Build a structure that will sustain your major gift program’s increased success
Learn proven strategies and apply state-of-the-art techniques to immediately close more major gifts.
Give your team personalized coaching to hone their skills and boost their results, fast!
Professional fundraisers rave about the ROI this program delivers. You will, too.
Learn proven methods to close significantly more gifts, in any economic environment:
Get Breakthrough Results!
Join the 2023 Major Gifts Coaching Intensive.
Learn faster gift closing techniques for major/principal donors.
Get to the gift conversation more quickly with your largest donors.
Develop skills for direct conversations with mega donors.
Learn to efficiently determine their interest and giving capacity.
Learn advanced discovery and qualification methods.
Reveal new major gift prospects capable of funding your mission.
“Honestly, this was a game changer… It is the best investment we’ve ever made!”
Equip Your Team for Transformative Results
Better strategy. Sharper skills. Faster results.
- Expand major and principal gift programs to realize significant revenue
- Start planning for a capital campaign
- Receive hands-on personalized guidance and support to ensure success
- Learn the best practice building blocks of an ongoing, stable major gifts initiative
- Install a disciplined prospect management system to keep the focus on your top donor prospects
- Raise ever-larger gifts to fund your institution’s work
- Help your board members understand their role in major gift success
The major gifts methodology you’ll learn can transform any team’s results, no matter the size or type of your nonprofit.
We’re closing amazing gifts because of the major gifts course! For example, a donor recently offered us a gift of $1 million, paid over 4 years. Unbelievably, I did not even make a formal ask! She said she had very much enjoyed the change in our communications, because we had become much more transparent. In terms of a return on investment, the major gifts course is a home run!
My big news is that I received a $100,000 gift from a somewhat demanding donor – without an ask! I followed all of your rules in working with Major Donors, patiently listening and sharing gratitude. Later, she said to me, “You have made me feel heard. I didn’t feel that way before. So, I want to make a $100k gift in support of your new leadership.”
We teach Fundraising
by the Numbers.
You’ll know how to structure your team, implement accountability, and focus on the data that matters most for success.
Learn this proven Major Gifts approach to successfully manage the work and close more major gifts.
Learn & Practice New Strategies in Real Time
You and your team can put your learning to use immediately, practicing new skills in real time with your donors. We ask that you and your team commit to:
- Attending the seven core instructional webinars and three group coaching sessions
- Setting aside at least four days a month (1 day a week) for planning and donor visits
- Personally making discovery and cultivation visits to prospective donors
- Making a financial investment in the course
- Bringing board members to the optional presentation designed for them
What you get with your investment.
The Major Gifts Intensive 2023 is a live, advanced, fast-paced program. With your investment your team of up to 4 members receives:
Live, Interactive Training
Seven LIVE advanced webinars with plenty of time for personalized, direct Q&A
Private Coaching
Three private 45-minute coaching sessions for your team with Beth Ann Locke or Gail Perry, focusing major gift strategy.
Group Coaching
Three group coaching sessions so your team can learn together from other colleagues in a small cohort of similarly-sized organizations
Assignments & Accountability
To move you forward and keep you accountable to success
Ongoing Support
Email access to your coaches at any time during the course
CFRE Credit
for 20 course hours
“We joined your Major Gifts Program last year and smashed our targets as we followed your guidance. Last week, we met with two of our lovely loyal donors, and told them about our building plans in the hope they would plan their future giving with us in mind.
Today they called to say they are giving us $500K towards our building fund!!! No-one has ever given us $500K!!! We are so excited by this gift and grateful for the training we received from you. Thank you for giving us the tools and confidence to do this work!”
What will you learn?
2023’s curriculum is advanced and fast-paced. Here is a snapshot of what you and your team will take away:
1: Empower Your Institution for Success: Your Culture, Team, Mindset, Team
- Building support for major gift fundraising across your institution
- The million-dollar major gifts mindset
- Creating and supporting a major gifts team
- Emotional intelligence as a fundraising tool
- Must-have skills for individual success
2: Creating Structure to Support Your Major Gift Program: Prospect Management and Pipeline by the Numbers
- Building the Major Gift Plan
- Creating structure and accountability to measure your progress
- Establishing the right metrics to lead you to success
- Creating a predictable model for major gifts
- Estimating the value and timing of your prospect portfolio
- Analytics: managing your data for results
- Major gift officer performance in real time, making midcourse corrections
3: Identifying Major Gift Prospects and Creating Actionable Discovery Plans
- Understanding the Discovery Call Playbook
- The role of prospect research: Finding the high net worth donor
- Qualifying your donors: net worth vs philanthropic track record
- Advanced discovery and qualification skills all fundraisers need to know
- Identifying and segmenting your priority prospects
- Power discovery questions that reveal your donor’s passions, interests and hot buttons
4: Mastering the Ultimate Skills that Build Major Gift Donor Relationships
- Sales vs relationships
- Mastering the soft skills of major gift fundraising
- Getting appointments in the virtual environment
- The Advice Visit
- Deep Listening skills that yield mega gifts
- Advanced prospect management skills to optimize relationships with the right people
5: Deepen the Donor Relationship: Create Strategy that Leads to Transformational Gifts
- Mastering the zoom visit: virtual etiquette
- Helping the donor to enjoy her visit with you
- Moving the donor along in their interest and enthusiasm
- Power conversations that open the door for a Gift Conversation
- How to ask your donor the tough questions
6: Preparing Your Donor For a Transformational Gift and Accelerating the Ask
- Understanding your donor’s triggers: Why would they give?
- Opening up the Conversational Ask
- Nuances of dealing with high net worth individuals
- Reading the donor’s giving signals and cues
- Testing for the right dollar amount
- The dynamic questions that lead your donor to offer a gift without an ask
7 : The Conversational Ask and Closing Techniques
- Nailing the gift conversation itself
- Five sure-fire approaches for a transformational ask
- Breaking down the steps of a formal ask visit
- Step-by-step permission-based asking
- The Oblique Ask
- Advanced asking and closing techniques
+ 5 Bonus Sessions
Meet our Expert Trainers and Coaches
Gail Perry MBA CFRE
Gail is founder of the Gail Perry Group and an international fundraising leader, keynote speaker, trainer and author with 30+ years’ experience. She’s keynoted fundraising conferences around the world, and worked with thousands of board members and fundraising teams to boost their fundraising skills and inspire them to change the world.
Dr. Kathryn Gamble
Kathryn leads the Gail Perry consulting team, and has decades of experience in successful major gifts and capital campaign fundraising. She has built several fundraising programs to new heights. As our data and analytics expert, she created the Fundraising by the Numbers methodology.
Beth Ann Locke
Working in the U.S. and Canada for 30 years, Beth Ann has helped nonprofits raise over $75 million. Now a consultant and fundraising coach, she’s been a champion of relationship fundraising and gratitude. As Director of the Gail Perry Group Academy, Beth Ann is the private coaching lead in the Major Gifts Intensive.
“The major gifts intensive course is the best thing I ever did for my career. The curriculum is so comprehensive—I learned something from every part of it: from the psychological ideas, to moves management, new ideas on discovery and especially the permission-based approach to asking.
This course helped me navigate the large volume of donors at the major gift and principal gift level. Now, I’m able to better connect with my donors—particularly “skeptical” donors with high capacity.
I would tell any fundraising team that if they want to be successful in their careers in gift planning, major gifts and principal gifts, this is the course they need to take.”
Barbara Mari, Senior Philanthropic Advisor, Principal Gifts
ALSAC/St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital
Make a Transformational Investment
Get ready to transform your institution’s major gift fundraising fortunes and lead your team to success!
Your team’s investment of
$5,900 equips up to 4 registrants
from your organization with new gift-closing skills via this 4-month course.
Learning alongside your team members helps bring consistency to your major gift strategy and reinforce your new learnings. If you would like to register more than 4 people, we can structure a group rate for your team. Reach out to find out more!
Payment plans are also available.
For any questions about the course please contact coaching@gailperry.com.
Start your team’s transformation now!
Discover the transformative power of our Major Gifts coaching
One of my best “happy ending” stories involves a donor with whom I spent two years repairing a hurt relationship. She came back with a gift nearly 80% above her previous large gift two and a half years earlier— and revealed she had left us in her will for a $2.5 million bequest gift. All of this was due to careful stewardship techniques and good conversation starters taken from Gail Perry Group’s Major Gifts Coaching course.
As Penn Foundation embarked on the first capital campaign in many years, it was immensely helpful to be in the Major Gifts Intensive. I am delighted to report that we just passed the $1.2 million mark to purchase and renovate a building that is adjacent to our campus. How exciting to see the tools and strategies we learned from Gail and Kathryn be turned into a project that will allow us to continue our mission.
What sets Gail and her team apart from their competition is that they get right to the point and get the participants doing the work and applying the principles quickly. Plus, they are a fun and caring group of people!
Gail, we have had our best year-end ever! We exceeded last year’s totals by an amazing 50%! Our investment in your training paid off in spades for our organization and I just wanted to share our success story!
I’m absolutely thrilled with the results, we raised $120,000 in new major gifts and increased gifts from our major donors, in just a few short months.
The webinars were an extremely valuable educational tool. Thank you for helping us bring our fundraising to a new level.
Our biggest takeaway was to listen to donors. This was very powerful for our board. We secured a $600K gift just by listening – with no ask!
We closed a $700k gift because of Gail’s coaching for a major gift ask!
We raised over $400k this year in the program! No more donor fatigue! It was wonderful to have direct access to Gail and get direct and personal feedback. I feel like I am getting supported in a personal way, and the advice was really targeted to my personal situation.
Nothing quite compares to the expert advice that you have shared in response to my questions, whether that be in email or during a coaching call. Not only have you provided valuable perspective on the situations I have encountered, you have also helped me to develop a greater understanding of the many moving parts in large public educational institution fundraising.
All your fundraising lessons gave me the confidence and boost to go the distance. This is my second major gift so far. Last year I was able to close a $25k gift from a Héma-Québec supplier and, he showed for another $25K this fall!
During a thank you call with a donor who had been giving $1,000 faithfully, I used your cultivation approaches, and she said she wanted to write a check for $100,000! The biggest plus is that I now recognize opportunities to ask for a gift when they come up on the phone. It has become very natural for me.The major gifts course was truly an investment that has paid off!
Join these Successful Non-Profits:
Major Gifts Intensive Coaching Clients 2015-21
4KIDS of South Florida
Achievement Centers for Children & Families
Action Against Hunger
Adirondack Health Foundation
Alpha Sigma Tau Foundation
ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
American Kidney Fund
American Rivers
Animal Rescue League of Iowa
Australian Himalayan Foundation
BANANAS
Baptist Children’s Homes of NC
Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry, Inc. (BEAM)
Blue Deer Center
Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Central Piedmont
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta
Calvert Marine Museum
Campbell County Healthcare Foundation
CARE House of Oakland County
Caritas of Austin
CASA Child Advocates of Montgomery County
Catholic Social Services
CHI St. Alexius Health Williston Foundation
Chicago Commons
Children’s Advocacy Center for Denton County
Children’s Hope Alliance
Christian Library International
Citizen Advocacy Center
City Rescue Mission
Congo Initiative
Connelly School of the Holy Child
Cornerstone Community Housing
Crocker Art Museum
Cross International
Crossroads School, Inc.
De Benneville Pines, Inc.
Eagle’s Nest Foundation
East Carolina University (ECU Foundation)
Eyes Ears Nose and Paws
Families Together
Fannin County Children’s Center
Farmer Foodshare
Fleisher Art Memorial
For Kids’ Sake
Free Will Baptist Children Home
Friends of Bonobos/Lola ya Bonobo
Fuller Center for Housing > International- *Americus*
Gathering Waters: Wisconsin’s Alliance for Land Trusts
Georgia Organics
Global Autism Project
Global Fund for Children
GrieveWell
Habitat for Humanity of Bucks County
Halachic Organ Donor Society
Halton Health Care
Harlem RBI
Hawaii Children’s Action Network
Hema-Quebec Foundation
Henry Ford Health System
Historic Columbus
HODS
Home Sweet Home Ministries, Inc.
Hospice Giving Foundation
Idaho Youth Ranch
Indiana 4-H Foundation at Purdue University
Institute for Community Living
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International House
Jhamtse International
Johnston Community College Foundation, Inc.
Kehillah Jewish Education Fund
Kindred Community Farm Sanctuary
Knoxville Habitat for Humanity
Koman Kansas City
Kuumbwa Jazz
La Clinica Del Pueblo
Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking
Ladies Union Benevolent Association dba Noyes Home for Children and Meadowview
Lomakatsi Restoration Project
Los Angeles Conservancy
Loudoun Therapeutic Riding
Maine Maritime Museum
Make A Difference – Wisconsin
Maximum Accessible Housing of Ohio
McDaniel College
Me Fine Foundation, Inc.
Medicine Hat & District Health Foundation
Methodist Senior Services
Methodist Retirement Communities
Misericordia University
Montana Audubon
Mount Paran Christian School
Museum of Nebraska Art
Muttville Senior Dog Rescue
NAMI Wake County
Nassau County Council on Aging
National Children’s Advocacy Center
National Council of Jewish Women of Australia
National Trust for Canada
Nashville Public Library Foundation
NC Arboretum
NC Study Center
NCJWA
Next Step Ministries
North Carolina Outward Bound School
Oakland Symphony
Options Domestic and Sexual Violence Services
Outlook Nebraska
Ovarian Cancer Canada
Peace Education Project
Penn Foundation
Preston High School
Prevent Blindness Wisconsin
ProKids
Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research
Randolph County Partnership for Children
Red Door Family Shelter
Restore NYC
Rheumatology Research Foundation
San Diego Center for Children
Seva Foundation
Sherwood Community Services
Sight Center of NW PA
Smoky Hills Public Television
Snow City Arts
Sojourner Family Peace Center
Somerville College, Oxford
SouthEast Lancaster Health Services
St. Francis Center
St. Joan Antida High School
St. Timothy’s School
Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation
The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts
The Dressage Foundation
The Emily Program Foundation
The Fuller Center for Housing
The International School
The Kilgoris Project
The Mental Health Association of Westchester
The Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation
The St. Francis Center
The University of Montana Western Foundation
The Women’s Center of Tarrant County
Three Rivers Land Trust
Tree House Humane Society
UCHealth Memorial Hospital Foundation
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
Unlock Ministries
USO of NC
Valley Conservation Council, Inc.
Volunteers of America Michigan
WARM
Warren Easton Sr High School Foundation Inc
Washington State University
WaterAid America
WhidbeyHealth Foundation
Women’s Earth Alliance
YMCA of Northwest North Carolina
Youth Homes
Frequently asked questions.
When does the program begin?
The program will begin February 28, 2023, with Orientation, and our first instructional webinar will be March 7th.
One registration includes up to four team members. What if I have five members who want to participate?
If you have more than four people, please contact us for custom pricing.
What if we want additional private coaching sessions for our team?
We would enjoy working more closely with your team to ensure success. Please contact us for custom coaching pricing.
How long are the webinars?
Each webinar is designed to last 60-70 minutes, with an additional 5-10 minutes for open Q&A.
Will I get to meet the other participants?
Definitely! You will be assigned to a smaller cohort for the group coaching sessions and we will use breakout rooms so you can get to know your peers better.
For any questions about the course please don’t hesitate to contact coaching@gailperry.com.