Hi, I'm Terry Axelrod, the founder of Benevon.

Thank you for joining me for this brief overview of the Benevon Model, a systematic process for engaging and developing relationships with individual donors, who truly believe in your work and will support your organization for the long-term.

This model was developed at an inner-city school and can be customized to any organization that is committed to getting off the year to year fundraising treadmill and willing to follow this evidence-based, step by step process.

There are five key metrics or formulas that will make or break your success with the model. I'll point these out as we go along.

Potential donors enter the circle at STEP 1 by attending a Point of Entry Event, a sizzling, one-hour tour of your mission.

If you adopt this model, you'll be putting on at least two private Point of Entry Events per month, each one hosted by an Ambassador.

An Ambassador is a short-term volunteer who hosts and fills one private Point of Entry Event with ten or more guests, letting them know in advance that the goal of the Point of Entry is to get the word out about the organization. They will not be asked for money and they will receive one Follow-Up Call and to please be thinking of other people who might want to attend a similar event.

The Point of Entry inspires guests with a welcome from the Ambassador, a brief talk from your Visionary Leader, Stories, Myth-Busting Facts, and Needs without asking for money. It organizes your work into three broad areas of impact we call buckets. Guests should leave your Point of Entry inspired and thinking of other people they would want to have experience this event.

STEP 2 of the model is a one-on-one follow up call with every guest within two to three days made by a staff member we call the Team Leader, asking specific open-ended questions to gauge the guest's interest in becoming more involved and ideally becoming an Ambassador.

Our metric is that a minimum of one out of every ten Point of Entry guests should become an Ambassador and host a private Point of Entry within three months. Often groups generate more than one new Ambassador out of each Point of Entry.

Some guests will not want to become Ambassadors. They may express interest in a particular bucket area, in which case, they will come back for a subsequent private visit or programmatic event related to their area of interest. We call that a second date.

These ongoing contacts happen along what we call the Cultivation Superhighway. Some guests will tell you they do not wish to get more involved. You will Bless and Release those guests without ever asking them for money. We expect approximately 50 percent of the Point of Entry guests to be blessed and released.

STEP 3 is where we ask for money. We only ask the people who have attended a Point of Entry and have chosen to become more involved in some way. There are two ways to ask. One-on-one in person, and at the free one-hour Ask Event.

The purpose of the ASK EVENT is to launch and then grow your base of Multiple-Year Giving Society Donors, some of whom with personal cultivation will become more major donors over time.

Guests are invited to the Ask Event by the same person who invited them to attend the Point of Entry.

100% OF the Table Captains at the Ask Event must be people who served as successful Ambassadors in the prior 12 months. At least 40 percent of their guests must be the very same people who attended their Point of Entry event and have chosen to become more involved. These guests know that they will be asked to give at the Ask Event, but that there's no minimum and no maximum.

The program for the free one-hour Ask Event is tightly crafted with a welcome from a board member, a short emotional element, like, a poem or a song, and an inspiring Visionary Leader talk, a moving video with three stories showcasing your three bucket areas, and a live testimonial culminating in the last ten minutes with what we call the pitch, where people are invited to join your Multiple-Year Giving Society with three giving levels, starting at $1,000 a year for five years and going up from there.

There's also a fill in the blank spot for people to give whatever they'd like.

Our metric for Ask Event giving is that a minimum of ten percent of the guests will join the Multiple-Year Giving Society at one of the three levels. The average group we trained and coach raises $200,000 at their first Ask Event, including pledges.

To develop larger individual donors, we teach our groups to cultivate one or more donors for a Leadership or Challenge Gift, which is announced at the Ask Event, as well.

The day after the Ask Event, you're on the phone calling your new Multiple-Year Donors, thanking them for their generous gifts and asking for their feedback about the event.

Many will tell you that the Ask Event had them think of other people who should know about your organization's work. That's when you can invite them to introduce those others by becoming an Ambassador and hosting a Point of Entry for their friends who might then be sitting at their table at the Ask Event next year.

Having these donors who have chosen to join your Multiple-Year Giving Society by pledging at least $1,000 a year for five years, lets you know which donors have committed to supporting your work over time. It lets you know where to focus your donor cultivation efforts.

We do that by inviting these Multiple-Year Donors to small, mission-focused free Feel-Good Cultivation Events at STEP 4 in the model, like an award ceremony or a school graduation, program related events you're already doing to reconnect these multi-year donors to your real work.

This Free Feel-Good Cultivation Event serves as a point of re-entry, and two days after these points of reentry, just like after a first time Point of Entry, you follow up, constantly deepening your relationship leading up to the next ask.

If you keep following this model over time, your base of Multiple-Year Donors will grow very organically.

At the school where the model was started, once we exceeded 100 donors in our Multiple-Year Giving Society, we were able to complete a Capital Campaign for a new building, raising $3.2 million in six months from 18 of the same donors that had just joined the Giving Society.

By the seventh year, we had over 500 donors in our Multiple-Year Giving Society, and we were able to complete an endowment campaign, raising $15 million from a subset of those same donors.

That $15 million, when invested wisely, threw off in interest enough money to cover our operating gap each year, allowing our little school to get off that year-to-year, hand-to-mouth treadmill.

In other words, these same donors, who make unrestricted gifts in your Multiple-Year Giving Society become the pool of donors you cultivate for capital, for endowment, and even restricted major gifts like the library or technology center at our school, allowing you to leave a legacy of a self-sustaining, mission-based, individual giving program for your favorite nonprofit organization.

So, there you have it, a brief overview of the Benevon Model for Sustainable Funding.

I hope you see how this model could work for you. We have many other resources available to help you learn more and share this approach with others on your team.

If you'd like more information, please contact us at info@benevon.com. We look forward to hearing from you.