Review: Mega Gifts by Jerold Panas

If you are a church leader, who is even remotely involved with fundraising, as soon as you finish reading this post, drop everything, go online, and buy Jerold Panas’ book, “Mega Gifts –Who Gives Them, Who Gets Them.”

Jerry Panas is one of the deans of fundraising. Armed with forty years of experience, Panas interviewed 50 men and women who had made gifts of one million dollars or more and surveyed about 1,000 fundraisers.

His goal? To document the factors that leads to and motivates donors to make mega gifts.

Virtually every page contains a gem of wisdom that can make the difference between your visit to a potential major donor a success and going home empty-handed. Here are some examples…

Preparation

• Why 85% of securing a major gift is in getting the appointment.
• Why “doing your homework” can be the difference between success and failure.
• Who is the best person to make the initial contact and set the appointment?
• What is the one element of an organization’s staff that Panas found to be a requirement in every major gift?

The Approach

• Who is the best person to set the appointment?
• Can you reach a donor through his or her children?
• Why no one ever got milk from a cow by sending a letter.

The Presentation

• What is the most important aspect of your church’s appeal for funds?
• Why should you sell this first?
• Why involving both spouses can prevent your most compelling presentation from failing.
• Is a donor’s close friend a good choice for making the presentation?
• How many people should attend the presentation?
• Should be presentation be done over lunch?
• What is the chance of getting a major gift on the first visit?
• How many visits should you make to a major donor?
• Why is listening the most important component of the fundraising presentation?
• What you should be listening for?  When you find it, what should you do next?

Ask

• Why “ask and you shall receive” is a critical component.
• How many times should you ask?
• Why “you’ll be hurt more by those who would have said, “yes,” but weren’t asked than by those who say, “no.”
• What is the “Rule of Thirds” and how can applying this rule multiply your results?
• What is the “greatest commandment” of fundraising?

Donor Mind Set

• Are major donors’ decisions to give spontaneous or do most want to think it over?
• Why most donors are not motivated by the needs of your organization.
• Can you secure a major gift by making the donor feel guilty?
• What is the singular most compelling reason a donor makes a major gift?
• Why do major donors make gifts?  Why incorporating the answer in your presentation is essential.

Mega Gift Characteristics

• What is the “Rule of Sevens” and why it can lead to larger and larger subsequent gifts?
• Are “matching gifts” effective?
• What kind of a gift suggestion will often increase the donor’s gift?
• Does a major donor have to be a member of your organization?

‘Nuff said. Buy the book.

Autoresponders: Church Communication and Fundraising Applications

A number of technology tools can help a church in their fundraising and communication. Over time, I will post information about them. This article will deal with one of the most basic: autoresponders.

What is an autoresponder?

An autoresponder is an email facility that allows for the broadcast of an email, or a series of emails mailed at predetermined intervals, to be sent to people who give their OK (voluntarily opt-in) to receive the information.

Who can autoresponders reach?

Today, virtually everyone. Most people have a computer. Even my 90-year old mother had a computer. She communicated with friends and relatives all over the place. Her grandchildren grew up in an era where the word “letter” was not in their vocabulary. Everything was email. Today, my mom would have to buy an iPhone or a Blackberry and learn how to text message. But those are topics for a future post. Almost everyone who has a computer can send and receive email.

Are autoresponders intrusive?

No. First, a person normally has to fill out a form on a web site, enter their email address and give permission for information to be sent to them via email.

To prevent someone from entering your email address, reputable autoresponder companies use a double opt-in process. After you fill out the form, an email is sent to the email address you provided with a link you must click on to activate the autoresponder. For a church, this is also an added safeguard in that this confirmation provides proof of the opt-in if the person forgets or if there is a spam complaint.

What if you are a church with an existing email list? Can you import all these emails into an autoresponder? Generally, no. Most autoresponder providers either require everyone on your list to opt-in or require the church to show that everyone has already opted in to another list.

Autoresponders in general

The mechanics are very simple. There are ways to use an autoresponder without a web site, although a web site or blog would be necessary in order to put up a form allowing folks to put in their name and email to subscribe.

Emails can be sent out in text or HTML format. Some autoresponder companies have their system programmed so that if you send out an HTML email and the person’s email client can’t read HTML, a text email will be substituted.

If you choose to use HTML, there are tons of template choices. You can use the autoresponder provider’s templates or a company that specializes in email templates.

With that quick overview, I want to spend the rest of the article suggesting applications of autoresponders in your church. This is certainly not an all-inclusive list. Perhaps one topic will spark your creative juices and you will come up with many more uses.

Register for an event

It’s a simple process to put up a form on your web site allowing people to sign up for a class, dinner, teleseminar or webinar. I’ll discuss below how you can customize your form to gather many different kinds of information. For example, you could find out how many in the family will be attending the dinner. Once they have registered and are on that specific list, the church can follow up with reminders, change of plans or the specifics on how to access the teleconference or webinar. After the event, the autoresponder can provide for any follow up necessary.

Email classes

The class could be about anything. The pastor could provide an email class similar to one he/she would teach in person. The key is, however, is that the class would only have to be composed once. Subsequent classes would be sent by the autoresponder at, for example, weekly intervals as new students sign up.

Updates

While the most common use of autoresponders is to send out prewritten messages at intervals, there is a broadcast feature that allows a message to be sent out to everyone on a specific list whenever you want. Your church could be involved in a capital campaign or the search for a new pastor. The autoresponder could be used to broadcast updates.

Newsletter

The most common use of the broadcast feature is to send out a newsletter. With postage rates going up, the ability to send a newsletter for free is a welcome alternative.

Collect information

The web form where people enter their name and email address can contain many other fields. As such, it can operate as a mechanism to collect things such as birthdays, anniversaries etc. It can also function as a way to conduct a simple survey.

Communicating with non-attendees

The two groups that immediately come to mind are the home bound and service men and women.

I’m sure every communication, announcement and update about what’s going on at the church is very much appreciated by those who are tied to their home. What could brighten a person’s day more who is half way around the world, putting their life on the line to defend our freedom than a message or prayer from the pastor?

Those who have moved away

We are in a mobile society. Just because someone moved to another community doesn’t mean they have lost interest in what’s going on at the church they attended. I think that includes potential financial support as well. Keep in touch.

Send links to other resources

To be delivered and read, emails should be short. The autoresponder can send out a broadcast message, which includes a link to a video or audio posted on your web site or blog.

On the fundraising side, you could produce DVDs or audio CDs of events or sermons and sell them to raise money. The DVDs and CDs could be physical. Today, there are ways to deliver this content digitally as well. Either way, the announcement about the content can be communicated via an autoresponder.

To form subgroups

Use a web form to have church members sign up for a committee. Use the form to build a youth group. In both cases, now you have a segregated list that can be used to communicate with the subgroup as necessary.

Coordinate with a blog

If your church has a blog, you can put an autoresponder form on the blog, which allows people to sign up to get a heads up email when blog posts appear. You can set your autoresponder to send out an email whenever a certain number of blogs posts accrue, on a specific day or days of the month or automatically every time a new blog post is published.

There are a number of autoresponder providers, but only a couple that are the cream of the crop. I use two, one of which is coordinated with my shopping cart. The one I would recommend you check out is AWeber.

I hope that this post gives you some ideas you can employ in your church. Post your creative applications under ‘Leave A Comment’ so everyone else can benefit.

Critical Statistics For Church Fundraising

One of the first tenets of selling is to define your market. Once you’ve done that, the next step is to research the demographics of that group of people. Then you need to determine how you can best reach them. Where do they hang out? Finally, you have to choose the medium(s) by which to communicate your message.

If you are involved in fundraising for your church, let’s call a spade a spade: you are selling. If you want to be as successful as possible in your endeavor, you really need to walk through each of the above steps.

I subscribe to Contributions, a publication for nonprofit professionals. Recently there was an article by James P. Gellat, PhD (I have put his bio below) about trends in a number of areas. I have extracted a few that have a bearing on churches. They are all great food for thought and, in my view, should be addressed when putting together any fundraising campaign.

• Nine countries account for half of the world’s population. In 2050, the four largest countries will be India, China, US and Pakistan. Globally, there are more people over 60 than under 15.
• In 2007, the number of people in the United States turning 60 increased by 600,000. By 2050, the elderly population will double.
• The Baby Boom Generation (those born between 1945 and 1964) account for 40% of US households and half the consumer spending. Boomers are twice as likely to own a second home. Even by 2010, spending by Americans 40 or older will be one trillion dollars more than the 18 to 34 age bracket.
• In addition, it is predicted that 80% of the US population increase in the next 30 years will be immigrants and their children/grandchildren.  By 2016, one in four Americans will be Hispanic.
• More than one quarter of all US households are singles.
• About 28 million Americans are classified as “contingent workers”, that is, they work part time, do outsourcing work or work by contract. That is 400% greater than in 1980. While Americans traditionally have commuted to work, today 60% do jobs where the physical location is not a factor.
• Thanks to technology, all of the routine transactions that a business or consumer does each day are being replaced by some kind of digital technology. For example, there is now one cell phone for every two humans on earth. It is predicted that eventually there will be more cell phones users than people who can read or write.
• 120,000 blogs are created every day. People are uploading 15 hours of video per minute to YouTube. Facebook has 175 million users, uploads 415,000 videos per day and now is the world’s largest online photo site. Go do your own research on Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter. The reach these social networks have will blow your mind.
• Donors who are used to direct mail are “aging out” (what a great term!). Wealthy people are increasingly likely to use the Internet to make their donations.

I hope that these statistics cause you to stop and do the preliminary research about the people you are trying to reach, how they access information today and all the options you have to communicate your message that you never have used before.

James P. Gelatt, PhD, is the author of “Managing Nonprofits in the 21st Century” and general editor of Aspen’s Fund Raising Series for the 21st Century. He is the president of Prentice Associates, a management consulting company specializing in national associations and nonprofits, and a past-president of the Greater Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Society of Association Executives.

Three Ways To Add Emotion Into Your Fundraising

If you are involved in fundraising for your church, here are three things you can do to increase the number and size of the gifts.

These suggestions apply to current gifts as well as gifts to your endowment fund. Donors can often see the results of their current gift right away. Gifts that will find their way into the endowment fund may come years later. Nevertheless, it is still possible to apply these three gifting mainstays to future gifts.

In selling, those on the marketing end know that, most of the time, a person buys on emotion and later justifies their purchase with logic. Why do you think the sales person down at the car dealership suggests your taking the car you are considering for a spin around the block? Words are no substitute for the smell of leather and the surge of power you feel by actually driving the car.

Planned giving professionals tell us that donors also give on emotion. In fact, one book I recently read claims that major donors often make their decision to give (and we’re talking million dollar plus gifts) in a split second. That decision occurs a split second after the donor feels the emotion of the application of the funds you are asking for.

Here are three things that can create that emotion for the ministries in your church.

1. Personalize

Communicate clearly how the gift will affect people. Dollar amounts are cold and nebulous. Donors want to see the people with the problems their money will solve. There is no need to bring out the violins. Laying out the problem in front of someone carries enough emotion by itself to tug at anyone’s heartstrings.

2. Quantify

How many shoes will a certain amount of money buy? How many children will the missionary teach? How many people will your gift feed?

It’s a lot easier to relate to a gift’s specific end result, as opposed to $100 or $500. This allows the donor to visualize his or her gift in action. Just running this through the imagination creates emotion.

3. Show

Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, it creates emotion. In today’s high-tech world, “pictures” include the entire gamut of audio-visual tools. Video, video DVDs, audio CDs, podcasts (both audio and video), audio and video on web sites, slide shows – and the list could go on.

Here’s an example that produced good results. Nothing fancy. Just pictures. Our church participates in a larger worldwide program, which sponsors children in third world countries. The program encourages the donor and the child to write back and forth. Often, the child sends pictures they have drawn that end up on the donor’s refrigerator door.

One woman at our church decided to actually visit the little girl she was sponsoring in a Latin American country. Once a year our church devotes part of a Sunday service toward asking people to sponsor a child. Last year, this woman shared many of the photographs of her trip. Pictures of the child she sponsors, her school and village were projected up on the big screen as she moderated her trip and what she saw and learned. It was powerful. The ushers had to pass the tissue boxes out.

The emotion her little presentation and pictures evoked “sold out” all the sponsorships.

If you take the time to translate the dollar amount of your fundraising goal into these three emotion-creating suggestions, I believe your results will be multiplied.