What do you get from the following personal letter Sarita and I received Monday from the president of one of the charities we support? I believe it raises some strategic questions major donors ought to be thinking about as they fund their favorite charities.

I am happy to inform you that by God’s grace, we met the goal of matching your generous offer of $_______. You may recall that the proposal we submitted to you broke out the amounts as follows:
$______ for _________ and
$______ for _________.
We sent out letters in January and February asking our donors to give to the [first project] and they more than matched the $________ [necessary for the second project]! We then sent out a letter in April and at this point, it appears that the $_______ will be met when all the gifts are sent in.

I want you both to know what a tremendous impact this gift has made on our ministry. Recently, I was informed that, thanks to the momentum generated by your challenge grant, we had one of our best direct mail quarters in years!

But it’s much more than the bottom line. People have been energized by the prospect of helping to ___________ some of the most difficult _______, and your matching grant gave them a sense of urgency and purpose. But most importantly, you made it possible to _________. This was a very strategic gift and we are so grateful to you for playing this vital role in the ministry of __________.

I also wanted to share with you another opportunity that I would like you to prayerfully consider.

John and I have been talking for some time about the philosophy of major donors giving to projects. As I’ve told John, I have genuinely tried to put myself in your shoes and ask myself honestly: “What would my giving look like if I gave six figure gifts to ministries?” As you have done, I would probably work with the ministry leaders to determine strategic and specific needs in line with my areas of burden, and I would use matching grants as much as possible, due to their proven effectiveness.

What I have concluded is that given my experience as a ministry CEO, I would give something between 25% and 33% of my resources to the general needs of the ministry. The reason for this is that such funds are critical to sustaining and upholding all the initiatives of a given ministry, and yet it is increasingly difficult to meet those needs as more donors are giving to projects. Yet, without the infrastructure remaining strong, the ministry cannot effectively grow.

When we first talked about your generous matching gift, you mentioned the possibility of a 2:1 match that would involve a gift of $_______ on your part. As we discussed it further, I sensed that while you were willing to make this generous offer, you were more comfortable with a 1:1 match. What I suggested to John was that we try to match the $_______ and that I be given an opportunity to ask you to consider another strategic way of using remaining funds.

Therefore, my request is that you commit a $_______ matching gift to help us meet our Fiscal Year-end general funding needs.

Like many ministries, we operate on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year. In a few weeks, we will be sending out letter to our donors informing them of the needs we have to meet our general fund budget. I genuinely believe that a matching grant would make it very likely that we could meet these needs.

Our general fund literally makes [our organization]’s ministry possible! It is like the hub of a giant wheel that motivates and supports ministry in dozens of countries that touch millions of people! . . .

I want you both to know what a great encouragement it is to me that I can open my heart and mind to you on such important matters related to the Kingdom of God. Thank you for the part you play in making so much ministry possible around the world. I’ll pray with you for God’s guidance in your decision, and am available for any questions you may have.

I should probably note: when we first proposed the 2-for-1 matching grant, the president was concerned that his fundraising department couldn’t meet our requirements. Our goal was too ambitious. “Our average is $_______,” he said.

He told me more (we have a very open relationship), but I don’t think that’s important to my post, here.

But here are a few things I take from his letter.

• Matching grants make a difference.
• If everyone give solely to project-specific needs, the organizations that support and sponsor the projects will be unable to move forward.
• We need to pay attention to general/overhead/infrastructure needs as well as the more “s*xy” projects themselves . . .

Or . . .

• The organizations themselves need to add a reasonable general/overhead/infrastructure “tax” on designated gifts to cover the necessary overhead expenses.

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Sincerely,

John Holzmann

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under charity, giving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.