What to do when a donor keeps coming up with objections
You’ve answered one concern. Then another comes up. Then another. The conversation starts to feel like a treadmill that won’t stop — and you’re not sure if the donor is genuinely working through their decision or just finding reasons to say no without saying no.
This page is for that moment.
First, a reminder
Our job as fundraisers isn’t to answer every objection a donor raises. It’s to help them make a decision they’ll feel good about. Those are related, but they’re not the same thing. You don’t have to have an answer for everything. Sometimes the most powerful move is to stop answering and start asking.
Two questions to help you get off the treadmill
These questions come with permission from sales author Jeffrey Fox, adapted here for fundraising. Marc has used them for years — and they work precisely because they shift the conversation from spinning wheels to getting back to a decision.
They move to the close but they are not closing “techniques.” They are relationship questions. That’s what makes them feel a little scary. And that’s what makes them so important.
Question one:
“If I can answer this to your satisfaction, is it the only thing standing in the way of your gift?”
Then stay completely quiet and let the donor answer.
Use this when you’re not sure whether you’ve found the real concern — or when objections keep surfacing one after another. This question does two things at once: it signals that you’re willing to genuinely engage and it allows space for other concerns hiding behind this one to surface.
If they say yes, this is the only thing — you know exactly what you’re working with. If they hesitate or bring up something else, you’ve learned something important: there’s more going on than what they’ve said.
Question two:
“If I can’t answer this to your satisfaction, would it prevent you from moving forward with a gift?”
Use this when you’ve hit a concern you genuinely can’t resolve — or one that’s been circling for a long time without resolution. It sounds risky. It is a little. But it’s also one of the most honest things you can say in a solicitation.
As Marc says: these questions feel scarier than the ask with the dollar amount. There’s something vulnerable about asking whether the relationship can survive an unanswered question. But that vulnerability is exactly what makes the question work. It tells the donor you care more about getting to the truth than winning the argument.
Stay quiet after this one too. The silence isn’t manipulation — it’s respect. You’re giving the donor the space to actually process your question rather than react to it.
A story that shows why this works
Marc was working with a board chair — a founding donor to a hospital foundation in a small community in Maine. A great volunteer. A $1,000 annual donor. Marc was asking him to triple his gift to sponsor a specific health event.
Every time giving came up, the donor raised the same concern: he wasn’t sure that a gift to the hospital event would count toward the foundation’s fundraising goals. The two were separate organizations on paper, but all hospital giving flowed through the foundation. Marc had been trying to explain this for three years. It wasn’t landing.
And the “will the foundation get the credit” question came up again when Marc asked him to sponsor the health event. After a few minutes, it was clear that this conversation was going on the same treadmill as the past conversations from the past three years.
So he tried the first question.
“Charlie, if I can answer this accounting question to your satisfaction — is it the only thing standing in the way of you sponsoring this event?”
He went quiet. Charlie thought about it. To Marc, even though the silence was only for a few seconds, it seemed to last forever. There might be any other reasons that would come up. But Charlie said, “Yes, this is the only thing.”
So Marc asked the second question.
“At the risk of seeming impertinent, if I can’t answer this to your satisfaction would it prevent you from sponsoring the event?”
More silence. Then Charlie said: “No. It wouldn’t. I’ll sponsor this anyway. This event just makes sense.”
Marc never had to answer the objection. The question itself cleared the path. Marc pulled out the event sponsorship pledge form and Charlie made the gift.
The critical detail
Both questions require silence afterward. Real silence — not a pause before you jump in with more information. This is out of respect for the donor. The donor needs space to process. Fast processors will answer quickly. Reflective processors need longer. Honor whatever speed they are. You’ll know when they’re done because they’ll be the first to speak.
Filling the silence is the most common way these questions fail.
AI prompt
I’m stuck in a donor conversation where objections keep coming up. Here’s the situation: [describe the donor, the ask, and the objections that have surfaced]. I’m considering using one of these two questions to cut through the back-and-forth:
1. “If I can answer this to your satisfaction, is it the only thing standing in the way of your gift?” 2. “If I can’t answer this to your satisfaction, would it prevent you from moving forward with a gift?”
Help me think through which question fits this situation best — and how to frame it naturally so it feels like a genuine conversation, not a sales technique.
Privacy note: Use initials or a general description rather than your donor’s real name. Avoid including sensitive personal details or information shared in confidence.