To meet the growing demand for strategies to accelerate major giving program results, the Philanthropy Leadership Council launched a national survey of major gift officers (MGOs) at hospitals and health systems. The survey aimed to isolate the ingredients for high-achievement by analyzing the performance goals, results, and day-to-day activities of a diverse sample of MGOs.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the industry’s best MGOs are not necessarily the most tenured or the highest paid, nor are they employed by the largest organizations. Instead, high-performing MGOs demonstrate several shared—and replicable—behaviors that enable them to achieve big results.

This research report uses survey data to isolate the three most productive behaviors of the industry’s top MGOs and delivers best practice guidance for engineering them at your organization.

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Top MGOs start more new relationships

High-performing gift officers spend a larger proportion of their time engaging with new prospects relative to their peers. The result? They add new life into the front of the pipeline. Use the following tactics to engineer that behavior at your organization:

Tactic 1: Give MGOs a reason to qualify new prospects (p. 21)

Tactic 2: Scope a role to focus on discovery (p. 23)

Tactic 3: Design an environment that improves call efforts (p. 25)

Top MGOs prioritize quality interactions

High-performing gift officers know how to make the most of their interactions with prospects and donors. By focusing on value-oriented moves, they are more productive, activate more relationships, and require less visits to close a gift. Use the following tactics to prescribe high-value moves at your organization:

Tactic 4: Source great moves from top gift officers (p. 32)

• Related resources:
• • Legacy Health’s Move and Touch Definitions: A guide provided to gift officers with criteria for tracking prospect moves and stages
  • Moves Management Interview Guide: Ask MGOs at your organization the right questions to identify and codify the activities that drive results
  • Moves Prescription Worksheet: Document and circulate the specific moves that MGOs should focus on to advance prospects through each stage of the cycle

Tactic 5: Involve prospects in planning milestone moves (p. 34)

• Related resource:
• • Pre-Visit Call Checklist: Set a bilateral agenda for an upcoming visit with a pre-visit call

Top MGOs maintain momentum in their portfolios

High-performing gift officers maintain momentum throughout their portfolios, limiting pipeline clogs and leakage in the process. To engineer this behavior, use the following three tactics to make gift officers aware of stagnating relationships and plot interventions to promote reengagement:

Tactic 6: Identify internal benchmarks for moves efficiency (p. 41)

• Related resource:
• • Step-by-Step Moves Efficiency Analysis Tool: Use this tool to guide your own analysis into moves management efficiency every step of the way

Tactic 7: Set automatic flags for at-risk prospects (p. 43)

Tactic 8: Triage interventions with at-risk prospects (p. 45)

• Related resource:
• • Modernizing Donor Engagement: 11 best practices on creating more personalized experiences for non-major donors, closing the gap between donors' capacity and actual giving, and surfacing better prospects

More details from the survey

For a summary of all data collected in the 2017 survey of major gift officers, download the following appendix.

  Download appendix

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