Using Volunteers to Cultivate and Solicit -- Part 1 of 5

In the past decade I have not seen very many of the smaller nonprofits moving in the direction of using volunteers to cultivate and solicit gifts of any kind, much less major gifts. With the exceptions of the hospitals and universities, most boards and executives around this area expect that when they hire "a fundraising professional" that person is going to relieve them of the burden of contact with donors. Even some of the larger charities don't have very large contingents of actively soliciting volunteers.

What a waste! Volunteers, who have made their gift to a campaign or project,are the most efficient and productive fundraisers; the use of volunteers in the field is really the way to do major gifts fundraising.

The first reason I can think of for using volunteers in fundraising generally, but especially in cultivating and soliciting major gifts, is that volunteers bring home the bacon far more often than anybody else. If you send the consultant out, the gift comes about 30% of the time; if you send the development director out (“just another ‘hired gun,’” I’ve heard people say), the gift comes back about 50% of the time; if you send the executive director out, the gift comes back about 65% of the time (probably because people like to be visited by the top banana!).

But if you send a volunteer who has made a significant gift out to a prospect, the gift comes back about 86% of the time. Volunteers, quite frankly, have the most credibility. My statistics come from observations of solicitation effectiveness during my time working with the Salvation Army, the Detroit Institute of Arts and with a few longer-term clients.

You probably know the next fact already, because you’ve seen how volunteers worry about whether they’ll make some kind of mistake, but I’ve seen volunteers – no matter how much we have prepared them in advance – go out there and stumble around, get red in the face, then suddenly blurt out what they think is the case for support, and still come away with the most marvelous gifts!

When I’ve gone back under other circumstances to some of those donors, the feedback I get is that those donors highly respected both the extent to which those “inept” volunteers had a visible, palpable commitment to the organization, and the fact that they had the guts to go in there in that situation, make fools of themselves and make the pitch all because they believed so much in the organization’s work. Their own commitment made it an easy sell to the donors.

Frankly, with a volunteer, you can’t lose! Unless you’re in a situation where the prospect flat out has no motivation to give, or has no financial capability to make a gift. In that case no one would come out with a gift; it's "blood out of a stone" time.

Another reason I think volunteers are so productive in cultivation and solicitation is that volunteers know the community. They know its history; they know the fights and grudges; they know where the skeletons are buried. They know a lot about who has what degree of financial capability. They know who is aligned with your organization and who’s really not interested no matter what they say outwardly. If you give a volunteer a list of 20 people, he or she will be able to guide you directly to the productive targets. You winnow down the list, waste much less time and come away with good gifts.

In a similar vein, volunteers know the people in the community. They know who’s been appearing in the symphony’s playbook for years; they know who attends the big auctions; they know what people need in terms of ego stroking; they know what people value, in terms of types of charitable work they do; they know who’s volunteering at which charities; they know what people want in terms of recognition. These volunteers are priceless!

It is, in my mind, therefore, inappropriate for any nonprofit to go into the marketplace of donors and prospects looking for major gifts without letting volunteers take the lead. These executives and development staff of smaller nonprofits are barking up the wrong tree when they don’t or can’t take the time to get together a strong contingent of volunteer solicitors, train them, monitor and evaluate their work and turn them loose in the community with substantial prospect lists and cultivation/solicitation assignments. They’re missing the boat – read “money” – if they don’t use volunteers.

More tomorrow.