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The Three Habits of Highly Effective Pitchers

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The Rules

  • People give to people they know.
  • People give because they are asked.
  • If you ask, you may get.
  • If you don’t ask, you won’t get.
  • HOW DOES THE DONOR BENEFIT?

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Donors contribute when the fundraiser has identified their needs and demonstrated how they will benefit if the candidate is elected.

--EMILY’s List, “Making the Dough Rise”

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The Habits:�Preparation

  • Know your donor
    • Foundation Directory Online
    • Inside Philanthropy, Chronicle of Philanthropy
    • European Foundation Centre
    • News searches/articles
    • WealthEngine
    • Giving history
    • 990s
    • Mutual connections, shared partners, intersection or collaboration with their other grantees

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The Habits:�Preparation

  • Get your house in order:
    • Are you prepared to accept gifts – are your registered appropriately? Do you have accounting/compliance infrastructure in place?
    • Know your own data: How much is your operating budget? How much is the project budget for which you are seeking funding? Who are your major donors? What are your major sources of revenue?
    • Tell your story: How do you measure impact?

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The Habits:�Presentation

  • Spend more of the meeting listening than talking.
  • Credentials: impact, awards, budget, donors; staff size
  • Value proposition:
    • Challenge/opportunity: Why this? What is this?
    • Urgency: Why now?
    • Why you?
  • How will you address the problem/respond to the opportunity? How will you know if you are succeeding?
  • How does the donor benefit?
  • LISTEN
  • THANK

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The Habits: �Persistence

  • Thank them: Send thank-you note no later than the next day. Reiterate any next steps identified in the meeting:
    • Are you sending a proposal? By when?
    • Did they agree to make intros? How can we facilitate?
    • Tease a timeline for getting back in touch.
  • Follow up: No response? No worries. Re-forward your thank-you email with a brief, direct question about next steps.
  • Follow through: Did you promise to send a proposal? Send some research or background reading they might find interesting? Introduce them to someone else? Follow through and do what you said you’d do. Be servicey.

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The Habits:�Persistence

  • Cultivation plan: Be enticing.
    • Be in their inbox every 4-6 weeks, even with something standard, like a newsletter that you top off with a personal note.
    • Make them tell you no.
  • Moves management.
    • Mechanism for tracking and prioritizing prospects in process.
    • With whom do you need to follow up today/this week/this month? How many prospects do you have in play, and what’s the timeline for moving them along?

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Thank you!

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Gallagher Group LLC

📩Bridget.t.gallagher@gmail.com

@GallaGroupNYC

Bridget.t.gallagher