Preparing the Major Gifts Team Annual Review

One of my clients has recently been preparing their Annual Review of the Team’s performance.

This is important for the team but also for showing Directors the progress of the major gifts team’s work.   This may not always show itself in finance especially in the first 2 – 3 years of the programme.  Directors tend to look at finance primarily and therefore an annual review can help educate that good things are being achieved towards establishing the longevity of the programme.  It can take 2 – 3 years before it shows a high £ ratio return.

The purpose is to show how well the team have done in progressing the contacts even if income hasn’t been delivered yet in this financial year.

The Review could include the following:

• Income total
• Current caseload for each team member and income raised this year compared to last year from that same group of donors
• Income by months
• % returning donors from previous financial year
• % new money
• % renewed that were lapsed (your definition of lapsed is up to you – could be 3 years)
• Number of gifts over £50k, £20 – £49k, £10k – £19k, under £10k (your own categories)
• The Major Gifts Executive’s gifts as categories above and whether new gift or repeat gift
• Three largest gifts
• Above as %’s
• As type of gift by % – regular giving, multi-year, one offs
• Corporate gifts as %
• Trust gifts (that are clearly a trust not personal trust giving) as %
• Breakdown for solicited and unsolicited
• £’s pledged for next financial year
• Forecast for next year by months based on donor interest (Use a Relationship Chart spreadsheet to forecast over next 12 months for every qualified donor – request a sample chart by emailing me)
• Number of Active Prospects
• Success rate for prospects – number contacted, number converted
• Number qualified (as at FY year end) and their £ capacity
• Locations of donors (on UK map – very interesting for Directors to see)
• Qualified dropped over the year (lack of continued interest)
• Lapsed big givers
• Number of couples, singles (F/M), trusts, corporates
• Their interests by project type
• Qualified donors contacted each month – showing growth in latter months
• Meetings achieved each month for year and by Major Donor Executive
• Phone calls each month for year as above
• Missed calls* each month for year as above
• Emails each month for year as above
• Letters for each month for year as above
• How many donors have moved through your stages of Stewardship (need to have defined this)

*Missed calls are important to monitor as MGE’s spend a great deal of time phoning and not getting through!

It is also important to report on your highlights and challenger.   I think this is done best at the end of every month but can be summarised in the Annual Review.

The Review can help you set goals for the following year and then demonstrate the upward trends.

There could be many more that you monitor and include in your annual review.  I would love to hear from you about any that you consider important but aren’t in this list.

Ruth Irwin

Ruth is the principal and founder of Ascent Philanthropy, author of two books and passionate about helping non-profits with their major gift programmes by offering advice for introducing a new major gift programme or enhancing the productivity of the philanthropy team