How to Determine Your Private School’s Cause and Identify Donors to Support It!
80/20? or 98/2?
When I was a Development Director, knowing the 80/20 rule—that I'd get 80% of our fundraising revenue from 20% of our donor base—left me with an obvious question: Who are the top 20% and what are they capable of donating? What about new families coming into the school?
Today, many development offices are seeing 95%—and some report 98%—of their revenue coming from 2-5% of their donors. During these times of economic uncertainty, can we even depend on that?
In short, your fundraising efforts need to be more compelling and your potential donors more intelligently targeted than ever.
Answer These Two Questions About Causes and Donors
1. Are you a cause?
• How well do you position your school as a cause rather than just as a school? Beyond academics, what greater purpose do you serve in society?
• Why do you deserve to exist?
• Why do you matter?
• If you weren’t here now, why would you need to be invented? What greater need are you meeting?
• What do you stand for?
• What difference do you make?
• How and why is that a cause worth supporting?
“Donors are more motivated by a higher purpose rather than just an institution!”
2. How well do you know your donors?
• What other causes do they support?
• What are they capable of giving to all their philanthropic priorities?
• Where do you fit into that picture?
• Are they capable of giving in greater amounts to YOUR cause?
• Given their assets, is your cause getting its fair share of support?
• Or are your donors “underperforming,” given their capacity?
We may not be able to answer that first question for you, though we have the tools to help you answer it through objectively monitoring the experiences and beliefs of those you serve and seek to serve.
But we can absolutely help you immediately with the second question, particularly if you are a school or organization with a small, overextended development office with few resources for prospect research.
Meet and Exceed Your Goals With Our Help
You may not currently have the tools, bandwidth, budget, or specialized skills to identify your top potential donors, but we can help point you to the right people to nurture, cultivate, and steward.
We can help identify the top donors you must bring closer to your cause if you want to thrive.
We can help you make your efforts to meet your fundraising goals more compelling and more efficient.
Get started now to position your fundraising efforts to hit a higher level of growth this year, even in these uncertain times.
Be a Cause…Because!
Then prioritize the donors who will identify with that cause and leverage their capacity to support it.
Supporting your cause is important to us at Connor Associates. Let’s do this, together!
Connor Associates Strategic Services, LLC is based in Northern California and has served the market research, planning, and branding needs of hundreds of private, charter, and independent boarding and day schools and colleges in 26 states, Europe, Africa, and Asia over the past 20 years. For information on how we can support you, please visit https://www.connor-associates.com/
