10 Reasons to Love Small Gifts (and Plan as Carefully to Raise Small Gifts as Large Ones)

08 Aug 10 Reasons to Love Small Gifts (and Plan as Carefully to Raise Small Gifts as Large Ones)

Good things come in small packages. Here are 10 reasons to love small gifts.

10 Reasons to Love Small Gifts

Here are just my top 10 reasons to love small gifts. (There are others!)

1. 1. You never know how much a person can give.  You only know how much they did give.  A potentially large donor may court your organization before marrying it.
   2. The number of donors you have matters as much as how much the largest donors give.
   3. Base-building builds the beloved community.
   4. Being able to say “100% of our Board give,” “100% of our staff give,” or “100% of our volunteers give”) is important to large donors and to funders.  It reassures them your fundraising pyramid has a strong and solid base.
   5. Board, staff, and volunteer gifts naturally include large and small gifts if the people who make up your Board, staff, and volunteers represent the beloved community you’re building.
   6. Practice democracy: ask everyone to give.
   7. Remember the Zen proverb “How you do anything is how you do everything.”  How your organization handles a small gift tells the world how you handle, and value, every gift.
   8. Small gifts yield a lot of money, especially regular pledges of amounts like $5 and $10.  Do the math!
   9. Most of us started out small.
   10. Giving is good for the soul.  Invite everyone to give because you care about the state of their souls.