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The importance of cultivating donors respectfully and listening to them carefully paid off spectacularly for National Public Radio earlier this month. Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, died in October and left NPR $200 million. While the size of the gift is stunning, what is important for our purposes is the cultivation process that led to the gift.

Kroc never visited NPR's home office in Washington, DC. She was a loyal listener to KPBS, the NPR affiliate in San Diego. Kroc met KPBS's development director, Stephanie Bergsma, after Bergsma's gravely ill husband wrote a letter to her from a hospice that the Krocs had founded. Kroc and Bergsma became friends. They chatted frequently about public radio, but Kroc rarely commented on specific programs and never tried to throw her weight around. (This is important: major gift prospects should be courted with intelligence and imagination, but should not be under the illusion that they can affect the policies and programs of the nonprofit).

Kroc made modest gifts to the station and preferred to remain anonymous. She did, however, tell Bergsma that if it served the station's fundraising purposes to use her name, they should by all means do so. When Kroc told. Bergsma that she would like to understand how public radio works on a national scale, Bergsma contacted NPR President Kevin Klose and Executive Vice President Ken Stern, who flew to San Diego and met with Kroc. They had two further meetings with her, the last on Kroc's birthday in August. At this last meeting, Kroc told them: "We are going to do something great together."

Great indeed: $5 million to local affiliate KPBS and $200 million to NPR. While the numbers are dazzling, the point is that Development Director Bergsma befriended Kroc, listened respectfully to her, and responded when she said that she would like to know more about public radio on a national level. Bergsma also understood what mattered to Kroc about public radio. In the San Francisco Chronicle's article about Kroc's gift on November 7, Bergsma notes: "'I think (Kroc) valued the fact that we provide a really balanced, in-depth view of the world. That's what she was all about. She had this huge passion for peace and justice and fairness, and she was a very hopeful, optimistic person. Even until the end.'"

Do you know what matters to your donors? Do you make an honest, consistent effort to befriend them, to seek out their opinions about your work and to listen carefully to their interests and concerns? As Zimmerman Lehman teaches in its major gift seminars, every donor deserves a specific, nuanced approach; one size most certainly does not fit all. Cultivate with respect, intelligence and imagination, and your nonprofit may well be in store for extraordinary surprises in years to come!

Copyright 2007 Zimmerman Lehman.

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