At its core, fundraising—particularly raising major gifts—is a relationship-driven endeavor. But personal relationships are hard to manage in a global pandemic, challenging fundraisers around the globe to consider how COVID-19 has impacted our work. Specifically, what are the tangible short- and long-term impacts of the coronavirus era on our fundraising and how can we address these specific challenges? More importantly, how can we learn from them?

Lately I’ve heard from many fundraising colleagues about how successful they’ve been during the pandemic. Indeed, many universities and nonprofits received significant contributions or are even finishing the last fiscal year in record territory. But what lies ahead for 2021 and beyond?

At Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, U.S., we saw some surprising trends in fundraising amid the pandemic around solicitations, fundraising yield, and time-to-close. Digging into the analytics, here’s what we discovered—and what lessons the data hold for the future.

A Surprising Trend

For most mature fundraising shops, I believe the health of a program is best measured by the number of major gifts raised in a particular year rather than the overall dollars raised. Large outlier gifts can often mask underlying weaknesses. As a result, fundraising can look rather “lumpy” from year to year. (For more on the metrics that should and shouldn't be used to gauge fundraiser performance, see my book, Managing Major Gift Fundraisers: A Contrarian’s Guide.)

At Northwestern, we were on track to have a record fiscal year last year (closing Aug. 31, 2020) for major gifts. Through February we made a record number of major gift solicitations and raised a record number of major gifts of US$100,000 or more. However, beginning in mid-March, we saw a precipitous decline in key metrics including the number of major gift solicitations of individuals and the number of major gifts raised. In 2020, our overall dollars raised fell below the previous year, but just slightly, as many generous donors still stepped up to support the university.

When we began to dig into the data, however, we saw some surprising trends. For example, our number of major gift solicitations dropped much more significantly than our number of major gifts. From March to August, we saw a drop of 46% in major gift solicitations of individuals compared with a decline of just 31% in major gifts raised. Since Sept. 1, the number is even more dramatic: We’ve seen a 37% decline in solicitations with just a 9% decline in the number of major gifts raised.

In April, when I began to see our solicitation activity fall off a cliff, I waited for the major gift number to follow. It didn’t. Confused and pleasantly surprised, my colleagues and I waited for the other shoe to drop. It hasn’t—at least not yet. Our major gift numbers continue to outpace the solicitation activity. What’s going on?

Explaining the Data

We asked Sarah Meegan, senior business analyst on our reporting and analytics team, to help us understand the dynamics of this strange phenomenon. In the past, when we saw a drop in major gift solicitation activity we ultimately saw a corresponding drop in major gifts raised. Yet, during COVID-19, these two things became uncoupled.

We looked at a couple key metrics to try and understand what was happening: yield and time-to-close. The yield on our major gift solicitations (the number of solicitations that successfully turn into major gifts) improved. Compared to the same two quarters in fiscal year 2019, our yield improved from 53% to 56%. While not a huge increase, when factored over more than a hundred solicitations, it definitely had an impact.

However, the greater surprise was the improvement on time-to-close, the period between when a solicitation is made and when a major gift is booked. The time-to-close improved from 74 days in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2019 to just 47 days during the same period in fiscal year 2020.

Number of Solicitations

Number of Major Gifts

Major Gift Yield

Time to Close

FY20 Q3-Q4

190

108

56%

47 Days

FY19 Q3-Q4

350

156

53%

74 Days

Thus far in fiscal year 2021, which began Sept. 1, we have seen a 37% decline in major gift solicitations. However, because we increased our yield and improved the time-to-close gifts so significantly, we’re only 9% behind last year with respect to the number of major gifts raised.

We’re barely behind last year through the first quarter of the year. In fact, we raised more major gifts in October (28) than in any of the past three years (25, 24, and 26, respectively) despite a big drop in solicitations that has persisted since mid-March. This fact is even more surprising as we have fewer major gift officers on our team this year compared to the same time last year.

Number of Solicitations

Number of Major Gifts

FY21 Q1

137

63

FY20 Q1

217

69

We don’t have precise explanations for these results, but I have a few hunches.

• First, donors who are capable of giving now may feel particularly motivated given the impact of the pandemic and/or the efforts by universities to address racial inequality.
• Second, I suspect many, if not most, of the major donors to Northwestern during the past nine months are thoroughly engaged prospects and, therefore, negotiating gifts with fundraisers they’ve known for a while. In other words, these are not new donors. They’re donors who know our institution well and are confident in our ability to execute successfully on the programs they’re funding across campus.

Proximity Matters

The pandemic also shifted travel and our in-person interactions with donors. Northwestern has offices in Evanston, Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco, and our team had, prior to the pandemic, analyzed local and regional major gift work. Those insights proved interesting amid COVID-19.

Dan Zarlenga, associate director of our prospect research and management team, analyzed proximity and major gift work, learning that regional prospects—those that require travel—took 12% longer to close than local major gifts. Not surprisingly, local donors who made major gifts had 20% more engagement (or visits) with proposal managers than regional donors.

In fact, when fundraisers made fewer than three trips to a particular region, it took 23% longer for fundraisers to close major gifts in these regions. Furthermore, when fundraisers are able to spend more time meeting with donors over a shorter period, the amount of the gift is much closer to the ask amount—thus larger—when compared with donors who get less attention because they are not within close proximity of fundraisers.

This analysis had nothing to do with our efforts during the pandemic, but Dan was able to make some creative suggestions in the context of our current work paradigm. His takeaways:

• We may supplement our in-person visits by employing the tools we’ve used during COVID-19—such as Zoom meetings—to improve our time-to-close and increase the scale of major gifts.
• We may also engage prospects who live in areas too remote to visit regularly by deploying virtual engagement strategies and regular Zoom check-ins.
• Additionally, Dan’s analysis helps to justify the cost of our remote offices in New York City and San Francisco—and the advantages of a remote staffing model.
• Moreover, we should consider hiring additional fundraisers to work from home in other key regions where we have a critical mass of prospects. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that we can be highly productive fundraisers in a remote environment.

Challenges and Looking Ahead

While we have been able to maintain our fundraising thus far without a significant drop in major gifts—in spite of a steep decline in solicitations—the numbers will likely eventually catch up to us. Even a continued improvement in yield and time-to-close can only do so much, and I expect that we will see a slowdown in major gift activity this winter.

In particular, our international fundraising work—with some notable exceptions—has taken a significant hit. Raising money outside the U.S., especially in Asia and Europe, requires more personal interaction and social capital. Since international fundraising has become an ever-increasing portion of our overall effort during the past decade, we will continue to see fewer gifts from international donors until we can get back on airplanes.

Still, as new vaccines are administered and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m optimistic that we’ve learned more about our work processes and have identified some new and innovative ways to improve our work.