Why Focus Your Research on Major Gifts?

The purpose of this blog and research is to understand the underlying rationale for a high-net-worth individual’s charitable activity. The focus is exploring the exact moment, to the best they can recollect, when they made their final decision to provide a major gift to a nonprofit organization. Information about what strategic vision, meaningful story, key operating metric, or some other specific appeal, which inspired a major gift will prove helpful in assisting other major gift officers. The assistance will arrive in the form of designing effective donor qualitative research techniques when gift officers are preparing to ask a major gift donor for a major gift. By improving such qualitative research, this project will support an important part of the American cultural system: the role of philanthropic backing. This may sound trite or trivial, but private philanthropy has long played an important role in helping society change educational and other societal structures to adapt to changing times. For example, philanthropic support has made it possible for students from all societal backgrounds to attend institutions of higher education (Burlingame, 1992). The power that comes from securing philanthropic support is demonstrated by the recent experience at a private K-12 school in Pennsylvania, the Chatham Hall Academy. In October 2009, Chatham Hall received a gift of $31 million from Elizabeth Beckwith Nilsen. Her gift was the largest a girls’ school had ever received. It has become part of the school’s endowment and will be used for technology in education purposes (www.chathamhall.edu, 2009). The Nilsen gift transformed Chatham and no doubt secured the school’s future over the long term. As stated, almost all nonprofits are conducting fundraising campaigns similar to the one that produced the Chatham Hall gift, but they are experiencing disappointing results (CASE, 2012). Fewer and fewer institutions are having successful experiences in securing major gifts. Without at least one major gift that equals roughly 25 to 40 percent of the campaign total target, it is very likely the capital campaign will fail (Mutz, 2010). What may be missing for major gift professionals working in today’s 21st century marketplace is the insight that can be provided by hearing firsthand from donors who actually provided major gifts (Panus, 2011). By giving voice to their major gift experience, donors can provide a better understanding of what qualitative research techniques motivated them to give.