Sharpening Your Major Gift Communication Tools

An important element of raising 5-, 6-, 7-, and 8-figure gifts is having the right tools in your communications toolkit to engage, solicit, and steward major gifts. But, getting that work done—and done well—is fraught with challenges.

Strategies we recommend include:

Audit Your Communications

First, take an inventory. What tools do you actually have (such as proposal templates, one-sheets, slide decks, microsites, and impact reports)? Then, in collaboration with those who use those tools,  determine what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing. You’ll also want to see where there may be duplicative communications or outdated materials that should not be accessible any longer. 

Level-Up Your Communications

Once you have the results of your audit, it’s time to level-up your toolkit by refining and updating what you’re keeping, and beginning to create what you need but don’t have. Depending on the scope of work involved (anything from editing and interviewing to writing and designing), you may want to bring in outside expertise.

Create Systems

Making your updated communications tools and resources accessible—and doing so efficiently—is vital to ensure everyone on the team has what they need when they need it. Technology is key to streamlining processes, so whether your organization uses Google Drive, Teams, Asana, or something else, make sure everyone knows how to use it to share and find what they need.

Facilitate Internal Communication

To keep your toolkit up to date and accessible to all, be sure to keep it front of mind for everyone who uses it. This could mean adding a standing item to a regular meeting agenda to review updates. Or it could mean creating a small working group (perhaps representatives from communications, major gifts, and grants) to serve as ambassadors for the effort.