Major Gifts or Middle Giving

Major Gifts fundraising traditionally provides the largest amount of fundraising dollars for an organization. With a capital campaign and most of our traditional major gifts cultivation techniques we are seeking to get the largest gift that we can from our wealthiest donors. I wonder if there might be a different way.

Think about the number of people in your city that can give a gift of a hundred thousand dollars. How many of them do you actually know? Now think about the number of people that could give a gift of a thousand dollars. How many do you know now? I suspect you could come up with a handful of names that could give a hundred thousand dollars and if you’re well connected maybe you actually know one or two of them. But, I imagine, you could think of hundreds of people that could give a regular $1,000 gift and in fact you probably even know well over 50 people in that category.

Is there a price point at which major gifts can see the very best results? I’d be interested in hearing from those of you in Major Gifts. Have you ever seen a middle giving program that has a higher ROI than a Major Gifts program? If you were to build a program with a shorter cultivation process for individual solicitations at the 1,000 level, is it possible that this could have a higher ROI than a traditional major gifts program?