Cultivation #3 – What To Do

Ever feel stuck in a rut with your cultivation? Last post, I mentioned my tendency to just invite prospects my organization’s next event. Didn’t matter who the person was or what the event was, that was my strategy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes events are great cultivation tools. But for every prospect? And every time? My approach was shallow and one-size-fits-all.

It wasn’t that I needed new, innovative cultivation strategies. I just needed to get better at matching strategies with prospects.

That’s what today’s post is about.

Most of us don’t need fancy new donor cultivation ideas. Shiny objects rarely deliver. And resources are limited, after all.

Instead, we need to make sure we’re maximizing the opportunities we do have. And, most importantly, taking a donor-centered approach to cultivation.

So, what does that mean? Three things (at least):

1. Face-to-face interaction. Kind of a no-brainer. We all know face time is a key ingredient in building meaningful donor relationships and soliciting large gifts.
2. Curating the experience. Top performing gift officers always seem to know “where each of their prospects are” in their respective journeys toward major gifts. They facilitate the learning, trusting, and engaging process every step of the way.
3. Meet their needs. Major donors give for different reasons. These reasons are rooted in psychology. Our work is best when we understand our prospects on a motivational level and develop customized cultivation experiences.

Last post, we talked about identifying the top 25 prospects in your portfolio and reverse engineering a cultivation strategy for each. We also covered learning agendas and how they’ll inform the plan.

Today, we’ll go deeper.

What activities should make up a cultivation strategy? How do you choose?

No surprise here: it depends on the prospect.

We’ll stick with the frameworks that have been guiding us, starting with the three-pillared bridge. Then we’ll consider your prospect’s psychology using the Seven Faces framework.

Cultivation and Learning

Quick refresher. The three pillars of major gift cultivation are: learning, trusting, engaging.

These are fundamentals. If your prospect doesn’t trust you, know enough about you, or feel connected, you’re not getting a big gift.

So, let’s get practical. We’ll take each pillar individually and list cultivation activities to help you meet that objective.

Learning
This one’s the most straightforward. What does your prospect still need to know about your organization? How will you educate him?

Here are some ideas:

• Site visits and/or tours
• Meetings to review your strategic plan and offer feedback
• Meetings with program staff
• Opportunities to interact with your organization’s clients
• Updates on specific areas of interest
• Sending articles and other relevant information

Trusting
This one’s a little harder to pin down. Although there’s a lot of overlap between building trust and learning, it’s not as linear.

Ultimately, you want your prospects to trust you on two fronts: 1) that your organization can do the job, and 2) that you treat your donors well.

Helping prospects trust that you can do the job (or meet the need):

• Meetings or small group events with your top executive
• Exposure to other leaders
• Press clippings or other external validations
• Impact stories in internal publications or shared in person

Demonstrating that you treat donors well:

• Advice visits
• Social opportunities with like-minded donors
• Event invitations
• Hand-written notes
• Birthday, holiday, or anniversary cards
• Recreational activities (golf, etc.)

During cultivation, you want to give your prospect a sense for what it’s like to be a donor to your organization. They’re wondering, Would I feel proud to give here? Do I like these people? What social circle(s) will I enter?

And let’s not forget the simple importance of time in building trust. I’m talking about consistent, positive interactions with the organization over a period of months, or even years.

Engaging
Hands-on volunteer opportunities will be some of your most high-impact cultivation tools. They build connection and reinforce learning and trust. Here are some ideas:

• Mentorship opportunities
• Speaking engagements
• Hand-on volunteering opportunities
• Administrative support
• Committee work: advisory, event, etc.
• Smaller giving, regular giving
• Trips/travel opportunities
• Trusteeship (the ultimate cultivation opportunity)

The bridge-building framework will help you conduct a “gap analysis” when building cultivation plans for your prospects.

For each person, ask yourself, Where are the gaps? Does she need more information? Or, does she just need to get closer to the organization and grow more confident in it?

Perhaps she needs a little more of both and would enjoy a hands-on, “engagement” opportunity.

You can also go deeper.

Cultivating Seven Types of Donors

Most donors are truly generous and give with good intentions. Yet, charitable giving isn’t free of self-interest.

It’s important that fundraisers keep this in mind.

Fundraising isn’t exactly sales, but we are “selling” an opportunity to act in alignment with one’s values. It’s a chance for your prospect to see herself in the way she wants to see herself, and to feel about herself in the way she wants to feel about herself.

These desires are deeply rooted in a person’s psychology and sense of identity. They’re powerful motivators.

This is where Russ Alan Prince and Karen Maru File’s Seven Faces of Philanthropy framework comes in. What cultivation events or activities are best suited for your prospect given how she thinks about the world?

Let’s look at some ideas for each of the seven profiles.

Along with suggested tactics, I’ll provide some quick refresher info on each of the seven types. Again, to really get into it, buy the book!

1. The Communitarian: Doing Good Makes Sense

• Values: The community where they live and do business; “We’re all in this together”
• Motivations: Investing in the community is good business; they do well when their communities do well; they develop valuable personal/business relationships via nonprofit involvement, namely board service
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Arrange meetings with local elected officials, or other influencers, to discuss opportunities, challenges, and project ideas
  2. Start by engaging the business through high visibility event sponsorship opportunities
  3. Provide opportunities to meet clients benefiting from services in local community

2. The Devout: Doing Good is God’s Will

• Values: Faith-based causes and institutions
• Motivations: “It’s God’s will that I give to his work and for the benefit of others”
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Leverage religious affiliations, or existing relationships with individuals in a particular religious community
  2. In cultivation conversations, align work done by the nonprofit with religious values like, help for the poor, caring for orphans, taking good care of God’s creation, justice, equality, etc
  3. Emphasize basis for trust (transparency, honesty, credibility), not recognition or donor benefits

3. The Investor: Doing Good is Good Business

• Values: Tax efficiency; sound financial management; more likely to give to community foundations or other umbrella non-profits
• Motivations: Tax and estate benefits; adviser recommendations
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Expose to financials; use numbers to demonstrate impact and efficiency
  2. Ask for feedback on strategic plan
  3. Provide opportunities for education around tax-advantageous giving
  4. Get to know their business; understand and express appreciation for the link between its performance and their giving

4. The Socialite: Doing Good is Fun

• Values: Having fun while doing good; more likely to support the arts or collegiate athletics
• Motivations: Leisure and entertainment; expanding their social influence; networking
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Leverage existing relationships within the socialite’s circle
  2. Involve in event planning; empower the socialite to develop fun, creative ways for other people to give
  3. Highlight the way other socialites who have been involved have been publically acknowledged
  4. Help position the socialite as a “hero” within her network; provide her with opportunities to “take care of” her group

5. The Altruist: Doing Good Feels Right

• Values: Generosity and selflessness; “Giving is a moral imperative;” most likely to support social causes
• Motivations: Empathy; personal/spiritual growth; wholeness
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. When talking about opportunities to give, highlight impact, not recognition, events, or status
  2. Surprise and delight with spontaneous, or “just because” acts of kindness
  3. Personal trust is more important to altruists than external validation; introduce them to other “good people” working for the organization
  4. Since wholeness and spiritual growth are valued, make sure you seek to understand the altruist on this level; have conversations about it
  5. Don’t lead with governance positions or volunteer opportunities that are operational in nature

6. The Repayer: Doing Good in Return

• Values: Loyalty; likely to support education and/or healthcare
• Motivations: Reciprocity; obligation; Helping an organization that helped them
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Take a nostalgia-based approach, help the repayer continue to appreciate his experience
  2. Demonstrate to repayers how the organization is still creating the type of change they benefitted from
  3. Don’t lead with recognition, or socialization around giving
  4. Find specific opportunities to honor or memorialize individuals who were significant in the repayers experience

7. The Dynast: Doing Good is a Family Tradition

• Values: Tradition; legacy; family name
• Motivations: Continuing family legacy; expectations; peer pressure from other dynasts
• Cultivation tactics:
  1. Connect dynasts with leadership early. They want to “know and be known.”
  2. Acknowledge that they are well-versed in philanthropy. Educate around what makes your organization and its mission distinct. Also, highlight longevity.
  3. The family’s tradition of giving is important, but understand that young dynasts may not want to do things the same way their parents did, or even support the same causes.
  4. Don’t over-emphasize donor benefits or recognition. Dynasts grew up around philanthropy and feel that everyone should give as they can, regardless of financial means. Highlight your organization’s broad base of support.
  5. Attempt to get to know their advisors.

A Key Tactic for All Types

Introduce prospects to current donors who have same philanthropic profile.

It’s simple, yet powerful. Connect a prospect with a like-minded donor and watch the magic happen. It will make it much easier for your prospect envision herself getting further involved and make a gift. Her sense of belonging will skyrocket.

Hopefully you have board members representing each profile who will be willing to go to bat for you in this way.

Pacing

Be donor-centered here. Big gifts take time – 18 months, on average. 4-5 years for $1M+ gifts.

Nonetheless, managing the pace and momentum of donor relationships is part of the job. Move too slow and you’ll never get a gift. Move too quickly and you might get a smaller gift than you’d hoped for.

Here’s a tactic I’ve found tremendously helpful in maintaining forward momentum: schedule agreed-upon next steps within 48 hours.

For example, you meet with a prospect for the first time and get him interested in a site visit to your organization. Try and schedule that within 48 hours of the meeting.

The site visit may still be six weeks away. That’s fine. It’s important to capitalize on the momentum of your first visit and get the next opportunity on the calendar now. This approach is far more effective than waiting six weeks to try and schedule the next meeting.

Extra effort to sustain momentum is critical between the first and second visits with your prospect; this is where you’re most in danger of losing it. Give this tip a try!

In Conclusion

We’ve covered the psychology of donor cultivation, how to plan for success, and what cultivation activities are most meaningful to the seven types of prospects you’ll encounter.

Next post will be a What to Say When article. We’ll get even more granular.

Given what you know about your prospect’s learning agenda and his psychology, how can you use conversation to move things forward? What are the right questions to ask? What is he most likely to respond to?

Stay tuned!

---