“I’d like to ask you to consider a gift of $5,000 to the campaign.â€
Did you practice the question? Is it rolling off your tongue?
Keep on practicing. Then try adding higher dollar amounts.
I was just speaking with a new colleague who told me a cool story. In a past position, he and the board were hoping for a $50,000 gift from a donor for a campaign.
When they shared the story, the donor said, “I’m prepared to give you $50,000…†Here they all breathed an internal sigh of relief, but the donor hadn’t finished. “…a year for the next five years.â€
How cool is that!
Granted, that doesn’t happen to all of us. Usually we’re the ones trying to remember the “…a year for the next five years†phrase. Last fall, a donor told me she doubled her gift simply because of that phrase.
She’d decided on a number and had written the check. We’d asked for a multi-year pledge and she had decided on a one-time gift. I was grateful for her including a gift to us at all, but I took a risk and said, “At the risk of appearing pushy, would you consider repeating that amount at this time next year too?â€
It turns out the amount was a few thousand dollars! (When she told me she’d written a check, I’d fallen into the trap of thinking of my checkbook and the size check I could write. I should know better than to do that!)
But because I asked her to consider repeating the gift next year, she did.
You just never know until you ask!
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