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    Maximize The Middle: Managing Your Ministry's Mid-Level Donors
    Maximize The Middle: Managing Your Ministry's Mid-Level Donors
    Maximize The Middle: Managing Your Ministry's Mid-Level Donors
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Maximize The Middle: Managing Your Ministry's Mid-Level Donors

    By E. Dale Berkey and Mike Meyers

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    About this ebook

    Mid-level donors are a significant untapped resource for many ministries. We'd like to help you identify them — reach them — and maximize their potential.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateOct 29, 2019
    ISBN9781543992649
    Maximize The Middle: Managing Your Ministry's Mid-Level Donors

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      Book preview

      Maximize The Middle - E. Dale Berkey

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      ISBN: 9781543992649

      CONTENTS

      I. For You as a Ministry Leader

      The middle ground is fertile ground

      Who’s in the middle?

      Qualities worth noticing

      My donor, my friend

      Information, please

      You’re good

      II. For you as a Mid-Level Donor Rep

      9 keys to good stewardship of your mid-level donors

      Key #1: Paying attention

      Reasons why

      How hot? How cold?

      Paying for it

      The buy-in

      Key #2: Making it personal

      The practicalities

      High-value touches

      Focusing on the mids

      Key #3: Engaging through digital

      Score!

      Welcome!

      Report results

      Reinforce other channels

      Near-time updates

      Feedback

      Key #4: Entertaining and inspiring

      Step 1. Know who you are

      Step 2. Make a connection

      Content is king

      Different age groups

      Key #5: Saying thank you

      Getting to done

      Key #6: Asking

      3 Steps

      Nervous about asking?

      Script or no script?

      Key #7: Following through

      Between the asks

      Key #8: Offering involvement

      The how question

      Big and fancy?

      Awesome experiences

      Vision trips

      Key #9: Joy-giving

      Doing them a favor

      III. For you as a Manager of Mid-Level Reps

      4 commitments of great mid-level managers

      Commitment #1: Creating a rhythm

      The rep in context

      The content calendar

      Direct mail

      Digital

      Receipts

      How soon?

      Commitment #2: Estate planning

      Where the money comes from

      How to begin?

      Commitment #3: A great caseload management system

      5 functions

      Training ground

      Day by day

      Where they are

      Go prospecting

      Commitment #4: Hiring the right people

      Who’s right?

      The connection factor

      What about nepotism?

      The end? Where do we land?

      Appendix: Metrics matter

      Donor Performance Index

      Upgrading General Donors to Mid-level Donors

      Year-to-Year Tracking

      Sample Content Calendar

      Sample Donor Performance Index

      _________

      The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving. —Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses, 1890

      For You as a Ministry Leader

      I.

      The middle ground is fertile ground

      Here’s a donor. Maybe your donor. Supports your ministry. Gives two, maybe three times in a year. Gives $25 here, $30 there. A general donor, you might say a very valued, good person, but who gives at a low level. Ordinary, actually. Most of your donors are just like this donor. General.

      Here’s another donor. Maybe this is your donor too. Hugely committed to your ministry. Might give only once a year, but when it happens — wham! A hundred thousand dollars. Or more. This is someone you might call a major donor. High-level. Extraordinary. Major donor. Not many of your donors are like this donor, but thank God you’ve got this one!

      But here’s a third donor. Probably your donor. Supports your ministry more than a general donor would, but not as much as a major donor could. Maybe this donor makes a $1,000 donation here, a $2,500 donation there. Winds up giving up to $10,000 total over the course of the year. Not low-level. Not high-level. This donor can really only be called mid-level.

      How many of your donors are mid-level? Maybe you scratch your head. Maybe you have to stop and think. Maybe you’ve only been thinking in terms of big donors and small donors. Maybe you have a good handle on how to communicate with your general donors — and maybe you have a pretty good system for attending to your major donors — but maybe you’ve never even given much thought to those mid-level donors.

      In fact, it’s possible that the most thought you’ve ever devoted specifically to your mid-level donors has been to wrestle with the question: Where do we draw the cut-off line between generals and majors?

      Yet a significant portion of your ministry’s revenue may be coming from the giving of mid-level donors. For some ministries we’ve worked with, this figure is higher than one-third of their total revenue.

      What if you discovered that communicating and relating differently with your mid-level donors could increase their giving … increase their enthusiasm for your work … increase their potential to become major donors?

      We believe you could be on the brink of just such a discovery, at this very moment. Because that’s exactly what this book is about.

      We’ve spent our entire adult lives helping ministries raise money — more decades than we care to admit — and along the way we’ve observed some surprising but subtle patterns. We’ve commissioned professional scientific research to see if our suspicions could be confirmed. We’ve tested the findings on the actual donor files of actual ministries.

      And now, we’re prepared to share what we’ve learned — and what we’re still in the process of learning. (After you’ve digested these findings, you may want to have a conversation with us about them. We would welcome that.)

      But here’s one thing we’ve become absolutely convinced of: Ministries benefit today and tomorrow by devoting themselves to establishing and nurturing healthy relationships with their mid-level donors.

      This is not just a matter of the percentage of your ministry’s income being derived from mid-level donors. Mids are also valuable because:

      If you continue talking to mids as if they were only generals, they may be giving less than they might.

      On the other hand, if you talk to mids as if they were majors, you may drive them off because they feel pressured by your expectations.

      But if you talk to mids as mids — if you hone in on that mid-level donor and tune your communications to the mid-level’s unique mindset — if you can somehow connect to the heart of the mid-level donor — wonderful things can happen.

      Our goal here is to give you the why, the what, and the how of a great mid-level fundraising program. Our hope is that this will inspire you and your ministry team to invest — and invest wisely — in mid-level work … so that your ministry can do even more of what it was called to do.

      Let’s get going!

      Who’s in the middle?

      Who is a mid-level donor, exactly?

      Well, we may be in trouble already. Because there’s no official definition.

      The mid-level donor category stretches from the largest average donor to the smallest major donor. But of course, those terms must be defined as well.

      Some ministries define mids based on their giving alone: You’re a mid if you gave between $2,500 and $10,000 cumulatively over the past 12 months, or if your largest single gift in the past 24 months was between $1,000 and $10,000. We tend to recommend,

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