Major Gifts

Your organization determines what you consider a major gift. For example, you might consider a $500 donation a major gift whereas another organization might only consider gifts of at least $10,000 as a major gift. Regardless of their exact value, major gifts are special because they often have a specific purpose. For example they may be applied to a capital campaign, endowment, or they may be planned gifts.

Major gifts may be an important part of a donor's legacy with your organization. Typically, major giving prospects are mature donors who already give regularly in support of your organization. They may also be board members, committee members, passionate volunteers, or regular event participants. To identity major giving prospects, you must identify your most dedicated and passionate individual supporters.

Most major gifts are not spontaneous. Instead, they are the result of a deliberate plan of action in which you cultivate an a greater affinity for your mission and then ask the prospect to consider making a major gift. You might even assign a solicitor to give the donor special attention or invite the donor to special events. Then when a donor makes a major gift, be prepared to respond with thoughtful, personalized thanks.

You can use For Impact to improve how you identify and cultivate major giving prospects. For details, refer to For Impact. Moves management is another concept for cultivating prospects. For information about this concept and how to implement it, refer to Moves Management Overview.

Determine your organization's plan for major gifts, create a document to describe it, and save the file to a shared location. We recommend you upload the file to your eTapestry database. For details, refer to Organization User Manuals.

You'll also need to know personal information about the donor. For example, know who the donor has relationships with, other organizations or causes the donor is involved with, what interests the donor has, which events and committees the donor participates in, every interaction and contact your organization has made. Enter this and other relevant information on the individual's account. For details, refer to Accounts .

Tip: We recommend you use the user-defined field set to help track major gifts. For information about how to add a defined field set, refer to Add Defined Field Sets.

You can also create a query category called "Major Gift Tracking Queries" and then use queries to help you identify prospects, track solicitor and individual assignments, and track upcoming steps for your plan of action. To analyze your major giving efforts, run reports based on these queries. For example, the Top Donor Report helps you identify the top 10% of donors each year. For details, refer to Top Donor Report.

Note: For questions about additional tools for prospect research, please contact your Account Manager or send an email to eTapClientAccountExecs@blackbaud.com..