What's the Right Number? - A Petrus Development Show Episode on Solicitation Amounts

It's a recurring question in the life of a fundraiser:  "How much money should I request from a donor when I meet with them?"  If that's a question that continues to baffle you, we have good news!  Andrew and Rhen return with an episode on tools you can use to determine the appropriate dollar amounts for donor asks.  

Show Notes:

Andrew shares his experiences with determining donor ask amounts.  He highlights tools he uses to help him come up with his ask range, and he discusses the clues you can look for in your initial interactions to help you determine ask amounts down the road.  Most importantly, however, Andrew emphasizes the need for boldness when you make your asks.  The consequences of being bold are often much less than the lost opportunity that comes with caution.  

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

02:08.92
Host:
Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. My name is Rhen Hoehn with Petrus Development and joining me today, he always smiles when I say howdy. It's Andrew Robison, owner and president of Petrus. How's it going, Andrew?

02:22.55
AROB:
It's going great. I think that we should put together a montage of all of your howdies and all of the times that I say, "Ren, how are you doing?" And you say?

02:35.62
Host:
Living the dream.

02:36.46
AROB:
Living the dream. You pause like I was looking for something different or unique. But no, I feel like I have helped condition you to say howdy, at least in conversations with me. Maybe I don't know what you do otherwise. And then you have conditioned me to expect the "living the dream" response from you. So that's as good.

03:00.11
Host:
Excellent. We're going to dive right into it today and just get into our topic. There's something that comes up frequently. Well, everybody, everybody in fundraising deals with this problem. It's figuring out what is the right ask amount when you're going to make a solicitation of a donor. You were telling me a story of a donor that you asked for the very wrong amount for, or maybe this is a story of somebody you worked with.

03:24.28
AROB:
Yeah.

03:24.35
Host:
Uh,

03:24.56
AROB:
So I had a client a while ago and they went and they met with somebody, you know, kind of one of these C-suite individuals and they asked them for $2,000 for their project and the donor looked at them and they said, "Buddy, look at me, look at the situation. Look at my job. I give $10,000 to 30 different organizations. Why don't you try your ask again?" And so my client said, "Oh, OK, well, would you consider $10,000?" "Yes, I'll give you $10,000." So that was a very clear and resounding lesson in using the clues and the information that's available to you and asking for the right amount.

04:08.80
Host:
That is living the dream as a fundraiser, right?

04:11.42
AROB:
Ah.

04:12.42
Host:
That's the direction you want it to go of, "No, I'm going to give you more."

04:14.87
AROB:
Yeah.

04:16.06
Host:
I think the bigger fear is probably the opposite of that though, right? I'm going to ask for way too much and they're probably gonna be angry about it.

04:19.53
AROB:
Yeah.

04:23.02
Host:
What's going to happen? So let's talk a little bit about how do you determine the right amount to ask for when you're making a solicitation here.

04:31.60
AROB:
Yeah, so let's first before we do that, let's name why this is such an anxiety-producing activity and exercise, right?

04:37.94
Host:
Oh yeah.

04:39.85
AROB:
I think that there's a lot of reasons, right? But kind of the underlying main core reason is that it is terrifying as a fundraiser, as a person, but as a fundraiser to offend or to upset your donors, right?

04:58.28
AROB:
Because the outcome of offending and upsetting your donors is that you ultimately have no donors.

04:58.63
Host:
Right.

05:05.06
AROB:
You have a lot of formerly generous, now offended or upset individuals who don't give you any money, right?

05:14.45
Host:
Right.

05:14.84
AROB:
So there is a fear of asking for too much will offend or will upset your donors and then you won't have any more donors to your organization. I would say that in my 20 years the number of times that I have offended a donor by asking for too much is exactly and precisely one time. It is one time in 20 years that I asked an individual for too much and they were very upset and I learned my lesson and it wasn't that I asked for too much, it was that I went into the meeting unprepared, I picked a number that I wanted to fit them into and I was not cognizant and I wasn't showing appropriate gratitude for the generosity and the gifts that they had been making and I simply was trying to, you know, score a win as a new person in a new role. And so other than that, I've never had anybody offended and I've asked for large gifts. And usually the response is, "Gosh, I wish I could give that much. But I can't let's talk about a level that's more appropriate to what we can do."

06:27.96
Host:
That is spot on. That's exactly every time that I've asked for too much. It's been that same. It's almost apologetic. Like, "Oh, I really wish I could do that. I'm honored that you think I can, but I can't for whatever reason."

06:38.26
AROB:
Yeah.

06:39.70
Host:
I remember the very first time that I asked for a gift that was too much. We went in, we made the ask somebody who'd given a couple thousand a year for years. We asked him for $10,000 a year over three years. So $30,000 ask. And he said, "Oh, I really wish I could, but I can't. Sorry." And my fear was that he was going to be so angry at us and cut us off completely.

06:59.10
AROB:
All right.

07:00.41
Host:
Right. And then we asked him at dinner one night, the next night we had an event going on in his town and he had RSVP'd to attend. So I was terrified of what was going to happen, how awkward it was going to be when he showed up to this dinner.

07:11.31
Host:
Right. And he walks into the dinner. "Ryan, great to see you," gave me a big hug and sat next to me the whole night. I was like, this is not what I was expecting at all.

07:19.87
AROB:
But--

07:20.06
Host:
The next year we had a cookout in a park in his town and he came and it was pouring rain. I was grilling brats and hot dogs for everybody. He held the umbrella over my head so I could grill without getting wet, right?

07:30.20
Host:
And later on we came back and made him an ask for him to pledge his current level of giving for a project. And he said, "No, I've been thinking about it. I'm moving some assets and I'm going to make that $10,000 a year gift."

07:41.77
Host:
And he did it for five years, so $50,000.

07:41.87
AROB:
Wow.

07:44.55
Host:
And so I think that fear of somebody blowing up at you for making too big of an ask is probably more in our heads than in reality. It can happen, but it's very rare.

07:56.14
AROB:
Yeah.

07:56.63
Host:
And so it's not something to be afraid of, but you still want to try to get the right ask as much as possible.

08:00.77
AROB:
Absolutely.

08:01.41
Host:
And so the question is, what factors can we look at to help us zero in on... I don't think we're ever going to know perfectly what the right ask is, but how do we get in the right ballpark?

08:11.74
AROB:
Yeah. So there's a couple of ways, tools that we have in our tool belt as fundraisers. One, you have a database. So going back and looking or hopefully you have a database going back and looking at past giving history is a very good indicator of what's the right ask amount. Sometimes it doesn't tell us much at first glance, but if you sort of understand, you know what to look for, then you can see some clues. Some of those clues might be very consistent, multiple frequent gifts.

08:41.48
AROB:
That's an indication of donor loyalty and an interest in supporting the organization that may be an indicator that they can give a larger, more substantial gift if asked for it. They've given consistently, they've never been asked.

09:00.56
AROB:
Sometimes you look and gifts are all over the place. One year it's $4,000, the next year it's $12,000, the next year it's $1,700, the next year it's $10,000. That's a situation where the capacity is there and either the projects happened in the years that they got excited, or they on their own sort of indicated or decided to make bigger gifts.

09:23.83
AROB:
Or those are the years that somebody asked them to help at a higher level. And so the capacity is there if you can find the right project or you presume the capacity is there if you find the right project and the right ask. And so you just got to ask. So past giving history is probably our strongest indicator of ask amount.

09:45.00
Host:
Yeah, I was working with somebody recently who had a big donor in mind and they were able to actually see some of their giving history with other organizations locally that were, you know, publicly available. And that person had made a lot of $1,000 gifts to those organizations and then a lot of $5,000 gifts.

10:00.64
Host:
And it was clear, like, okay, we probably, if we're asking for our first gift, probably should ask for $1,000. And then next gift, we'll ask for $5,000.

10:05.38
AROB:
Yeah.

10:07.07
Host:
That seems to be their clear pattern.

10:07.46
AROB:
Yeah.

10:09.04
Host:
And sometimes you have that, it usually isn't that clean, that easy to figure out, but that is definitely a great clue, if you can see that, both with your organization and with other organizations that they give to.

10:17.24
AROB:
Yeah. And so with that other organization, the next tool that we have in our tool belt is the wealth screen. And so, you know, there's a couple of big programs out there, WealthEngine, DonorPerfect, even some of the databases kind of incorporate wealth screening in there. But with a lot of wealth screening platforms, if you go and you look up, you know, Andrew Robinson, and it's putting together their comprehensive listing of wealth and capacity, it will list other gifts that they have made.

10:50.18
AROB:
That are publicly known. So all of the search engines pull from public sources. So the gifts that it will show on there are gifts that show up typically either on an organization's website or in their annual report or on their donor rolls that are public. So those are usually bigger gifts that will show up sometimes.

11:08.66
AROB:
It'll show a range, but if you have somebody that you've been talking with and you're stressing about asking for $1,000, you pull a wealth engine and you see that at the zoo for 10 years running, they've given $25,000 annually. Well, that's an indicator of capacity. Maybe they like the zoo maybe more than they like you. You have to develop that relationship and figure it out, but at least it can give you a clue about capacity.

11:36.05
Host:
Yeah, you have to take those with a grain of salt, right? The two that I've used are Wealth Engine and Donor Search, and they have different algorithms. At least this was true a couple of years ago, I assume it's still true. Wealth Engine was based on assets, and Donor Search, their kind of recommended giving levels are based on previous public giving records.

11:54.90
Host:
So, how much has this person given to other organizations? And factors like, do they have a family foundation? Do they own a yacht or a plane? There are different things like that that it bases the numbers on.

12:05.69
AROB:
Yeah.

12:06.31
Host:
But I've had—we had a donor that I worked with who's given $90,000 a year. We looked him up in one of the wealth screening services. He came up as a recommended $5,000 a year donor.

12:15.56
AROB:
Yeah.

12:16.15
Host:
Right.

12:16.27
AROB:
Yeah.

12:16.39
Host:
Cause he had a lot of private assets that weren't publicly known. And so you have to take them with a grain of salt. It goes both ways. Sometimes you get somebody who shows as high net worth, but it's actually his junior.

12:26.69
Host:
His dad is senior, has the same name and they're confusing the numbers with his dad's numbers. I had that happen multiple times, where you go and think you can make a bigger ask than you actually can.

12:37.23
Host:
Cause the numbers got jumbled there. But they're definitely a good tool to get you in the right ballpark, at least a starting point.

12:45.18
AROB:
Yep, the next tool that we have is, let's kind of put this collection of tools under like our investigative belt tool, right?

12:57.53
AROB:
So what I mean by that is that as a fundraiser, you're constantly looking for clues.

12:57.76
Host:
Yeah.

13:03.14
AROB:
It's one of the reasons that it's most valuable to meet a donor in their place of work or in their home. Because when you go into somebody's home, you get a very clear sense pretty immediately about what capacity could be, you know what kind of home they're in, what kind of car they drive, what kind of artwork is on there, you know what their clothes are, how their kids act and carry themselves. Those are all indicators of capacity. That's not always money that they're gonna give you, right? It's not discretionary necessarily.

13:37.90
AROB:
But it is an indicator. So looking for signs in somebody's home or in their office, looking for signs about whether they in conversations talk about the family foundation, right? Or they talk about the vacation spots or the land that they own and have for six generations. Conversation points about donor advised funds, things like that. Those are all clues that we can learn from them.

14:07.89
AROB:
Or from peers, right? One of the questions when we do feasibility studies for a capital campaign is we ask, you know, when we sit down with somebody, we say, would you make a gift? Yes, at what level would you see yourself? Well, who else should we be talking about this? Well, everybody, you know, in most of those cases, most people are going to say, oh, we got to talk to this person, this person, this person. And it's because they know things about their life that, you know, we just don't know yet because we don't have those relationships.

14:34.56
AROB:
And so learning from individuals and peers is another way to understand gift capacity. And that kind of all falls under that investigative tool belt resource.

14:48.64
Host:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One kind of fits into that category and the previous giving category. There's certain giving vehicles that are indicators of higher capacity, right? So you mentioned donor advised funds there. There's certain donor advised funds like Vanguard, I believe, where you have to put in at least $25,000 before you can make a distribution. So, you know, if you get a $100 check from somebody's Vanguard donor advised fund, they've got pretty good capacity because they had to put in at least $25,000 to set that up.

15:21.31
Host:
Right. So that's somebody you might be able to go back to for a bigger ask. Great.

15:26.94
AROB:
Totally.

15:27.15
Host:
Yeah. Any other kind of indicators that you would look at when you're investigating? It can feel kind of weird, like looking up all these things about a person, but it's kind of part of the business there.

15:35.05
AROB:
Yeah.

15:38.28
AROB:
I mean, those are the three, you know, you've got—can you still hear me?

15:45.09
Host:
Yep.

15:46.23
AROB:
Sorry, my microphone popped, so I didn't know if I hit a cable. So you're kind of built into these all of these. You're constantly looking at real estate. You're looking for clues about where they give.

16:00.24
AROB:
Other organizations they might support. What this is doing ultimately is it's helping us to put together a puzzle about an individual that will give us a sense of range, right? There's very few things that we can look at and we can say based on this information, the perfect ask amount for this individual is $15,642, right?

16:29.44
AROB:
The wealth screening tools will, they have a formula so they have to, so they give you a number. There's nothing that will tell you this is the exact amount to ask for this person at this time. So really what we're doing with all of these clues is just sort of helping to understand what tier of gift are they.

16:48.65
AROB:
What tier of donor are they in? And then what scope of gift could we presumably ask for and have the request be received well at this time? And so what that means is, you know, are we, and this is different for every organization, but, you know, are we asking for a project or a need in the thousand to $10,000 range? Are we looking for, are we asking them for a project in the $10,000 to $50,000 range? Are we asking for a $50,000 to $100,000 or is this a donor that's in a $100,000 plus range by themselves? That's what you're doing. You're understanding what the range is and then you're looking at what your needs and your opportunities are for growth as an organization and then matching a gift amount, a project need, even if it's an unrestricted project, a project need to that range, to that donor.

17:46.78
AROB:
That's a long way of kind of putting together this idea that all of these clues, past giving history, wealth screening, investigation, real estate, peer understanding, this is all just to give us a, put together the puzzle that shows us a range. But ultimately what we're asking for is based on the needs, the growth, the plans of the organization that we know match with that donor's range and interest level towards the organization.

18:18.79
Host:
Kind of two questions to follow up on that. First, would you ever ask a donor what might be the appropriate level to ask them for?

18:29.77
AROB:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, when we do, this is in feasibility studies, but in campaigns, and in any ways, a gift chart can be a very valuable tool and a gift chart is just simply all these ranges listed out on a piece of paper, or on an iPad or whatever and showing them and saying, where do you see yourself in this? That's a perfectly fine question to ask, not on the first visit. But as you get to know somebody, asking them, "Look, we've got a couple of projects I think that you'd be interested in."

19:04.73
AROB:
"I don't know what to ask you for. I don't know how to present this to you in a way that fits with your philanthropic goals, your abilities, your capacity, your interests, but would it be all right if I just sort of showed you what some of the ranges are or what some of the projects are and let you teach me about this?" Absolutely. Yeah. That's a, I would say that's kind of like next level. You know you have a good enough relationship, you can do that. And that's sometimes how you have to approach people that you've been working with for a long time.

19:37.41
Host:
Yeah. If you go back to one of the earliest episodes of the Petrus Development Show, I want to say it's in the teens or twenties in terms of episode numbers. We had a talk by John Flynn, who's one of the head fundraisers at Focus at one of our conferences years ago, maybe 2018 or 2019.

19:55.32
Host:
And he talked about what he called the golden questions, right? Questions that are extremely valuable to ask. And some of them, I would say when I was a brand new development director were kind of shocking to me. So I pulled it up here. I just want to read some of them. These are questions that he would ask donors in donor meetings. "When you're looking to support a new organization, what's a typical initial investment you like to make?"

20:20.81
Host:
"What is your largest or most meaningful donation you've ever made? How much do you like to give away annually?" Those are kind of the ones that stood out to me in terms of like, he basically asked them, you know, what are we trying to ask about?

20:31.78
AROB:
All—

20:33.34
Host:
What is the right number to ask you for? That feels very forward.

20:37.08
AROB:
Right.

20:37.23
Host:
Right. But, you know, in my experience, I found, especially with higher level donors who are probably meeting with development people from lots of organizations regularly, they're kind of used to talking about these things and it's not as taboo as you might think.

20:51.02
AROB:
Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, we talked about this a couple of episodes ago—being a good development director is all about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

21:02.63
AROB:
And sometimes asking those questions, certainly the first couple of times you do it, is going to be very uncomfortable.

21:02.93
Host:
Yeah.

21:08.33
AROB:
But gosh, if you can, the insights gained from somebody who is willing to answer those are invaluable for the long-term relationship between that donor and you and the organization.

21:21.58
Host:
Yeah, and we skipped over something that maybe we should have addressed first. If you're a brand new development director, this might not be obvious. Why do we need to ask for a specific amount anyway, right?

21:33.28
Host:
If we just go in and present a project, why not just let them decide what level to think about?

21:38.88
AROB:
Yeah, so I think of this from like an individual psychology standpoint, right? If you are asking somebody to engage with a project that you are doing,

21:50.14
AROB:
If you are just saying, would you support this project? The answer they are posed with or the question they are posed with is yes or no. Will I support it or will I not support it? Once you start transitioning into the question of would you support this project at a level of X, the question in their mind shifts from, do I want to support it or not? Very subtly, but it shifts to, is that the right amount that I want to support this project at? So in a way, it's just an exercise in psychology of moving somebody in their brain from—I already know I'm going to support it. Is that the right level? Yes or no? High or lower? Yeah, that's it.

22:34.69
AROB:
The other reason though is it gives people just a way to react, right? It's, "I love this project. I love what you're doing." You know, we talked about earlier in this episode, "Gosh, I wish I could support at that level, but I can't, but this is what I can do." And so asking for a specific amount gives them a way to respond specifically while also shifting their psychology about whether this is even something that they want to support at all.

23:02.57
Host:
And there's a number of donors who've never thought about giving at whatever level you're asking for, right? It just never even occurs to somebody to think about a $10,000 gift sometimes.

23:08.68
AROB:
Yeah.

23:11.81
Host:
So, a few weeks ago, we were at SEEK and when I was on the plane home from the SEEK conference, I watched the movie Inception. And if you remember that movie,

23:19.67
AROB:
That's a bold move on a plane, yeah.

23:20.79
Host:
Yeah, there are some similarities there where you're planting an idea. You know, in that movie, they're planting ideas in your dreams to make it feel like it's your own, but you're planting the idea.

23:21.11
AROB:
Go—

23:31.45
Host:
Like I mentioned that person earlier in this episode where we asked him for $10,000. He said, "Oh, I can't do that." And a couple years later, he's like, "You know, I'm actually gonna move some things around and make a $10,000 a year gift."

23:41.15
AROB:
Yeah.

23:41.73
Host:
We caught him a little bit off guard that first time we asked him. But later on, he had been thinking about it for a couple years. And he's like, "Yeah, let's do that. That'd be so cool." Right. And so you're kind of planting that idea in a lot of ways to give at a level that they never considered that they could before.

23:57.10
Host:
So it's definitely worth making that specific ask whenever you can.

23:57.30
AROB:
Yeah. Totally. Yeah, I think it's great.

24:03.81
Host:
Excellent. Well, anything else you'd add in terms of making the right ask amount when you're soliciting a donor?

24:09.81
AROB:
Be bold. You know, like we said, asking for more than is reasonable very rarely brings somebody to offense. It might bring them to shock. Right. But if you have a good enough relationship, then that shock very quickly turns into building the relationship and a bond. So be bold—the blowback on being bold is much less than the lost opportunity by being soft and cautious.

24:48.46
Host:
Yeah, that's great. I'm going to share one story before we wrap up just to kind of hit on that point.

24:49.97
AROB:
Yeah.

24:52.94
Host:
Where I was fundraising for the campus ministry here, the last ask that I was a part of, we asked somebody for $105,000 and it was a parent of a student. And somebody might think, "Oh, you know, they're paying for college, all this stuff."

25:04.65
Host:
I don't know, but we think they have some means. And they literally wrote us a check in their checkbook for $105,000. You're like, man, if you can just do that without really thinking about it, we should have probably asked for more, right?

25:14.66
AROB:
Yeah.

25:17.32
Host:
It's kind of a bummer to leave it on that note as my last ask there. So sometimes you gotta be bold and ask for a little more.

25:24.68
AROB:
Absolutely. Yep. Be bold. That's what's going to build the kingdom.

25:29.15
Host:
Yeah. Go out and make those asks. Great. Perfect. Well, I think that was very helpful and hopefully this gives you, listener, some ideas on how to get started doing some of that donor research and making the right ask.

25:42.06
AROB:
Perfect. Thanks for putting this together, Rhen.

25:44.26
Host:
Great, well, have a good day. Thank you, Andrew.