Membership vs. Major Gifts at Arts Organizations: Campbell Chat
Sometimes the best way to answer a question is to look at it from another perspective. Our Campbell Chats bring together our diverse team to talk about the toughest questions facing nonprofits today. By looking at these questions from several points of view, we share our expertise with each other—and with the nonprofit world!
Duncan Reilly, Marketing and Business Development Associate: Welcome! Today we’re focusing on one broader topic: Arts organizations’ membership programs and how they integrate with major giving programs.
First question: what keeps membership and major gifts teams from working together? Are they just talking past each other or is something else going on?
Charlotte Cottier, Senior Consultant, Communications: I feel like it’s an issue of different goals. Attendance vs. relationships and major gifts.
Taylor Schmidt, Consultant, Strategic Information Services: I agree with Charlotte. From a data perspective, working with a large population of members in aggregate can be very different than working with a smaller population of major donors in someone's portfolio where there are one-on-one relationships that take place (mostly) outside of a database.
Cassie Carter, Senior Consultant: I think that the membership staff fear that the patrons will be insulted if they get asked to give, so they want to set up a firewall.
