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A Real Life Approach to Endowment Building

by Cynthia M. Adams, CEO, GrantStation

First Gifts, Next Steps
Part Nine

It took me a few days to digest the Advisory Board work session. I had to step back and ask myself, “Now what?”

Since we are starting to collect pledges, and checks, it's probably smart to put together a simple gift table which we can share with the Advisory Board, organization staff, and the Board of Directors. We will be using the gift table primarily as a motivational tool for the Advisory Board Members, but we'll also use it to plan our campaign strategy.

There are several basic rules of thumb that help you build a gift table:

• 10% of the campaign total will come from one gift
  
• About one-third of the total will come from the top ten gifts
  
• Another third will come from the next 100 gifts
  
• The last third will come from all the rest of the gifts

Because we are pursuing a small, quiet campaign, I have chosen to modify these rules to fit our particular situation:

• 20% will come from one gift ($20,000)
  
• 40% will come from four gifts ($10,000 each = $40,000)
  
• The remaining 40% will come from eight gifts ($5,000 each = $40,000)

At the Advisory Board work session a few weeks ago, we received four pledges of $5,000 each (which I have noted on the gift table below). We also talked a bit about the 20% gift, and who might make that gift.

You can use an Excel spreadsheet to make up your own gift table using the following as a sample:

Assign one person to keep the gift table up-to-date, and share it with others via email every time a new pledge (or check) is received.

In our case, we've asked the Chair of the Advisory Board and a member of the Endowment Committee to manage the gift table.

The key to making the gift table work for you is flexibility. Rather than sticking to these figures exactly, most fundraisers know you have to allow for variations and changes.

For example, our goal is $100,000. We want to raise one 20% gift (or $20,000) but that might not happen. If it looks unlikely (and we should have a good indication of the likelihood within weeks) we need to reduce that to a 15% or even 10% gift, and adjust all of the other figures accordingly.

On the other hand, if it appears we can bring in a gift of $50,000.00 (which we certainly didn't account for in this gift table), we would adjust the rest of the table and perhaps even raise the goal for our quiet campaign.

Thousands of organizations have used the gift table to help guide their campaigns, so hopefully this will help us all keep on track as well.

I'm going to give you all a break for a while as our Advisory Board members start working on their “asks.” In the spring, I'll check back in to let you know where we stand, how much we've raised, and any other problems or issues we may have encountered on the way to our $100,000 goal.

Over the last several weeks, I've received several inquiries about the ins and outs of endowment building. Next week's article will be a Q&A in which I'll answer those questions that are most widely relevant and applicable.