Q: I have two questions about your fundraising plan, which we are implementing:

1. What cultivation plan do you recommend for the major one-year donors of $1,000 and above?
2. How and when should we ask our five-year donors to upgrade their pledge?

We appreciate your help.

Nancy in Tennessee

A: As for cultivating one-year donors of $1,000, I'd recommend you invite them to a Point of Re-Entry or what we call a Free Feel-Good Cultivation Event^™, either one-on-one or in a group. That becomes a Point of Entry^®, from which you can then follow up and continue cultivating following our basic model. There's a chapter about this in the book, Raising More Money—A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Lifelong Donors.

Multiple-Year Giving Society Donors should be given the opportunity to pay off and increase their pledge at the second year's Ask Event^™. The pitch script is modified to allow for that. If you don't have a second-year Ask Event, you can ask people to upgrade in person or (less preferably) by mail. I suspect you are doing the Ask Event again, so that would be the best place.

Terry