How to Find Major Donors Among Midlevel Supporters

Midlevel donors are some of the most important supporters your organization has, and some of them may someday be able to join the ranks of top contributors.

“Midlevel donors are the major-gift givers of tomorrow,” says Rachel Muir, a fundraising consultant who earlier in her career founded Girlstart, a nonprofit promoting science, technology, engineering, and math education for girls.

Finding out if a midlevel donor is able to give more takes research, expert listening skills, sleuthing, creativity, and patience. But it can pay off mightily, fundraising experts say.

Follow the Money

One of the first steps involves channeling your inner Nancy Drew or Dick Tracy to search for clues of greater wealth:

• Track the donor’s giving history and keep an eye on how contributions progress. If the first gift is small but later donations get bigger and bigger, the donor might be wealthier than you thought, says Liz FitzGerald, senior director for special gifts at the American Civil Liberties Union. She also suggests keeping watch for donors whose first gift is at least $100 — chances are good they can give a good deal more, she says.

• Follow the donor’s career trajectory: Is he or she steadily moving upward? At or near the executive level in a high-paying field? That’s a good sign, says Anthony Escobar, the executive director for development at New York public television station WNET.

• Search publicly available data to find out where donors live, what they own, and where else they give, suggests Drew Wynn, former senior director of emerging major gifts and stewardship at the Humane Society of the United States. Does the ZIP code indicate an upscale area? How much real estate do they own, and what kind? Any luxury items, like a boat? Also look into their stock holdings and activity, and check out the annual reports of the nonprofits to which you think they may donate, to get an idea of how much they’ve given.

Listen and Ask Questions

You can also learn a lot from conversations with donors, fundraisers say.

When you’re thanking them for their gifts, whether in a phone call or a face-to-face visit, use those conversations to find out why they contributed to your charity and what they care about. Ask what motivates their giving, how they heard about your organization, what inspired them to give in the first place, and what they would like their money to support, experts recommend. And make notes afterward about what was discussed.

Invite donors to attend special events with your organization’s leaders. Even if they say no, it helps to make them feel included, valued, and part of your group’s inner circle, Ms. Muir says.

A survey is a smart way to learn more about your midlevel donors, and creating one online can save money and time. But keep it “short, sweet, and simple,” Ms. Muir advises:

• Ask no more than five or six questions.

• Make the questions simple — at a 6th grade level.

• Don’t ask something you already know, like when they last donated and how much they’ve given your group.

• Design the survey with as little text as possible, and include visual elements — for example, a thumbs up or down icon respondents can click to answer questions about how much communication they want from the charity and in what format.
  

• Above all, include an eye-catching subject line in the survey email so people will want to open it.

Watch Your Step

Once you’ve discovered who has the potential to become a bigger supporter, your major-gifts officer can take over. But beware of the pitfalls at this stage:

• Don’t stop sending such contributors direct mail unless they ask you to, says Ms. Fitzgerald of the ACLU. Some wealthy donors prefer mail rather than face-to-face communications, and if you stop mailing to them, they may forget about you or wonder why they’ve been dropped. This is especially true if the gift officer hasn’t contacted them yet.

• Don’t start cultivating them for a major gift if you don’t know what’s happening in their life, Mr. Escobar warns. A donor’s business might be in trouble, or there might be an illness in the family.

• Don’t treat donors like an ATM. Helping them to become more deeply involved in your charity will show them that you value more than just their dollars, asserts Mr. Wynn. “Nonprofits have to work hard to take away that sales feeling, and we have to develop long-term relationships with our donors,” Mr. Escobar says.

• Don’t push your donor too hard. You may think that midlevel donor you’ve had your eye on is in a position to give a major gift, but if he or she doesn’t feel ready and tells you so, back off graciously, says Ms. Fitzgerald.

“If someone gives $5,000 a year, that’s fantastic,” she says. “You don’t want to alienate or scare them off by trying to move them up before they want to, and then lose them completely.”