Investment in Intermediate-Level Gift Officers

The Chronicle Philanthropy recently ran an article discussing the importance of intermediate gift officers. The way I’ve always defined this level of fundraising is that it is the gap between someone who makes a smaller gift or does a gift online for a couple of hundred dollars and those who give at the five-figure or $10,000 level. Normally, an intermediate donors will see a few contacts (emails, calls, letters) per year and may give anywhere from $1,000 to just under $10,000 annually.

This is such an underutilized and underrepresented aspect of philanthropy and its efforts. Many organizations are willing to send out mail or emails, as well as hire major gift officers, but so few actually take the time to create “elevation “opportunities for those who give $2,500 a year, creating a path in a relationship that would garner $10,000 or more annually sometime in the future. This can be accomplished through repeated solicitations and great stewardship.

The challenges are that many professionals would rather be doing major gift work and organizations have a great reluctance to spend the dollars on salaries for this level of position. What that leads to is the lessening of a major gift pipeline. While there are multiple options for higher-level donors to come into that pipeline, statistics are pretty consistent… the most likely next donor, a larger donor, comes from the current donor database. Thus, intermediate gift officers can and should play a critical role in building out major gift portfolios.

It is a worthy investment for any organization that has a large number of people giving somewhere between $500 and $10,000 annually.