Gift size doesn’t matter

Okay, that’s not fully true. The amount of a donation is important. It tells you, for now, what your “relationship budget” should be for this person. If it’s a large amount, you can (and should) spend more cultivating that relationship.

What gift size doesn’t tell you is how passionate and connected that person is. The amount tells you little about that.

Say you get a first-time donation from someone of $10. Your average first donation is close to $100. That $10 is a “small” gift.

But you have no idea how much passion and connection is behind that $10. Here are three possibilities:

1. Maybe this donor sends $10 to just about every charity she comes across. She rarely gives a second donation to any of them. Her total philanthropy adds up, but she doesn’t have a strong connection with most of them. This is a low level of connection. You aren’t likely to rise to a higher level on her list, because she doesn’t think about her giving that way.
2. Maybe this donor absolutely loves what you do. But $10 is all she can afford. Chances are you’ll get small gifts from her a couple times a year for a few years. It will never add up to much. But she really cares. And she just might include you in her will, an amount that will likely eclipse her lifetime giving by orders of magnitude.
3. Maybe this donor has a lot of money. They are capable of making five- and six-figure donations, and they do so — to other charities. They usually start with a low gift. They’re “auditioning” you, whether they think of it that way or not.

Three very different donors. With dramatically different potentials for you.

But you can’t tell that from the information you have: a single $10 gift.

The right thing to do, for all three (and all the other donations of every amount) is this:

• Acknowledge the gift promptly, and with heart.
• Send a thank you letter by postal mail (assuming you have a postal address for them).
• Report back on the impact of their giving with a newsletter or some other communication that tells stories of what they are helping make possible.
• Ask again. And not just a year from now.

Should you do a “wealth screen” on your donors? Maybe. That can help uncover some of those with the capacity to make large donations. But it tells you nothing about their passion and connection.

If you do the four things above — consistently and well — you will find the donors who really care, whether they have high giving capacity or not. Some will lapse right away. Some will stick around, giving small amounts. A few will upgrade to higher levels of giving. A small percentage will make charitable bequests — at an average of around $40,000.

Love your donors. All of them. That’s how you build and sustain a strong fundraising program.