The Myth of ‘Engage 7 Times Before Making the Ask’

There’s some advice going around out there that I’d like to debunk: you do not have to talk to a person seven times before asking them for a gift. 

I say this because I have helped nonprofits acquire hundreds of thousands of new donors over my career, gifts from people the nonprofit had never contacted before the moment they made the gift. 

Just last year we helped a nonprofit launch a brand new monthly giving program.  They have acquired 3,300 new donors in the last year, and approximately 95% of those new donors had never heard of the organization prior to giving their first gift. 

I have experience acquiring new donors for small to mid-size nonprofits who most donors have never heard of before, through email, direct mail, television, radio, telemarketing and face-to-face.

Just last Saturday I went to a small fundraiser for a person running for local office.  (I had nothing to do with the event; I was in the audience.)  There were about 40 people there.  None of the potential donors had ever met the candidate before.  Yet the campaign left with a meaningful number of donations and new donors.

This is not sorcery; it’s mostly being confident enough to ask.  And some of it is knowing how to ask well.

I suspect that the myth of “you have to engage with a donor 7 times before asking them for a gift” hangs around because asking feels risky.  And the idea that “we need to warm them up first” feels like good relationship-building.  But the data doesn’t support it, and in the meantime, gifts are being left on the table. 

Instead, please know that it happens every day.  It’s happening right now.  It’s probably happening to your donors right now.

Be confident.  Assume abundance.  Make the ask.

You’ll be glad you did.    

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P.S.  Are there a couple vanishingly small contexts where the “7 times” advice holds?  Sure.  If you run into a potential major donor at the grocery store, it’s not the right time to ask them for a gift.  If you’re talking to the grants officer from a foundation for the very first time, it’s not the right time to ask them for a gift.  But don’t take those contexts and apply them to your event, or your email list, or the mail, etc.