Use this template to take the fear out of donor visits

Donors ask hard questions before investing in colleges and universities: What am I supporting? What is the long-term plan? What will the results be?And academic partners have the answers. Yet integrating academic partners into donor visits is a tricky business—especially if it is a faculty member’s first donor interaction. Faculty may be anxious about saying something inappropriate. Donors can be unpredictable. So major gift officers (MGOs) are left to make sure that all sides are clearly communicating with one another—and then hope for a positive outcome. To move beyond these awkward conversations, faculty members need to understand their role in the visit, and need to feel comfortable asking questions upfront, so that there are as few surprises as possible when the donor is present. Yet traditional pre-visit briefings are inconsistent, or worse, do not even occur due to time and scheduling constraints. Instead of briefing faculty during the car ride to the donor meeting, use EAB’s Pre-Visit Briefing Template to provide key details to faculty with plenty of time for discussion before the visit. Navigate pre-visit conversations Any briefing before a visit should mention critical background information, such as why the meeting is happening, and what is expected of all participants. But to make them even more useful, be sure to share difficult questions that a donor may ask and awkward situations that may arise. This allows academic partners to prepare answers ahead of time, instead of being surprised on the spot. They can also practice passing a difficult question to the MGO, so that they do not feel they have to have an answer for everything. This alleviates the stress of being in an…