The right volunteer asks the right donor for the right amount at the right time to support the right project with the right approach.

— The Six Secrets of Big Gifts

You should now have a large list of prospective donors that has been carefully and rationally compiled, based on the advice in earlier chapters. But it's still too soon to talk to them. It's time to find out more about their willingness, interest and ability to give.

You must now tackle an issue many new fundraisers consider the hardest problem: deciding how much to ask the prospect to give.

Is this really necessary? Some people, who are new to their roles as fundraisers, fear that specifying an amount will anger or insult the prospect. “That's a decision,” these skeptics say “that should be left entirely to the individual. We'll just state our case and leave it to the person's generosity.”

Ultimately the decision is up to the prospect, of course. Yet most people actually appreciate guidelines. They don't want to give too little and have someone think they are cheap. They don't want to give too much and look like suckers and easy marks.

You will raise far more money if you know how much the prospect might give. It is usually (but not always) better to also suggest the amount as long as it is the right amount.

Challenging the majority view on this topic, fundraiser Michael F Luck wrote:⁶⁰

…You do not have to ask for a specific amount of money in every instance. When you visit with a prospect and (s)he tells you about the areas of your organization (s)he is interested in, your eventual `ask' is just beginning to be defined. I once sought a gift from a very prominent family in the community. After a series of visits, the day of reckoning came — how much should I ask for?
The prospect asked me how much I had him down for, to which I replied that I didn't have him `down' for anything. I went on to explain that he could give whatever amount he wished to give to establish the endowed fund that would forever carry his family name and assist in supporting burn victims and their families. I got the gift, and it was a large give — much larger than I suspect he was initially prepared to give.
The prospect later confided that during 35 years of multiple solicitations too numerous to mention, I was the first fundraiser who did not ask for a specific amount of money — he was both elated and impressed.
What does this mean? It means that sometimes the endless task of prospect screening to size up your prospect is not the most productive use of time. In the instance I just shared, I had a specific gift amount in mind, and I think the prospect knew that. However, it was important that I allowed him to
be in charge and call the shots — let him share his ideas, his desire to help and, lastly, the amount of his gift commitment. All you and I are supposed to do is plant the seed and be a catalyst — we don't always have to be the leaders too.

Let's look at the responses of the philanthropists on the givers' panel:⁶¹

Linda Bronfman: I hate being told the dollar amount. I find that very presumptuous… I am interested in hearing what your needs are, how much it's going to cost you to do what you want to have done, and what you think is the likely success of your campaign, how many larger donors are out there, so that I can figure out, if I want to make a difference for this project, for this organization, how much would I have to fund it.
I was once solicited by someone who named a dollar amount. I had actually had in my mind something larger than that, but I was so annoyed by the dollar amount that I said “Fine, that's what I'll give you.” She was happy. She may have made whatever she needed, but…

Lyman Henderson: I like people to be specific. If a friend comes up to me and says “You know we're building a new clinic for osteopathy, or whatever, and we'd like you to give”, I like them to tell me how much they want. The reason is: then I know the price of friendship. I know how much I have to pay to keep them as a friend. Or at least I know the target they're expecting and I can deal with it accordingly. Some people find this pretty crass, so it has to depend on the individual.

The conclusion? Suggesting a specific amount or range will result in a larger donation more often than not. However, you must have done enough research to know what the right amount is, and not estimate too low.

How you ask is important, too. There are better and worse phrases to use at this sensitive moment. That will be covered in the chapter on the right approach.

For now, let's assume that it is a good idea to know roughly how much a person might give, whether or not you mention the numbers to the prospect. The rest of this chapter will concentrate on that.

How do you decide how much to ask for?

There are six factors involved in answering this question:

1. How much do you need?
2. Has the prospect supported your group before?
3. Has the prospect contributed to other charities before?
4. How much might the prospect be able to give?
5. How can you make it easy for the prospect to be generous?
6. How can you take all this information into account and make a decision?

Let's examine these one by one.

1. How much do you need?

How much you ask for depends in part on how much you need. That doesn't tell you how much the prospects might give; but first things first.

Many people assume you should tell all prospects the overall goal, and ask them all to give an equal portion. But some people have more to give. Two people with the same income may have different life-styles, and therefore be able to contribute differently. In short, experience shows that there will be wide variations in the amounts people give.

How much can you spend?

In large campaigns, a preliminary goal is established based on how much you could productively spend.

Don't be too quick to say you could spend an infinite amount. Too much money can be as much a problem as too little.

For a case in point, we turn to the Reverend Canon James Dugan, Director of Stewardship and Financial Development for the Anglican Church of Canada:

A small church in Atlantic Canada (which shall remain nameless) received $600,000 as a bequest. It almost destroyed them. Some parishioners wanted the church to live off the interest, so they could stop giving. Some wanted to launch new projects they had never dreamed of before. Others wanted to give all the money away, because it was causing rifts. Others said that that wasn't the purpose for which the donor gave it.
It took a year before they could sort out the answer. They only barely survived. They worked through a stewardship statement, which called for them to take care of regular maintenance of historic buildings (their church being one) and to take on local outreach and international development.

Other charities have had the same kinds of problems. People who have won lottery jackpots have had similar problems coping with their new-found wealth.

If you think this doesn't apply to you, decide how many people you could hire quickly. Who would supervise and train them? How long would it take to move into new offices to accommodate them? How long would it take to get equipment? How long would it be before they could be productive?

With these concerns in mind, develop a realistic estimate of how much you could spend productively in the next five years.

You may wish to set several figures:

• A challenge budget — the most you could use productively.
• A measured growth budget.
• A status quo plus inflation budget.
• A minimal budget, the lowest you could survive on if the worst cutbacks happened. This assumes closing some programmes, laying off staff (if you had any to start with) and doing everything short of closing completely.

How can the goal be divided among the potential donors?

Once you have a clear sense of your overall target, it's time to divide it among the prospects. Fundraiser Kent Dove explains why this requires care:

One of the most common fallacies regarding gift ranges and distribution patterns is the notion that a campaign can succeed if everyone in the constituency gives the same amount. For the purpose of illustration, this theory suggests that a campaign with a prospect universe of 1000 can achieve a $1million goal by having each prospect give $1000. It never works. Why? This type of approach is not fair or equitable to donors. Wealth is not distributed democratically in this society.⁶²

Instead, you divide the total goal using a mathematical formula that has been developed and tested in years of fundraising. Let Kent Dove tell you how:

A traditional gifts table is constructed as follows: The lead major gift, the single largest gift need, is calculated to be 10% of the campaign goal: in a $1 million campaign, the lead major gift needed to predict success is $100,000.
Then, each successively smaller gift is half the amount of the previous one, and the number of donors needed is doubled…
A standards-of-giving table is a sobering thing, and rightly so. It says, in effect, that without gifts of the order indicated, the entire effort has little if any chance for success. In the mood of urgency created by this awareness, campaign leaders are better prepared to offer specific suggestions to prospective donors, and volunteers are better able to base each approach on the specific standards of giving needed to ensure the campaign's success.

2. Has the prospect supported your group before?

At the most basic, you must find out whether or not the person has previously given to your organization. If not, your job is twice as hard: you must convince him or her to support you, and you must suggest that the amount be large.

If he/she has supported you before, a few more questions are worth answering:

• How much was the last gift? This will have a major impact on how much the next gift will be. There are certainly cases where a donor has gone from $25 to $250,000 in a single jump. But more likely, a grass-roots group will be thankful if a donor doubles the previous gift.
• Has the donor given more than once? It will be much easier to get a large donation from someone who has been contributing for a long time.
• Have the donations been going up, going down, or staying the same? It will be much easier to get a large donation from someone who has been giving more and more, than from someone who has been giving less and less, or giving the same without regard for inflation.
• Are there any giving patterns? Does the person always give at the same time of the year? That's the time of year to ask again. Approach him or her around the anniversary date of the last donation, to ask for an annual repetition. If a major donor has given regularly for years but misses a donation one year, get in touch.
• Do certain appeals produce better results than others?
• A choir might discover that the donor always gives to appeals to support performances of Mozart, but never to Vaughan Williams or k.d. lang — or exactly the reverse.
• A food bank may have a donor who gives to help lobby for new social policies, while that same donor has ethical reasons for never giving food itself.
• An environmental group may discover someone cares more about fighting polluters than stopping the seal hunt.

In each person's file, add the history of the person's past donations to your group.

There is a form for you to adapt on the next page.

3. Has the prospect contributed to other charities before?

Do the people you are preparing to ask for support contribute to other charities? If so, how much do they give?

You may be asking “Why is this important? How could you find out?” Let's look into these questions:

Why is this important?

Imagine you have a prospect in mind: let's call her Jean Labelle. You discover she has given a hospital $25,000 and the symphony $10,000, and contributed $5000 to building a new community swimming pool.

Imagine another prospect: Marc Hudson. He has not made significant donations to any of these projects or any others you know about.

Does that affect your decision on how much to ask each of these? Of course it does, and it should.

You should take other considerations into account, too, of course. We'll come to them soon.

Similarly, you might find that one prospect apparently supports many other organizations similar to yours. Another might have chosen yours as the only one of its type.

How would you find the answers?

It is easier than you might think to gather this kind of information, without invading people's privacy or being rude. There are bounds of decency and legal limits, which you must not overstep. Let's explore some simple, easy and ethical ways:

• Board members and volunteers may know some of the basic information, at least about the potential donors closest to them.
• You may see their names listed among the top donors in concert programs and annual reports from other nonprofits.
• Their names may show up on plaques on the walls of hospitals, community centres, churches, concert halls or other public buildings.

• The amount given may be revealed in part, if donors are conveniently acknowledged in categories, such as Benefactors — $10,000 to $24,999; Sustainers — $25,000 to $49,999; and so on.
• For some high-profile prospects, there may be newspaper or magazine articles at the library.
• ?“If your prospect contributes to political candidates, his or her donations may be public information”, Joan Flanagan points out. “Especially look for donors who gave to politicians who ran on issues defined by your organization. If the politician won, remind your prospect that the politician won because your group cut the issue for the public. (It doesn't hurt to have a letter from the elected official saying this.) If the politician lost, remind the prospect that electoral politics gives at best a 50-50 chance of winning, whereas a terrific organization like yours is out there fighting for the citizens every day…”⁶³

You will never find out about every donation a person makes. Some are made anonymously. Some are too small to be publicized. Some were made too long ago; others, too recently.

You may not know the exact amount of a gift, but you can usually determine the range. Similarly, you may not know the exact date, but you can usually determine the year.

Any information you find, however, is worth recording in the prospect's file. Here is a form you can adapt:

4. How much might the prospect be able to give?

Not everyone can afford to give generously, no matter how much they love your work. A single mother of three young children in a low-paying job might be doing all she can to give $100.

On the other hand, a single person with few responsibilities who earns more than about $35,000 a year might be expected (and invited!) to be far more generous than her or his last gift of $50 or $100. The same could be said of a working couple who earn a combined salary of over $60,000, depending on their expenses.

How much people are capable of giving depends on:

• their income,
• their assets or other sources of support, and
• their obligations.

Kim Klein uses examples such as these to illustrate the importance of research:

One of the biggest mistakes fundraisers make is assuming that how much a person can give will be directly related to how much they have. Obviously, how much money a person has influences how much they can give, since no one can give more than they have. However, many people have a lot more money than they will ever give, while many others with little money give a high proportion of what money they have.
…Even if you have names of people who are `wealthy', there are many factors governing how much money a person may have access to. Take, for example, a donor whose family is known to be worth $100 million. Will this person make a $2500 gift? In this case, it is unlikely, given her circumstances. This donor is 22. Her inheritance is set up in a series of trusts, each worth more as she gets older. She received $50,000 at age 18 and $100,000 at 21. Because she lives on only the interest from her trusts, has no other work, and has recently put a down payment on a house, she does not have a large amount of disposable income at this time. How much she is actually worth, how well she understands her money, and how much she has access to are three very different things.
In another case, a prospect is known to own a lot of real estate. A popular saying in his community is “Jack owns half the town.” Jack is probably worth several million dollars, but this money is not liquid. At any given time, Jack's cash flow may be very slim, particularly since Jack lives … where real estate is not selling well.
Sometimes we hear people say, “She could give a big gift. She lives in a really lovely house, is president of her corporation, must make six figures, goes for weekends to Greece…” From the prospect's viewpoint her money situation looks like this: “I am so broke. I pay so much property tax in addition to my mortgage, and I have to go to Athens to check on my aging mother, but I can only stay a few days because of work, so I wind up spending a fortune on that travel. I work 70 hours a week, and my husband has just left me for someone else and is filing for divorce. We are really stretched at the office because we are opening some new stores, so all top management have deferred their salaries for two months.”⁶⁴

She goes on to outline how to estimate the giving potential of two hypothetical individuals:

…For example, Gene Reilly, 42, has been a paralegal in a large corporate law firm for at least the 12 years you've known him. He is active in various causes, and his name has appeared on the back of several newsletters in a list of donors to those groups. He cares about your group, and he is your neighbour and friend. He lives alone and seems somewhat frugal… You think he earns between $40,000 and $50,000… If he gave 5% of his income, he would be giving between $2000 and $2500. A safe guess is to assume that he gives away a total of $800 to $2000 to all the groups he cares about.
…Think, “How much does Gene care about the work we do?” Also, remember that if this is his first gift, it will be less than subsequent gifts. In Gene's case, put him in the $250 range.
Let's take another example. Sue Smythe, 36, works as a creative director for a medium-sized advertising agency. Looking in the [newspaper] want ads, you know that jobs of this sort are advertised at $100,000 and up. Sue has said to you that she's happy in her work, and has commented, “It's fun earning so much money.” She shares custody of her young son, age 6, with her ex-husband. He is also in advertising, but you don't know his job or salary. She is active in her church and, in fact, chairs the Building Committee. She is also involved in anti-apartheid work and volunteers at her son's Montessori school, which is also your daughters' school. You know her from there, and she always asks about how your organization is doing. She has come to special events you have invited her to and is clearly committed to the goals of your group.
Based on her income and her religious convictions, we will go with a guess that she gives up more than the average person and could be giving up to 10% of her income. As a range, she may give $3000 to $10,000 to the building fund, payable over five years. She perhaps gives another $500 to $1000 to the school and $500 to her group, plus miscellaneous donations to various events and causes. That adds up to $3000 to $4000 a year. She is a giver. Flatter her and ask her to be one of the $1000 donors.
This should give you an idea of how to proceed. People are not insulted to be asked for more than they have, unless it is an absurd amount or the request is delivered badly. When you ask gently but straightforwardly, “Could you set the pace with $________?” or “We need a few gifts at $________. Do you think you could help with that?”, it gives people a way out if they need one, yet makes them feel happy if they can give that much.
Knowing the person and knowing what they believe in are the key ingredients for prospects.⁶⁵

Here is a short list of some of the easiest sources of information to help you get to know prospects:

• Conversations (as appropriate) with:
  • your board members and friends
  • other contacts
  • the prospect's friends
  • the prospect's business associates
  • the prospect's family
• Who's Who
• Specialty editions of Who's Who (eg, Women, Pharmaceuticals, etc)
• Directory of Directors
• InfoGlobe (the Globe and Mail reference service) or other newspaper files
• Financial Post cards
• Annual reports of companies the prospect is active in
• Corporate public relations departments, which may provide biographies of top executives
• City hall public assessment records, which show the assessed value of homes and commercial property, who owns it, and how much they pay in municipal taxes
• Obituaries, as Joan Flanagan recommends: “Obits can tell you about family relations, religious preference and memorials.”⁶⁶
• Taxation statistics published by Revenue Canada, which show average income by occupations. The table that follows gives selected data, based on 1990 tax returns (as published in 1992).⁶⁷

* SE: self-employed

Prospect's name:

What is the prospect's apparent ability to give?
(If there are more details than will fit here, attach them.)

Income Estimated

Annual income: $_______________

Bonuses: $_______________

Estimated profit from business: $_______________

Other sources of income: $_______________

Estimated net worth: $_______________

Other evidence of wealth: $_______________ $_______________ $_______________

Known Obligations

The prospect apparently supports:
__ children at __home __private school __university __other: ____________

__spouse who is not working
__parents
__other dependants
__a large mortgage
__other large loan payments
__other obligations

Changes

Information suggesting changes in spendable surplus income for better or worse: Prospect's business or investments are __ up __down
Details and source:

Prospect made major purchases recently: __ house __ business __ boat __ car __vacation home __other
Details and source:

Prospect recently sold: __ house __ business __ boat __ car __vacation home __other
Details and source:

Prospect recently __ divorced __ married __had child
Details and source:

Prospect recently had __ inheritance __lottery win
Details and source:

Other information:

Additional Addresses/Phone Numbers (as indicators of potential giving and to use for selected contacts)
__ Weekends:
__ Summer cottage (dates):
__ Winter home (dates):
__ Car/mobile phone:

__ Other: