The Development Team

This is a team sport. These things play out over a long period of time.

Chris Richards, vice president of principal gifts

The development team for the UW-Madison includes many players:

  • University faculty, staff and administrators, including the chancellor
  • UW Foundation staff
  • Wisconsin Alumni Association staff
  • University students
  • Volunteers and donors

Alumni are the most loyal givers, but many others are also generous, including faculty emeriti, students’ parents and friends of the department.

In service-provider settings, grateful patients and their families often want to know how they can give back to those who helped them.

In what ways does the Foundation engage donors?

You put your confidence in what people are doing. It’s called trust.

Marv Conney, donor to the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research

Annual giving has become more critical as the University faces significant decreases in state funding. Leadership annual giving looks to those who can make gifts of $1,000 to $100,000 a year to become members of the 1848 Society. A multi-channel fall annual giving campaign will target all alumni through electronic and print media to significantly increase the pool of donors.

The development team establishes relationships with individual givers to encourage major gifts for individual schools, colleges and programs or campus-wide initiatives.

Gift planning provides options for those who would like to include the University in their estate plans, establish charitable remainder trusts, create annuity funds or make real estate gifts.

Corporate and Foundation Relations presents gift and grant opportunities to corporate and foundation grant makers.

The Math of Major Gifts- Part 1

  • Securing a gift of $100,000 or more for a project often requires 3 prospective givers.
  • On average, development directors make 9 meaningful contacts over a period of several years to close a major gift.
  • Finding 5 new major gifts is likely to require 3x9x5, or 135 meaningful contacts.

The Math of Major Gifts- Part 2

  • The largest 10 gifts to a campaign provide half the goal. If no one can identify those lead gifts, more donor identification and cultivation is needed.
  • For every 3 or 4 donors asked to support a campaign at a particular level, 1 will say yes. You need 30 or 40 possible candidates with the interest and capacity to give to “guarantee” 10 will say yes.