IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aza/jeam00/y2020v5i3p286-292.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The myth of relationship building

Author

Listed:
  • Walker, B. Seth

    (Senior Director of Development at Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University, USA)

Abstract

The current economic reality of fundraising in higher education has made it necessary to be closing more major gifts to achieve our fundraising goals each year. At the same time, the industry is working to achieve these goals during highly concentrated campaign timelines. Complicating these two realities is that for the last 20 years, fundraising experts have put a great emphasis on ‘relationship building’. The focus on relationship building has pushed out the amount of time that major gift officers (MGOs) feel they have to cultivate a donor until they can make an ‘ask’. The question is, how can we close more major gifts faster than ever before while taking longer before an ask can be made? By examining sales data, we can see that emphasis placed on relationship building before a solicitation might be a myth, which is impacting our ability to close major gifts. This paper seeks to investigate common MGO types and define ways to quicken the solicitation process to close more major gifts on a faster timeline.

Suggested Citation

  • Walker, B. Seth, 2020. "The myth of relationship building," Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 5(3), pages 286-292, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aza:jeam00:y:2020:v:5:i:3:p:286-292
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/5948/download/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/5948/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    major gift officers (MGOs); relationship building; close rates; solicitations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M3 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aza:jeam00:y:2020:v:5:i:3:p:286-292. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Henry Stewart Talks (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.