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Asking For The Money: "If You Don't Ask You Don't Get"  Generally,
the first step in asking prospects to make a donation is to send them a
letter. This is true no matter the type of campaign or potential size of
gift. In the small-gifts division of an annual campaign the letter may
be the only step, although I would recommend having it followed up by a
telephone call, if at all possible. Even in door-to-door solicitations,
a letter should be sent first announcing the date of, reason for, and,
in most cases, the suggested amount of the request. In the case of
larger gifts, the letter announces that a solicitor will be calling for
an appointment. We refer to this kind of letter as the proposal letter
because it proposes that the prospect become a donor to an organization.Proposal
letters are usually signed either by the solicitor or by the campaign
chair. In the case of the latter, the status and power of the chair are
lent to what is essentially a request of the prospect to meet with a
solicitor. If signed by the chair, you can also be sure the letters all
went out by a specific time. This also forces solicitors to act by the
time the letter says they will be calling for an appointment. However,
not every solicitor will be able to make the initial calls in the same
time frame. One or more solicitors may be out of town when the letter
hits. Consequently, there is less likelihood of being in error as to
when solicitors will be calling if the timing of proposal letters is
left in the hands of the solicitors.Proposal
letters signed by the solicitors can be personalized to reflect the fact
that solicitors and prospects have shared experiences or even know one
another. It is best to make the determination of who signs and sends the
proposal letters on a solicitor-by-solicitor and prospect-by-prospect
basis.This
much is certain. If the letter indicates the day that someone will be
knocking on the door, someone must be there on that day. If it says the
prospect will be telephoned on Tuesday, the 25th, to be asked for a
gift, that call must be made on the 25th. If it says the solicitor will
be calling for an appointment next week, the call has to be made next
week. When asking people for money, it is vitally important to do what
you say you are going to do at the time you say you are going to do it.In
capital or endowment campaigns or when seeking larger gifts in annual
campaigns, the proposal letter should be followed up with a phone call
requesting an appointment. If prospects raise the question, "Is
this meeting going to be about money?" solicitors should respond
with a light touch, couching the request for an appointment in personal
terms:Don't worry, you won't need to bring your checkbook. I really would like to meet you, and I would consider it a distinct favor if you would give me the opportunity to share with you some of what is happening at the XYZ Institute. Never let the
phone call degenerate into a request for a donation. Just as big-ticket
items are seldom sold over the phone, large donations are rarely made
without a face-to-face meeting. Once
an appointment has been obtained, solicitors need to show up on time,
ready, willing, and able to present the case for support. Just prior to
a meeting, they should review with care the donor's profile and the
support materials in their solicitation kit. As a solicitor of funds for
your organization, you must be ready to properly answer questions your
prospect will most likely ask, such as:
The Opening: How It's Handled Will Determine Its Outcome The
first meeting should not take place in a public space such as a
restaurant with its distractions and interruptions. Solicitors should
begin by talking with prospects about professional and personal
interests, mutual friends and acquaintances, places and times where
their lives may have crossed. However, solicitors should not forget why
they are there. Quickly, but naturally, discussion of the campaign
should be worked into the conversation. Solicitors should mention their
own personal involvement and commitment to the organization as a way of
explaining why it is of such great value to the community. They must
convey how important the current fund-raising campaign is to the
organization's future. When appropriate, a tour of the organization's
facilities and the opportunity to meet others involved with the
organization should be offered. Finally, solicitors should ask prospects
to consider supporting the organization by making a pledge in the
suggested amount. Executing
a fund-raising campaign means doing the same few steps over and over.
Solicitors write, phone, present, ask, and report back - a process that
is repeated with each prospect assigned to them. However, the process is
seldom a straight line. There may be any number of phone calls to a
single prospect. A solicitor might first meet with a prospect in the
prospect's office and then arrange a tour of the organization or, in the
case of a capital building campaign, a visit to the construction site.
After that, another meeting over lunch may be required to clinch the
deal. All during this process the solicitor is reporting on progress to
the team captain. To be effective a solicitor must:
Persistent But Polite A solicitor can be doing
everything right and still run into a problem in getting appointments
with prospective donors capable of making large gifts. People who can
make large gifts are usually busy people. Simply getting to see them can
take a few weeks. Then there is the time it takes to convince someone to
part with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even
millions of dollars. The larger the sum of money involved, the less
likely that a 30-minute appointment on a Wednesday morning will do the
job. Solicitors must be prepared to put in whatever time and effort will
be required to get a final answer, and they have to be careful not to
pressure a prospect into a no response. Soliciting is exactly like
selling. Prospects have to be made comfortable, shown the value of a
contribution, and encouraged to make positive decisions. They have to be
flattered, cajoled, appealed to, convinced, and ultimately sold.
Sooner
or later a solicitor will get a final answer from a prospect. It will
take one of four forms. The prospect will say:
Obviously
the first response is best, and the second, depending on how much less,
isn't too bad either. When you get one of those two answers, you say
thank you, take the money or the pledge card, and leave. That day or, at
the latest, the next, you report the gift to your team captain and send
a thank-you note to the donor. If
the gift is less than hoped for, even if it is substantially less, never
show disappointment. Don't say, "But we were hoping for more."
Don't frown. Don't roll your eyes. Don't even ask why it is less.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the donor has already told you why.
To ask now embarrasses you by showing you weren't paying attention and
embarrasses the donor by forcing him or her to go back over the reasons
why he or she was unwilling or unable to give at the suggested level.
Can You Take No For An Answer? When the answer is no,
not at this time, it is still necessary to thank the person for
considering your request. You should try to find out if perhaps later in
the campaign the situation could be more favorable. If you are told it
might be, you put that in your report and encourage the organization to
follow up at the appropriate time. If there is no chance of a gift for
the current campaign, give up. Don't poison the well. Graciously accept
the no, and leave the prospect for the next campaign and the next
solicitor. After all, it might be you. When
the answer is no, don't ever contact me again, you need to leave with an
understanding of the reasons why the response was so adamantly negative.
If you have been listening, you probably already know. If you are
getting this response over the phone, ask why the prospect wants to be
dropped from the organization's list. Take this information back to the
organization and let the person responsible for development deal with
it. When
I was conducting telefunding campaigns as development director of the
Cleveland Orchestra, I would look at the reports on persons who the
night before had asked to be taken off our list. Some of them would be
people who had given us $250 or $500 or even $1,000 in the past. I would
call them and say, "I know you said no, and we will take you off
our list, but I want to be sure we are taking you off because of
something that we can't fix or is out of our control." They would,
invariably, appreciate the call and would tell me if they indeed wanted
to be taken off the list because of a grievance. Sometimes the reason
was something we could fix. Sometimes they would even reconsider and
make a gift, but I never asked them to. The purpose of my call was to
save these prospects for the future, if possible, and to find out if we
had done something wrong. Once
a prospect tells a solicitor no, you have to honor that answer. To do
otherwise, to try to pressure, shame, or intimidate a prospect who has
clearly said no, is to compromise your organization. Such tactics rarely
will bring in any money and nearly always create bad feelings.
If
you are always looking for the right moment to ask for the money, you
will never find it. You have to be ready, willing, and able to close the
sale. You have to take the risk of hearing no. If that happens, don't
take the rejection to heart. The person is saying no to the
organization, not to you. Once you have presented your case ask for the
money, either close the "sale," find out what the objection to
giving is and overcome it, or get your turndown and move on.Those
are my views on the subject. What are yours? I welcome your comments and
suggestions. tony@raise-funds.comNote: Additional resources to help you ask for the money for your organization are available on my website. You may access them by using .pdf and/or .html methods as follows:
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