What Is a Major Gifts Accelerator Program?

As with any nonprofit, you understand that fundraising is how you fulfill your mission, and major donors are at the center of bringing in dollars. Here, we provide insight into what a major gifts accelerator program is and how it can accelerate your fundraising.

Does My Nonprofit Need a Major Gifts Accelerator Program?

While the philanthropic market may be bustling, building an outreach and solicitation program for major prospects can be daunting. Many organizations forego the opportunity to fully explore the realm of major individual donor and grant-making foundations aligned with their mission. This can be a costly mistake.

Many nonprofits avoid a major gifts program because the process can be intimidating. If not executed correctly, a major donor program can be costly with few measurable results. Many have dismissed a major donor program, deferring to direct mail or general donor outreach to achieve fundraising goals.

The reality is that major gift-giving can represent 80% of total dollars coming in from donors. If 10% of your donors are not in the major gift category, commonly associated with gifts of $10,000 or more, then it is highly likely you are missing dollars that can fuel your next capital campaign. Many make an effort at a major gifts program, but when an organization turns up the power and unleashes an accelerator program, the potential to unlock transformational giving is on the horizon.

A Major Gifts Accelerator Program Starts with Your Development Team

Leveling up your development team is the first step to boosting your major giving accelerated. This begins with a strategic development assessment to ensure you have all the necessary tools to contact, cultivate, and solicit individual donors and foundations and make the case for your mission. A few of the tools and resources you will want to leverage to build a major gifts accelerator program include: 

• A well-thought-out strategy on how to approach current donors and renew lapsed major donors
• Prospect research tool to help identify major donors and high-impact supporters through your existing donor database.
• Donor Database (CRM) for donor research on gift size, frequency, etc.
• Gift planning collateral, including planned giving and possible gift-matching opportunities.
• Major donor summary collateral and messaging, refined.
• Wealth screening tools
• Major donor profiles aligned with your mission

Take advantage of this important step to review your structure to identify a major donor profile. Lastly, give the major donor category a name, consider the levels of donors within major giving, and define the benefits for each giving level.

Build a Major Donor Acquisition Program

The path to saying you have a major giving program and actually having one running as a major donor acquisition machine is based on a process that is documented, tracked, and measured by the major gifts officer. Once you find the best process through trial and error and feedback, sharing this process with your mission influencers and board members will allow your major giving program to have a consistency that breeds successful fundraising.

Major Gifts Accelerator Program Checklist

• The core of the major donor program is strategizing ways to upgrade current major donors and renew lapsed major donors.
• Unlocking what is in front of you is often overlooked when identifying low-level donors with high wealth capacity within the existing donor file.
• Providing in-depth research profiles on new major donors and foundation prospects with giving that indicates alignment and potential interest in your mission and funding priorities.
• Drafting outreach materials and templates, such as a prospectus, one-pager, meeting request letter template, letter of inquiry template, and call scripts, is necessary for building a major gift accelerator program.
• Develop individual outreach and solicitation strategies for identified prospects and a tracking system to manage the next steps. Establish coaching on outreach and in preparation for donor meetings.
• Gain professional grant writing guidance to streamline grants and inspire foundations to become partners in your mission. Include a reporting mechanism to measure outcomes, testing new approaches, and overall success or lack thereof.

The Importance of a Major Gifts Officer

If a Major Gifts Officer (MGO) is a part of your current development team, you are headed in the right direction. An MGO is central to your major gifts accelerator program and will own the charge forward, reporting and developing those key relationships. If you do not have this position filled, starting with a fractional MGO is a safe way to move forward. Outsourcing this makes a lot of sense for budget and time to ramp up. For example, AmPhil provides their clients a fractional MGO service that opens up an organization to a wider network of major givers, provides access to a deep reservoir of fundraising knowledge, gains the ability to access major donor profiles, the individual is proven in their expertise, and the all-importance culture alignment which is a must is answered.

A fractional MGO can establish your major gifts accelerator program foundation, train your development team, jumpstart your major giving, and help you develop an internal team member to be your next MGO. Here are some benefits and considerations if you are considering a fractional MGO:

• The organization filling this role is experienced in crafting an effective major gifts accelerator program and can work side-by-side with your existing development team.
• A partner that is mission-aligned to your organization and experienced with delivering results in your sector is critical.
• No training is required, and a key benefit is that your team will learn from this proven veteran of major donor management, planting the seeds of future success.

Major Gifts Accelerator Program Launched

When you combine these key elements thoughtfully and intentionally, you do more than possess a major donor program; you are building the foundation of a major gifts accelerator program. Provide your existing MGO with the dollars, resources, and tools they need to launch a major gifts accelerator program and accept that the process is not an immediate ROI. For those leaders with the fortitude to stay the course, the rewards will be new highs of major giving and renewal of your organization's mission fueled by the funds given by mission-aligned major donors.