The myth of relationship building

Abstract

The current economic reality of fundraising in higher education has made it necessary to be closing more major gifts to achieve our fundraising goals each year. At the same time, the industry is working to achieve these goals during highly concentrated campaign timelines. Complicating these two realities is that for the last 20 years, fundraising experts have put a great emphasis on ‘relationship building’. The focus on relationship building has pushed out the amount of time that major gift officers (MGOs) feel they have to cultivate a donor until they can make an ‘ask’. The question is, how can we close more major gifts faster than ever before while taking longer before an ask can be made? By examining sales data, we can see that emphasis placed on relationship building before a solicitation might be a myth, which is impacting our ability to close major gifts. This paper seeks to investigate common MGO types and define ways to quicken the solicitation process to close more major gifts on a faster timeline.