Major Donor Cultivation

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CULTIVATION IS PERSONAL

Pave the way to an ask by creating a personalized relationship with each prospect.

Cultivation is a highly personalized relationship-building process with a prospect that leads to a gift. Through cultivation, you learn more about the prospect, and they learn more about you. Each comes to view the other as a member of the family. When a gift officer has a limited number of qualified prospects in their portfolio, they can create a thoughtful, personalized cultivation plan for each of their prospects, and this leads to more and bigger…

Cultivation is a highly personalized relationship-building process with a prospect that leads to a gift. Through cultivation, you learn more about the prospect, and they learn more about you. Each comes to view the other as a member of the family. When a gift officer has a limited number of qualified prospects in their portfolio, they can create a thoughtful, personalized cultivation plan for each of their prospects, and this leads to more and bigger gifts.

Plan Cultivation Opportunities

Your cultivation goal is to get to know each prospect in your portfolio and what they are passionate about so that you can get them ready to ask for a gift. (Don’t make the mistake of treating your leadership circle like your primary major giving activity). When a prospect enters your portfolio, begin with what you know and lay out a calendar with a series of personal touches and small gestures that you suspect are well-matched with their interests. Each touch can yield more information that will help you design future touches, so make sure you review your entire portfolio twice a year, and update cultivation steps regularly. Lean on your development colleagues and station volunteers to help you brainstorm cultivation ideas and offer insights about prospects in your portfolio.

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Below are examples of cultivation opportunities. You’ll notice that many are replicated in our stewardship section. That’s because every stewardship plan is also a cultivation plan for a donor’s next gift.

Cultivation opportunities…

  • Monthly emails with personal recommendations of events, programs, podcasts that the donor would enjoy
  • Small group lunches (5-10 attendees) with station, sometimes called “Lunch and Learn”
  • Jefferson Dinners focused on a shared interest or theme
  • Shared on-air-drive reports with audio clips, photos, donor quotes from those who give challenge gifts or those especially excited about on-air fundraising campaigns
  • GM/CEO update letters with a personal note attached
  • Invitation to attend a local philanthropy event in your community with the station
  • Invitation to record a testimonial
  • Invitation to co-present about the station to a community group
  • In-person updates on programs they’ve invested in over coffee or lunch
  • Request for feedback on promotional materials or pre-production
  • Advance notification of new, strategic initiatives
  • Tours of the station with attention paid to areas of donor interest
  • Small-group invitation (2-3 couples) to a local reading/concert/performance with drinks or dinner before
  • A quick “saw-this-and-thought-of-you” email upon seeing an article or blog that would interest the donor (does not need to be related to the station or giving)
  • Personal congratulations or communication in response to the donor’s business/personal news (set up Google news alerts to be notified of such events as they are made public)
  • Invitation to networking opportunities with station staff, other donors, or important people in the community
  • A few handwritten notes for holidays throughout the year (New Years, Valentines, station anniversary, birthday, etc.)
  • Custom stewardship reports, mailed or in-person as appropriate
  • Donor-centered newsletters “where the donor is the hero”
  • Invitation to join a committee (standing or ad hoc) or your board
  • Invitation to become an advisor on a project

During Capital Campaigns:

  • Hard-hat or build-out tours
  • For capital campaigns consider creating a personalized memento for donors

Make the Most of Cultivation Events

Even with large events, you can create small, personalized experiences for major gift prospects such as private receptions or other opportunities for an intimate link to the station and/or its celebrities. At large events, such as a dinner, station personnel should be seated at each table with major gift prospects. Staff should be briefed on who is at the table and asked to note items of interest in the conversation (from program likes and dislikes to travel plans) and debriefed soon after the event. All this information should be entered into your organization’s contact report record for the prospect.

Develop a Consistent Message to Donors

We are always having conversations with our donors, whether or not we realize it. Everything we do is seen and observed: programs, station breaks, on-air fundraising, blog posts, newspaper articles, social media posts and more. Every time the donor is touched by the station — from fundraising letters to program guides to telephone calls — it forms an impression, for good or for ill. Only part of this conversation is managed by the station, and the development department controls an even smaller portion.

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Nearly every member of the staff participates in the conversation, but how often does your management team discuss the conversation? For instance, is there communication between your engineering department about contacts they have in rural areas where you may serve constituents through translators? At one state network, a planned giving prospect emerged through just such an interaction.

How consistent is your messaging? Does the development department present one face to the public while other departments present their own?

The best way to begin to bring consistency and excellence to all communications is to use your internal case to develop a series of message points: no more than five key themes that will be used consistently throughout your organization to put forward its message.

Key message points serve the following vital purposes:

  • Define the most important things you want your donors to know about your mission.
  • Focus on key issues to create awareness among your donors.
  • Promote consistency among your staff and leadership volunteers as you talk about the station.

A Warning

Prospects should not stay in cultivation indefinitely. It is important to realize when you have learned enough about a prospect to move them into active solicitation. Once they are well acquainted and involved with the organization and you understand how they would like to show their support, it is time to begin planning an ask.

 

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

Must have resource

Download the Individual Giving Plan Template to create individualized cultivation plans and timelines for every major gift donor/prospect in your portfolio. This step is crucial to creating an efficient relationship-based program.