Major Gift Fundraising! Who Reports to Whom?

By Betsy Steward

As a fundraising consultant, I’m intrigued by the relationships I’ve seen between nonprofit Executive Directors (EDs, aka CEOs) and Development Directors (DDs). Who’s the boss in major gift fundraising? 

In my years as a Development Director, I was fortunate to have an ED who understood the tricky leadership balancing act between ED and DD. Of course, on the org chart, there was no question who was in charge: SHE was!  She was my boss, I reported to her, and I had tremendous respect for her leadership. Although we collaborated on the overall fundraising strategy at our nonprofit, she made all final decisions about fundraising and everything else. She was in charge of making sure all work supporting our nonprofit’s mission got done.  

But there was one exception: major gift fundraising. 

We were a successful fundraising team largely because she understood that, for major gift fundraising, I was in charge. I was the one “driving the fundraising bus” — the one who was focused solely on the big fundraising picture and the small details essential to successfully moving a donor along the continuum of giving. If I said to call a donor, my boss knew it was in the organization’s best interest for her to drop everything and make that call.

I remember one perfect example of this tricky relationship. We were approaching the end of our 4-year Capital Campaign, when one of our lead donors called me to check on our progress. We were about $250,000 shy of our $6.5MM goal at that point, with the campaign end date looming and inflexible. Our generous and compassionate lead donor made a wonderful offer: She would give an additional $50,000 if (and ONLY if) we could find four additional donors who would also give $50,000. If we were successful, their total, $250,000, would put us at (or potentially even over) our goal.

Of course, over the four years of the campaign, we had already approached all the donors we could find, and many had been very generous. There were a handful, though, who we suspected had the capacity for an additional $50,000 gift, and who might be excited at the prospect of a match. One was an elderly woman (in her mid-90s) who was a great admirer of my boss, and who had been committed to our mission and vision for a long time.

Although it was often my job to call our major donors, my boss and I agreed that it would be more effective in this case if she were to speak with our senior donor. After we prepared talking points and practiced for the call, my boss picked up the phone. “H e l l o ???”  answered a very weak and trembling voice. My boss identified herself, and was abruptly instructed to call back in an hour.

55 minutes later, I headed from my office to my boss’s. As I approached her door, it opened, and my ED, wearing her winter jacket with her purse over her shoulder and boots on, came toward me down the hallway, heading for the exit. Looking surprised (and undoubtedly annoyed), I said, “Where are you going?” Her response: “OMG, I’m STARVING. If I don’t get something to eat, I’m going to fall over.”

I held up my hand in a STOP gesture, and, in a voice she didn’t dare argue with, said, “When a 95-year-old woman tells you to call back in an hour, you have to call her back in an hour. Turn around and go back to your office.” She didn’t actually say “Yes, ma’am,” but almost! She turned around, made the call, and got the gift… and we eventually exceeded our campaign goal. (My boss also got lunch about a half hour later.)

As it turns out, our donor was midway through a massage when my boss first called, which made her sound deceptively frail, so calling her back in an hour might not have been quite as urgent as it seemed.  

But if my boss hadn’t respected the donor’s wishes enough to do as she was asked — to call back in an hour — would we have gotten the gift? Honestly, we can’t be sure either way… but was it worth taking a chance by NOT calling as requested? That donor hadn’t agreed to an additional gift yet — she hadn’t even been asked — but she had implicitly agreed to a conversation, which is the first step in the solicitation process. Why take a chance that, by the time we called, she might have been unavailable, or she might have forgotten that she had invited my boss to call her?

It’s the job of the Development Director to keep all fundraising strategies at the forefront of her thinking so that nothing falls through the cracks. Unlike the ED, who must oversee the entire operation, the DD ‘s single priority is fundraising… which is why it’s important for the ED/CEO to understand the “balance of power” in nonprofit major gift fundraising.

Although the org chart may correctly identify the ED as the nonprofit’s top dog, a smart ED knows to take her major gift fundraising marching orders from her DD.

Betsy Steward is an independent fundraising consultant. She advises clients on major donor solicitation, cultivation, and stewardship, as well as fundraising best practices, back-office organization, board presentations and writing to donors (appeal letters, emails, proposal letters, thank-you notes, etc.). She can be reached at BetsyVSteward@gmail.com and you can join her blog mailing list by scrolling to the bottom of the page at https://www.betsystewardconsulting.com/.