I am the Development Director of the Art Museum and I am currently planning a capital campaign. Not so long ago I was informed that there is a person whom I could include into my donor opportunities list for my future campaign. This person is an older gentleman, the CFO and a shareholder in a large international corporation, Mr. Stayquiet. He seems to be rather generous since he recently pledged $750000 for church building fund. The pledge was done anonymously, so technically I am not supposed to know about it. This might raise doubts concerning whether or not I should approach him as a potential donor for my museum. Yet, in my opinion, the situation does not seem that delicate.
First of all, if Mr. Stayquiet really wanted to stay anonymous, his pledge would be done without the fundraisers knowing where the money came from. Instead, one of the fundraisers, who also happens to be my spouse, ended up sharing the information about the pledge with me. This way, it seems like Mr. Stayquiet did not really try to disguise his persona. To my mind, it does not matter where I learnt the information about this gentleman – from my spouse, from a colleague, or just waiting in line at Starbucks. The fact is that potentially this person is a donor for my museum and I do not see any particular reason why I should not approach him. I know his name, I am aware about his workplace, his fondness of fine arts, and his ability to pledge. This is a good enough basis for me to conduct a focused research, look up this man in the Internet, collect more information about him, his schedule, maybe even his personality. This would provide me with advantage designing the most successful ways of approaching him and capturing his attention.
Of course, talking to Mr. Stayquiet I should never mention that I know about his pledge for the church building fund, but the fact that me and him belong to the same congregation could be rather helpful. In my opinion, approaching Mr. Stayquiet equals to dealing with any other potential donor since it does not always happen that funders come up to the raisers and offer gifts. Besides, the research of a donor takes place in one hundred per cent of cases. I am absolutely convinced that I should approach Mr. Stayquiet and encourage him to start working with our museum. In fact, I believe that sharing the same church and his interest in fine arts make him an excellent candidate for donor opportunities list. I believe that approaching this particular funder would most likely result in a great success.
In conclusion, even though I obtained the information about Mr. Stayquiet by accident, I am going to include him into the donor opportunities list for the Art Museum. The facts I know about this man make him a likely future funder for the museum, and in my opinion, an opportunity like this should not be wasted. Of course, I should not tell Mr. Stayquiet who was my initial source of information about him was as it would be unethical and tactless. Besides, it is obvious that this information could have been acquired from anywhere since Mr. Stayquiet seems like a rather well-known gentleman who does not hide his social status and position.