A very important element in effective fundraising is recognizing that donors are not static. We sometimes say of a person, “They are a $50 donor,” but this is assigning an identity to someone based on a moment in time. Someone might start by giving your organization $50 for any number of reasons: perhaps that is what they can afford. Or that is what they were asked for. Or that is what this couple always starts with. Or perhaps that is how much your organization seems worth to this person relative to all their other commitments. If we just assume that someone who started giving with a $50 gift will stay there, we make a huge error and we leave money on the table. Donors' financial situations change and, fortunately for us, sometimes for the better. Donors also have varying degrees of affection and loyalty to our organizations, and our job is to increase both of those so the donor will be inclined to give more.
Getting your donors on a trajectory starting with “That is one of many organizations I give to,” and going through several iterations to “That is one of my top three giving priorities” is the function of Part Four, which is about asking current donors to give bigger gifts and different kinds of gifts.
We start with how to set up a year‐round major donor program, look at a specific way to upgrade donors by asking them to make monthly donations, and describe what a legacy giving program will look like—how to get donors to remember your organization in their estate plans. The end of this section is a discussion of how to set up an endowment, a strategy that helps your organization exist in perpetuity and creates a reliable income stream from investments.
Although you can't start your individual donor fundraising efforts with these strategies, they are where the real money lies. Donors make big gifts to organizations that have been respectful with their smaller donations, and they want organizations doing good work in the short term to exist for the long haul.
The strategies described in this section flow from the work described in the previous sections; they won't work without having established those foundations.