) during an on-air membership drive without having an interaction with staff or station leadership, they likely have the capacity to make a much larger gift. Make sure you have a follow-up plan in place that states who will initiate contact with the donor, and in what timeframe, especially during on-air drives, at the end of the calendar year, and on community giving days.

Your organization’s donor services team can also be a goldmine for prospects. They hear from donors on any number of issues or concerns and can be taught what to listen for to detect signs that a donor has a deep level of commitment and interest in the station as well as hints of financial capacity. Set up a system so those prospects can be tagged and directed to your department.

Be Bold

Set challenging goals for new donor growth for your gift club. Fearlessly invite your donors to join in and make an impact on the programming they love.

Gwen Colwell

Gwen Colwell

Major Giving Advisor

(206) 451-7430 (Pacific Time Zone)
gcolwell@greaterpublic.org
Main contact for major giving, mid-level giving, and capital campaigns