Development organizations devote enormous attention to cultivating and stewarding donors, board members, alumni, volunteers, and institutional advocates toward philanthropic support.
Those same people often have relationships that can create access to future supporters. A donor relationship can therefore create value in more than one way: through the gift itself and through the people that relationship can credibly put within reach. That second dimension is rarely approached with the same structure and intentionality that development teams apply to the first.
Higher education development
Higher education development teams screen alumni for good reason. But shared affiliation does not guarantee a response, and most teams know how often a call from an alma mater goes unanswered. The opportunity also extends past the alumni base. Qualified people connected to the institution through donors, trustees, faculty, and other relationships may care deeply about a specific program, research area, or initiative without ever having attended.
Nonprofits
Nonprofits can identify people who have given to adjacent causes, but a giving history somewhere else does not create a path here. Existing donors and board members often sit inside networks that include people who already have affinity, and others who could develop it through a trusted introduction, real education about the work, and direct experience with the mission.
Healthcare foundations
For healthcare foundations, grateful patients are an important source of philanthropic opportunity, and physicians can hold extraordinary trust with the people they serve. At the same time, trustees, board members, existing donors, and other relationships surrounding the institution can create credible paths to financially qualified people who believe in what the institution is building, or who could develop that affinity through the right introduction and experience.
RANDY PRATT
Associate Vice President of Development, Presidential Priorities, Miami University
