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Sarah sat down with Helene Erenberg, Director of Major Gifts and Individual Giving at the CDC Foundation, this week to talk about how Helene and her team have created a donor engagement plan. Here are some of our key takeaways:

CDC Foundation’s Tech Stack for Qualifying Donors
Relationship building/getting to know donors personally is the absolute best way
Using third party companies to verify income level, previous organizations donors have given to and likelihood of alignment
If your organization doesn’t have this in the budget you can find much of this information through things like political donation lists, Googling salaries and asking board members if they know anyone who might have the means and interest to donate regularly

Organization:
Segment donors into portfolios based on giving levels, even if you don’t have the staff at this moment to man each one
Remember before qualifying that not everyone will want to convert, especially if they’ve given to you during a disaster
Portfolios are broken down into campaigns
Started with 3 major gifts and a planned giving campaigns
Each campaign was assigned a staff member to fully qualify the donors
Campaigns were then further broken down into tiers based on donor quality as the staff members worked their way through

Engagement Process
In Salesforce engagement plans are a series of tasks in sequential order that remind you when to do what in order to keep building a relationship with the donor
For a smaller organization whether a major gift for you is $1000 or $50,000 you still need to take the steps of cultivation and relationship building with the donor
Always meet the donor where they are for engagement, even if it’s unconventional
Be creative in your touchpoints
Webinar invitation on topics of interest
Short videos
Articles about relevant topics

Advice on Making the Ask
It’s completely normal to be nervous
By the time you are making the ask, you should have a good enough relationship with the donor that it is not a surprise
The ask is the very last step, it is not a fast process