My Journey to a Smarter Ask
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Let me set the scene. A gift officer has a solid relationship with a major donor and thinks they are prepared to make an ask. Extensive research has been collected on the donor, including their philanthropic capacity estimate and whatever else could be found on the web. They gathered notes from their conversations, street research from people who know the donor, and the donor's giving history to the organization.
Now it’s time to come up with an ask amount for their gift conversation.
Despite all of the gift officer’s research, there is an uneasy feeling that whatever ask amount they use, it will, at best, be a guess. Prior experience suggests that the donor information they collected, including the philanthropic capacity estimate, may not represent reality.
Our gift officer experiences anxiety about being too cautious or aggressive with their ask, which might leave money on the table — something they’re loathe to do. They walk into the gift discussion uncertain and tell themselves that making the ask is about intuition, thinking fast on their feet, and divine good fortune.
This scenario is quite common but rarely discussed in professional advancement circles. As gift officers privately describe it, coming up with the ask is like “shooting from the hip.”
The ask guessing game
As a consultant for over 20 years, I have done countless training sessions with advancement officers. I regularly inquire if they use a formal or even semi-formal process to determine an ask amount. Over all the years, I can count the affirmative responses on one hand. Simply put, most fundraisers rely on gut feel and instinct to determine an ask amount.
There has to be a better way, right? Of course. And fifteen years ago, as a nonprofit consultant and former advancement executive, I set out to find one, starting with deep research on asks.
That deep dive revealed the profound influence of personal bias regarding money and institutional self-esteem. I gave more than 400 advancement officers two case studies with a small and large donor using the same 21 empirical and behavioral data points for each. The officers were instructed to arrive at an ask amount for each scenario. Using identical information, the officers’ responses ranged widely, from $15,000 to $250,000 for the small donor and from $50,000 to $3 million for the large donor!
A fundraiser’s relationship to money and reaction to the trappings of wealth are often influenced by their family’s financial circumstances while growing up. Fundraisers may make erroneous assumptions about a donor’s wealth based on a variety of subjective cues, such as the kind of car they drive, the town in which they live, where they went to college, the way they dress, and many others. The result of this bias can lead to asking the donor for too little or too much — sometimes miscalculating the ask by five or six figures or more.
The implication of such a wide range of responses and the inherent bias became clear to me. As mission-based fundraising professionals, we must make every ask count. Our industry needed a data-driven, bias-free, credible and defendable methodology for arriving at accurate and predictable asks.
Why current tools fall short
You might think we already have the tools we need to arrive at an ask with services like DonorSearch, iWave and Wealth Engine. But what fundraisers told me is that while these are essential research tools, they are not particularly helpful for arriving at an ask amount and predicting actual pledges.
One gift officer said, “It's just another tool that will only take you so far.” Another fundraiser said, “They are worth having. It's a great tool but not the be-all, end-all. I don’t think any of them are.” And another fundraiser neatly summed it up, saying, “You can’t use the info in wealth estimator searches alone. They are blunt instruments. When they are high… I get excited. When they are low… I don’t know.”
All wealth estimators draw upon the same big data sources and run donor data through their algorithms to estimate a donor’s capacity to give to all charitable causes. Since they do not consider the donor’s relationship and history with a specific nonprofit, they are of low value to fundraisers as a tool to confidently arrive at an ask amount.
Better analytics for a smarter ask
Through my case study research, I discovered 21 bias-free variables applicable to any nonprofit, essential for calculating an ask. The variables focus on donor-specific giving behavior and capacity, and their engagement and relationship with an organization. I put these variables into a spreadsheet that calculated a three-year pledge ask and goal using weighted donor data informed by my deep experience in major donor fundraising. The results demonstrated the value of this approach.
I also used the ask calculator with my campaign clients as a tool to arrive at ask amounts for campaign donors and to assess campaign feasibility. It helped increase confidence and certainty. The tool is so valuable to our private clients that we developed it into an online resource available for the entire fundraising community — the AbacusTM Major Donor Ask Calculator.
By using a standard set of bias-free data points specific to the donor’s connection with their organization, fundraisers can avoid the guessing game and inevitable bias to know that they have enough essential information to proceed with a successful gift discussion. Such tools represent a paradigm shift in how fundraisers prepare for and make major donor asks and how to make sense of and operationalize donor research.
Larry Raff is founder of AbacusTM and also President and Principal of Copley Raff, Inc., a US and international management and fundraising consulting firm.
