10 Strategic Ways to Engage Major Donors in Donor Events
Your major donors are those who give a significant amount to your nonprofit and are vital to your organization, making up a large portion of your fundraising revenues. Outside of planned giving, major gifts are the largest donations that a nonprofit receives.
Depending on the nonprofit's size, the exact dollar amount that constitutes a major donor will vary. For some nonprofits, that might be $1,000. For others, it might be $100,000 or more.
Image from DonorSearch
Image from DonorSearch
Major donors can be one of the quickest ways to reach your nonprofit's goal in a major campaign.
By practicing these 10 strategic ways to engage your major donors, you’ll more likely find them partnering in your donor events.
# 1 Motivate Your Major Donors
Use the mission and goals of your event to align with the reasons they donate to your nonprofit in the first place. Make sure your major donor knows the story behind your fundraiser and how they will make a positive difference.
Meaningful visuals or an informative video will resonate with major donors who share your vision. Engaging them in this manner is also motivation to attend your donor event.
# 2 Impact Stories Help Engage Major Donors
Just as motivation is essential, so too are the stories that inspire motivation. These stories should be about the real impact that your nonprofit is making.
Let your donors know the names and faces or the places and concerns now benefiting from their support. This forges a connection between the major donors, your nonprofit, and the people or causes they are helping.
Knowing the backstory ties into a donor's own desire to advance the cause and encourages them to engage in your donor event.
# 3 Create Groups To Encourage Major Donor Engagement
The world has been online for a while. Don't overlook engaging your major donors with your nonprofit's executive team by connecting online.
Personal invitations that come from executives can go a long way in creating transparency and trust. When your donors feel more connected, they are more likely to participate in donor events.
Create and add your major donors to exclusive online groups. You can use this group to share nonprofit updates, announce upcoming fundraising opportunities, gather feedback and create a sense of community for your major donors.
You can use these online platforms to set up a private group for your major donors:
Facebook: They offer closed groups that can be set up online.
Website: Your nonprofit can create password-protected websites that are for major donors only.
LinkedIn: Create a LinkedIn Group that is by-invitation-only.
Another suggestion, using my own personal experience, is to create a council of major donors. In my case, we created a "Women's Council" - which consisted of several wives from major donor (or major influencer) couples.
We met quarterly with these women and they helped contribute to our fundraiser events. They were instrumental in planning our women's outreach event by choosing the theme, the favors, and the speaker. They even helped find our silent auction items!
For our gala, they were a sounding board when we were picking a speaker, and on the day of the event, they came early to arrange beautiful flower centerpieces. Years later, many of these women are still deeply rooted in the organization.
This is just one example of how inviting involvement from major donors can strengthen their commitment and ties to your nonprofit.
# 4 Get To Know Your Major Donors Personally
Donor cultivation will help to build and grow a personal relationship with your major donor. Get to know your donors better, and learn about what aspects of your nonprofits' work are most important to them.
The world is opening up again, and one-on-ones are possible. Take the time to visit in person or to invite them to come to you and see how their donations make a real difference for the better.
All of the online connections you have with your major donors are critical to the success of your nonprofit, but there is an undeniable impact that a face-to-face meeting has.
Even if it needs to be brief, it will make those online connections more meaningful when you have met your major donor in person. That personal connection will increase donor participation in your nonprofit events.
# 5 Host Small Group Events For Major Donors
When you hold significant events, your major donors can get lost in the shuffle, but small, intimate events are a great way to build community with your major donors.
Your major donors are successful people, and they will appreciate being with like-minded people who can support your cause at a similar level. This is also another way for your major donors to introduce new friends to your nonprofit.
Another idea that is becoming more commonplace is a “major donor dessert.” This is hosted by the major donors themselves. It is held by invitation in their own home, where friends come over to share dessert and see a presentation about the nonprofit.
Attendance and All Access Subscriptions can be used by the nonprofit and the major donor to invite and collect RSVP’s for their organized major donor event such as a dessert night.
# 6 Engage Your Major Donor With A Peer-to-Peer Event
Peer-to-Peer campaigns are a strategy in which you ask your major donors to fundraise on your behalf from their networks. This engages the donor in connecting with like-minded people in their network.
It is a great way to engage your donor and spread the word about your nonprofit to potential new donors. Using a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising platform is easy for your major donor and further solidifies their support of the cause as they spread the word to others.
# 7 Stewardship Of Your Major Donors
Once you have a major donor of your nonprofit, practice stewardship of that donor. Stewardship is the relationship-building and communications that take place once a major donation is received.
As anyone would, a major donor wants to feel appreciated, and so it will be essential that you continue the relationship after the gift has been made. Send a handwritten thank you, make a phone call or send a newsletter that mentions their name.
It is never a good feeling when the only time a donor hears from someone is when they are asked for a donation.
Make sure that your major donors know that you appreciate them all year round. They will be much more likely to attend donor events when they feel important to your nonprofit as a donor and as a person.
# 8 Show The Impact of their Donations with How They’ve Made A Difference
A powerful way to engage a major donor and encourage them to participate in donor events is to illustrate exactly how their donation made a difference. This goes along with stewardship but gives the meat and bones of that donation.
Visuals are always powerful, and they can show pictures of the progress and the physical impact that their donations have made.
Your nonprofit event started with a goal, so make sure you relay the extent to which your goal was reached and include visuals. When your major donor can see tangible proof of their involvement, the more they will want to continue to support your nonprofit.
# 9 Ask For Feedback From Your Major Donors
There is a saying, "if it isn't broken, don't fix it." That may be true in some instances, but it is not a luxury that a nonprofit can afford. Once something is "broken" in a nonprofit, that impacts donations, and fixing it takes time and effort.
Feedback, especially from major donors, is essential to the success of your nonprofit. You want to know any positive or negative aspects of your fundraising efforts, especially from your major donors.
When you can identify and address pitfalls, you can leverage that information to strengthen your campaigns, message, and brand. When your major donors see that you have listened to and taken action on their feedback, they are more likely to engage in your events. You can gain feedback easily by:
Sending personalized email surveys to your major donors requesting honest feedback.
Adding designated feedback forms to your nonprofit's website and sending that link to your major donors.
Using Facebook Live chat or a webinar to discuss questions or concerns that your major donors might have. This is a great time to get the feedback so crucial to your nonprofit.
# 10 Be Transparent With Your Major Donors
This may seem small, but it can lose a major donor for your nonprofit if the donor feels that they cannot trust your nonprofit.
Your donor is trusting you with their money and information. They need to know just how you are using their dollars and their data. So it’s important to implement privacy and conflict of interest policies within your nonprofit.
Publish everything publically and in perpetuity so that anyone can refer to it, such as in your annual report. Gaining and keeping the trust of your major donor through transparency will be one sure way of encouraging them to participate in your donor events.
Enhancing Trust In Ministries (ECFA) accreditation is a seal of approval for those faith-based nonprofits. A high rating with the Better Business Bureaus (BBB) can also show the integrity of your nonprofit. Displaying these accreditations on your website and in print publications gives prospective donors confidence in your nonprofit.
Final Thoughts
It is much harder to find a major donor than to keep one. These donors are essential to your nonprofit, as they are like-minded individuals who can help advance your cause.
Taking time to engage your major donors in donor events will strengthen these valuable relationships and the success of your nonprofit.
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Crystal Hoag
This article was inspired by our customers and written to encourage your fundraising efforts. Although we work with nonprofits and events daily, our team members are not Event Consultants. We encourage you to consult with your event consultant, executive team, and/or affiliate organization before making any major changes to your events.
