The Value of a Good Name: Replacing Annual Giving with Omnichannel Giving

This article first appeared on Don Hasseltine's Coach's Corner on June 3, 2024

"Your name is one of the most important pieces of your identity. It is the thing that you own. It is attached to every piece of work that you put into the world. Your name holds power when you walk into a room. No two people with the same name are the same person. It’s important that, like everything else you grow to love in life, your name is something you appreciate as well."

George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue

As spring comes into full swing, organizations are working hard to update donors on the impact of their past giving and nudging donors to consider renewing their support. These efforts happen across all aspects of an advancement office but are particularly busy for our colleagues who work in what we generally refer to within the industry as our Annual Giving and/or Annual Fund program. This program area works with donors who typically decide annually to make current use gifts (i.e., the dollar raised today is spent tomorrow), primarily with no restricted purpose, and are typically modest in size (often below $10,000). 

The good work of these colleagues cannot be underscored enough. They are the main team whose work raises the visibility of the causes about which donors care so deeply, and they highlight the impact that giving through an organization can have on that cause. In the process, this team often provides opportunities for the majority of non-donors to become donors, thus beginning what we all hope will become a life-long journey with the institution. Over their lifetime, these donors will likely work with other advancement colleagues, ranging from our donor relations and engagement team to our gift planning colleagues.

The traditional approach to annual giving of raising unrestricted resources has been floundering for many years- participation rates have dipped precipitously, and donors increasingly look for evidence of how their gifts are making a difference. Further, donors expect a more personal and connected relationship than they experience in other aspects of their lives. The Amazoning of life requires the annual fund to improve the donor experience by giving agency to donors and meeting their desires of how they want to engage.

The changes I’m referencing include but are not limited to, the following.

• Accepting gifts that are recurring monthly (i.e., referred to as sustainers or monthly donors) or pledged over multiple years. A quick review of many institutional giving pages now shows donors the option to make recurring gifts and/or multiyear pledges. This change is so helpful because donors can rest assured that they will not miss making a gift, organization appreciate the ability to budget better based on the assurance that gifts will be received in future years. 

• Accepting gifts with restrictions. The annual Giving/Annual Fund program originally asked donors to contribute unrestricted funds. But, as donor confidence in nonprofit institutions has slipped, donors prefer to give funds with restrictions to programs or purposes. A benefit of allowing donors to make these restrictions is that the donors -- even at smaller dollar amounts – still give more than if they had made a small unrestricted gift.

• Accepting gifts that are for endowments or used over more than the current fiscal year. Again, donors who ask the institution to use even their smaller gifts that are co-mingled with larger ones over a longer period are both clearer about what impact their gifts are having and help institutions augment the dedicated funding over a more predictable period. 

• Accepting larger gifts. This change is motivated by organizations that want to engage donors in meaningful ways even when the donor can only give at levels below what is considered a major gift. Over the past few decades, the definition of a major gift has risen from approximately $10,000 or $25,000 -- payable over one and five years --to at least $100,000 or $250,000 in most higher education shops. Donors willing to consider gifts above $10,000 typically expect to have a personal contact at the institution to negotiate their gifts as a major donor would expect.  Thus, annual giving teams have added frontline giving officers to secure and steward such gifts.

• Accepting gifts using a host of new digital and social media channels. These changes reflect a more digitally oriented donor population and continue to evolve as new technology is introduced. 

• Becoming inclusive in engaging donors from diverse communities and lived experiences. This change encompasses how higher education has sought to move beyond strictly fundraising from alumni based in America. Universities and Colleges are engaging with and inviting investments in the institution from faculty, staff, parents, and other unaffiliated community members, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, religion, or nationality. 

• To accommodate all of these changes, the program area within advancement increasingly forms either a cross-functional, matrixed team or an umbrella under which the staff has expanded to include not only the direct mail and phonathon, but also:

  • front-line fundraisers (especially for leadership giving, which is typically gifts between $10,000 and up to $100,000) who work face-to-face with donors to engage them and negotiate gifts;

  • engagement and stewardship professionals who develop compelling in-person and online events;

  • marketing/comms professionals who develop social media content, in addition to traditional publications (e.g., newsletters, magazines, annual reports, etc.), who are skilled in communications methods AND know the technology for posting and optimizing views, click-throughs, etc. And last but not least:

  • data analysts who are well versed in analyzing the digital data generated by clicks combined with more typical data generated from prospect research to modify segments for more personalized engagement and communications. 

Given these changes, should we now consider using a different name for their work to clarify just how fundamental they are to a strong advancement office? I made the change from the annual fund/annual giving team name to Omnichannel when I worked at Teacher’s College and found that the ability to put together a team that could work in spaces beyond traditional annual fund roles played a big role in our success.

I can anticipate some pushback. For instance, Omnichannel sounds too technical, or donors won’t know what exactly the person working on this team does. Still others may feel that advancement at all levels is about donor engagement and facilitating that engagement, thus continuing to use “giving” and “philanthropy” may emphasize the wrong aims of the team. I see both of these points as intertwined. First, many others in the field have written about how changes are precipitating a need to re-evaluate what we call ourselves (e.g., fundraisers? Development professionals?  Advancement officers? Engagement liaisons? etc.). Based on my interactions with donors, they have appreciated the clarity and transparency of seeing “giving” or “philanthropy” in staff titles because the donors know – and staff also disclose – that the organization and donor are seeking a mutual relationship where both can work together to achieve shared outcomes. And in the process, part of the donor’s work will be through their choice of whether to invest through the organization. The omnichannel portion of the team’s name or in one’s title is no more or less technical than Annual Fund or Annual Giving have been. The advantage, however, is that omnichannel – omni = all, channel = mode or medium of engagement – is more descriptive of what the team is doing.

What do you think about this change?