Gift Range Charts

Fundraising can be challenging for any organization, especially when you don’t have a clear understanding of how to meet your fundraising goals. To assess the viability of your goals and determine exactly what it takes to meet them, you’ll need to develop a gift range chart.

A gift range chart lays out the different gift sizes and number of gifts you’ll need at each value to turn your aspirations into reality. Often, nonprofits will develop gift range charts for large-scale fundraising campaigns, such as capital campaigns, in order to structure their plans to solicit donations from major donors, mid-level donors, and small donors.

To make your fundraising goals more manageable and illustrate to your board how you’ll reach these goals, you’ll need to have the basics of gift range charts down. In this guide, we’ll go over everything your nonprofit needs to know to add gift range charts into your fundraising plan, including:

• What are gift range charts?
• When are gift range charts a helpful resource?
• How do you create a gift range chart?
• How do you use a gift range chart in your fundraising?

With a detailed gift range chart, you can approach any fundraising campaign with confidence and rally your team around your goal. Let’s begin.

What are gift range charts?

Gift range charts show how many gifts, and of which sizes, your nonprofit needs in order to reach a fundraising goal. It takes what you’ve learned during your fundraising feasibility study and lays out a roadmap for getting to your goal by organizing needed donations into fundraising tiers.

The basic format of a gift range chart includes:

• tiered gift amounts;
• the number of donors you would need to give at each tier;
• the number of prospects you’ve identified for each tier; and,
• how much of your total goal you need to raise at each tier.

These charts help guide your donor acquisition strategy by showing you where to allocate resources and focus your energy. Additionally, this is helpful when thinking through your stewardship plans to solicit larger gifts from your major donors and prospects.

When are gift range charts a helpful resource?

Organizing your needed donations into a gift range chart can be a helpful exercise anytime your organization is planning a strategic campaign.

These charts are often associated with major campaigns, like when you develop one with the help of a capital campaign advisor for a major building project. However, gift range charts are not necessarily confined to that type of campaign only.

From annual fund and year-end giving initiatives to capital campaigns and other major fundraisers, a gift range chart provides you with a framework for measuring progress and focusing your efforts throughout the entire fundraising process. These charts can even be helpful outside of straightforward fundraising efforts, extending to the world of grantmaking.

One example is challenge grants, a common way that grantmakers offer funding these days. A gift range chart increases your chances to meet the challenge by breaking the goal into more manageable segments.

To secure grants, you need to instill confidence in grantmakers when soliciting funds. One way to do this is by generating a gift range chart with a plan of action, showing how you’ll meet their challenge over time.

How do you create a gift range chart?

Pre-tier research

Before you break out the Excel workbooks, you need to completely understand your goal. This is where a nonprofit feasibility study can help. During a feasibility study, a fundraising consultant will interview key organizational stakeholders and community leaders to determine the public’s perception of your nonprofit and support for the proposed project.

Aly Sterling Philanthropy’s guide to nonprofit feasibility studies recommends taking the following steps to lead an effective study:

1. Identify the problem, solution, and benefit of your proposed project. This way, you can ensure the project you're pursuing is relevant to your mission and worth the effort.
2. Nail down project details. Generate a working goal for your fundraising campaign and a clear purpose statement.
3. Hire a fundraising consultant. An expert consultant will conduct interviews with key stakeholders and collect unbiased feedback about your project details and goals. Using this information, the consultant will then identify improvement opportunities for your nonprofit so you can hone your fundraising plan and improve your internal operations.
4. Determine key stakeholders. Your stakeholders should have a vested interest in your organization’s success and actively contribute to your nonprofit’s mission. Good candidates include board members, major donors, volunteers in leadership roles, and business owners.
5. Develop a feasibility case for support. Develop a source document which covers the ins and outs of your fundraising campaign to share with stakeholders, including your project details, cost, purpose, and need.
6. Cultivate stronger relationships with supporters. Your feasibility study presents a prime opportunity to cultivate and steward relationships with donors. Help participants envision themselves as contributors to your project and thank them for their time after the interview process.
7. Ask the right feasibility study questions. The questions your consultant asks your interviewees should be specific and target your fundraising goal and project details. This way, you’ll gain invaluable insight that will help you finalize your campaign.
8. Accept the results. Once the interviews are complete, your fundraising consultant will determine whether you should move forward with this project. Plus, the results of your campaign can also point to ways you can strengthen your internal structure and bolster your nonprofit’s operations.
9. Prepare to move forward. If you get the go-ahead, your consultant will present an executive summary of how your organization can ready itself to take the campaign live. This will include identifying your staffing needs, recommendations for technology to add to your toolkit, and other key steps to solidify your fundraising strategy.

At this point, you’ll have a solid understanding of your fundraising goal and can feel confident that it’s within your organization’s reach.

Building your chart

Once you have your fundraising goal, it’s time to break this amount into a series of smaller, more achievable gift tiers. In general, there are a few rules to help guide the creation of your gift range chart.

For example, in terms of donation size, your highest fundraising tier should ideally comprise 10 to 20% of your total donations.

Further, when you’re estimating the needed prospects for each tier, you should include more than you actually need. If you need two donations from a certain tier and reach out to four prospective donors, you’re more likely to reach your goal for that tier.

It’s not only important to consider the number of prospects you’ll reach out to, but also how you’ll communicate your fundraising needs and inspire them to give. NXUnite’s guide to donation requests explains that solicitations that are personal, specific, and genuine will increase your chances of securing a gift. Pairing your gift range chart with a strong donor communication strategy can push you closer to meeting your goals.

Keep in mind that your feasibility study findings inform your gift range chart by telling you how to strategically distribute the gifts you need across fundraising tiers. Reviewing your feasibility study and the performance metrics of past campaigns with your fundraising consultant can give you solid insights to build your tiered strategy on.

How do you use a gift range chart in your fundraising?

The biggest benefit of incorporating a gift range chart and fundraising tiers into your strategy is that it gives your team a concrete starting point. Use your tiers and goals to guide your prospect research and solicitation strategies, then refer back to it throughout the campaign to make sure you’re on track to hit your goals.

However, any gift range chart you create has benefits far beyond simply showing you which and how many donors to reach out to. They’re also very useful as resources for gaining internal and external buy-in for your projects.

For example, these charts can help you:

• demonstrate to potential grantmakers how you plan to meet their challenge, instilling confidence and boosting your chances of success;
• encourage donors to give more to reach the next tier and have a major impact on your campaign; and,
• show donors the impact their gift will have in the bigger picture.

Gift range charts can provide your nonprofit with a variety of key benefits when it comes to leading any fundraising campaign. However, just because you have a well-built chart doesn’t mean that putting it into action is an easy process. A fundraising consulting firm can help you develop the strategy needed to reach the goals outlined in your chart.

Building a gift range chart is pivotal to meeting your fundraising goals and creating a strong fundraising plan. The next time you embark on a strategic fundraiser, consider the following action steps.