Winter-Spring 2012 Workshops

Excelsior Bay Group principal, Kim Snyder, is teaming up with Hamline University’s School of Business to offer a three-part workshop series designed to help participants build their confidence and capacity to develop, implement, and sustain a successful major gift program.

• Building a Major Gifts Program that Fits Your Organization
  (Friday, January 20, 2012; 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm)  

• Identifying, Researching, and Cultivating Your Top Major Gift Prospects
  (Friday, February 10, 2012; 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm)

• Improving Board Involvement in Fundraising
  (Friday, March 2, 2012; 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm)

To register, please use this link to access online registration.

Major Gift Fundraising Made Simple

Each year, the vast majority of charitable contributions are made by individuals. Unfortunately, many organizations have not yet developed individual giving programs capable of capturing their share of these contributions.

This hands-on workshop series will help participants to 1) develop a simple and achievable strategy for launching and/or growing a major gifts program, 2) establish personalized strategies for cultivating and soliciting top major gift prospects, and 3) engage board members in advancing your major gifts strategy.

The first workshop – Building an Individual Giving Program That Fits Your Organization – is focused on simplifying the major gift process and creating, for each participant, an organizationally appropriate framework for major gift fundraising. In this session, participants will learn how to:

• Determine what constitutes a major gift; Identify what is necessary to know about a prospect in order to initiate contact; Qualify prospects through personal visits; and Track progress toward solicitation and ensure proper stewardship.

The second workshop – Identifying, Researching, and Cultivating Your Top Major Gift Prospects – is a working and coaching session in which participants will research and develop cultivation strategies for their organization’s top major gift prospects. Participants will leave the session ready to “pick up the phone” and begin the process of cultivating and soliciting key prospective donors.

In the final workshop - Improving Board Involvement in Fundraising - participants will work to create a personalized framework and set of expectations for engaging board members where they can add the greatest value to their organization’s fundraising.

These sessions are appropriate for all nonprofit staff and volunteers involved with their organization’s major gift fundraising. It is recommended that participants attend all three workshops in the series, in order to maximize the impact on their organization’s fundraising effectiveness. Each workshop, however, can stand alone, and participants are welcome to choose to attend only one session.

Together, the workshops will provide participants with the knowledge to develop a major gift program, the confidence to trust their instincts in building donor relationships, as well as simple, practical strategies for engaging with board members and moving donors toward solicitation.

This series is hosted by:

Hamline University – Minneapolis Campus
1600 Utica Avenue, Suite 700
St. Louis Park, MN 55416