How to Scale Your Major Gift Work Across a Large Donor Portfolio

Have you been given a ton of training for working one-on-one with donors but you realize that it's not scalable to your portfolio of like 120 or 160 or 200 people? If so, I want you to know that there are a bunch of us out here who know that that struggle is real. We understand the training that's being promoted out there is misguided and we can help you figure out how to scale these one-on-one techniques that we're being taught. I'm going to give you three tips for scaling your personalized one-on-one work with donors. Starting with number three, the best is for last so hang out. Number three is take the trainings with a grain of salt. Know that it's not every donor that needs this high-touch multi-year long super bespoke cultivation strategy. It's not for everyone. We talk about it like it's for everyone but it's really not. Number two, embrace that sometimes no is the new yes. When you get to a point with a donor where it's clear that the gift is not going to happen on the timeline that you need for your metrics or the project, you can totally move on from them. That allows you to dedicate your energy to opportunities that have higher potential and are going to come together on a realistic timeline. So when you get that no or no like way later down the road and you have a ginormous portfolio, it's okay to move on. Move on to the person who might be a yes. Number one, create systems that scale. It's totally doable. You can do it DIY. I'm going to teach you how to do it in the next three or four videos so stay tuned for those. I'll teach you how you can create content once and use that for many many donors to create a personalized experience. I'll show you how to segment your donors so you can send personalized communication effortlessly and I'll show you my system for reminding myself what to do with whom and when. So again if you're wondering how to scale your one-on-one work with donors, I got you. I'm going to teach you how.

Nonprofit leaders and major gift officers, if you're working with more than three donors, and I know you are, you need to have systems that scale so that you can really work with your 120 or 160 or 200 people. The majority of the trainings that we get focus in on the magic of that one-on-one relationship and I'm not saying that that's not useful, it's just it's not practical. In this video I'm going to teach you how to create a bank of high-value content that you'll be able to share with your donors and become the go-to source for juicy information about your organization. This is a long-ish video, so hang in there with me. I'm going to share three tips and the best is for last. All right, number three, the next time you're writing an email or a briefing or a letter, newsletter, blurb, something that is high value that you know you're gonna use again and again, I want you to save that somewhere where you can access it later. Number two, and you might want to save this video for later because I'm gonna drop some gems on you right now. There are four templates that will form the foundation of your content bank. Once you get these in place, all you're gonna do is build incrementally. The next time you're writing about or talking about the initiatives that are most prominent in your work right now, create a template for those, save that content where you can find it later. When you write a really persuasive, really well worded request for a meeting, save that for later. Another really high-impact template to have is a meeting follow-up message, so write something persuasive with a strong call to action and save that for yourself. And the final piece of content to form the foundation of your content bank is whatever you're gonna use to demonstrate impact to your donors. Okay, and now here comes the payoff. The number one tip that I have is that you've done all this excellent work and now you need to organize it so that you have it at your fingertips. Number one is just to create a Word doc that you add to over time and use a table of contents. Another way, and this is not my favorite way because my brain doesn't work like a file cabinet, is to organize files in the cloud. That's like my worst nightmare, but lots of people really like to use file folders. And then one of my other favorite options is to create a Trello board and have cards for each of the pillars of content. Alright, so that's how to create high-value content that you can revisit again and again so you never have to start from scratch. This will allow you to scale your one-on-one work to one to many many many.

Raise your hand if you have more than two or three people in your portfolio. If you're a nonprofit leader or major gift officer, the days of working just that tippy top of the pyramid are over. Our goals are too ambitious and our pipelines are too important for us to ignore the other 120, 160, or 200 people in our portfolio. But the human brain can't possibly keep track of that many people without having systems that scale. Most of the training that's being given to thousands of fundraisers is all about that one-on-one magic. And while that is super important and we can't be successful without it, it's not practical. We have to take that one-on-one work and scale it to one to many. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to segment your portfolio so that you know who to send that high-value content to that I talked about in the last video. If you haven't seen that, you might go back and watch that and then come back over here. This is a long-ish video because I have so many gems to drop. Don't scroll. Stick with me. It's going to be worth it. So you're building a little library of juicy content for your donors. Now, who you send that content to is the next question. And we don't want to use our brain or post-it notes to keep track of that. What you're going to do is batch your portfolio into a couple of different segments that make sense for your brain. I'm going to share with you what I do and then two alternatives. I start with segmenting people into batches based on what I know about what they're interested in. For example, if I've got a whole bunch of people who are interested in fifth graders learning how to code at the Boys and Girls Club, I'm going to send all those people the same content about what's happening in the computer lab or what's happening with fifth graders or what's happening with blah blah blah. And then I further segment it based on how often the people need to hear from me. Are they twice a month? Every month? Every quarter? Those people get batched together as well. So then I know who gets what content and when. This is my favorite way to organize my portfolio. Another way to do it is based solely on the stage of the relationship that they're in, like discovery or solicitation or stewardship or blah blah blah. Because that will inform the kind of content you're pushing out to them. And your portfolio will fit into nice, neat, clean and organized chunks. And each one of those segments can get the same stuff. A final way to do it is just to organize people based on how often they need to hear from you. And then when you get to that moment in time, you figure out what content they all need. So you'll have a chunk of people who are quarterly, a chunk of people who are every other week. When those pop up, you figure out what to send them. And of course, they'll fit into patterns so you can send a bunch of people the same content at the same time. So again, you can organize them based on interest, based on stage or based on cadence, how often you want to be in touch with them. This will allow you to push out batches of content to groups of people without customizing it over and over again. You can invest on the front end in creating that high value content. This is a go slow to go fast project. So that you can take your excellent one-on-one work and scale it to your huge portfolio. Because you have ambitious goals. And you can't meet those goals one person at a time.

Nonprofit leaders and major gift fundraisers, by now you know that I have a little bit of a beef with the extreme training for fundraisers because so much of what we're taught is all about the magic of that one-on-one relationship and I totally get that, but it's no longer practical. We can't just work with the tippy top of the pyramid. We'll never meet our ambitious goals that way. The last couple of videos I've been teaching you how to create systems that scale and today is my number one tip, so please hang out with me and save this for later because I'm only dropping gems, no fluff. The high value content that you've created and the segmentation that you've done is not helpful if you don't have a system to organize at all. You cannot keep this all in your brain and you can save a ton of bandwidth if you can put together this system. Here are the critical components. One, you need to batch your time, so set aside time every week for sending out content. Doing it all at once is a really efficient way to use your bandwidth because you're in a particular headspace and then you get to repeat it again and again until you've gotten through your list. And here are the methods for keeping yourself organized. Number one, your fundraising content bank. Here's how you can organize it. Open up a Word doc, search table of contents, drop a table of contents at the top, and then start dropping your content chunks into the document. It will automatically update the table of contents and then every time you open up your Word doc, it'll take you right to that content and it'll just keep updating over time. Another way to do it that lots of people like but that doesn't work for my brain is to save everything in folders. It might be the initiatives, then it might be invitations, and it might be invitations, and it might be follow-up, and it might be different kinds of follow-up. My other favorite tool is Trello. So go to trello.com. It's free. You establish a board that says like fundraising content bank. Very easy. Then you create these cards and you label them like initiatives, follow-up, impact, blah blah blah, and then you just put your templates under each one. So you can always just open up your board, find the type of content that you need, and it's all right there for you. And then my last tip is to stick to the system. Don't abandon it. It's going to help you raise more money by having highest value content going to the right people in an organized fashion.