Articulating a specific amount to ask from a donor is not easy, but it is necessary. One way to do that is to use your gift chart.
Julie Ingraham Walker, author of Jump-Starting the Stalled Fundraising Campaign, suggests that when meeting with a donor to make the "ask," you might want to use a gift chart to show the donor the total amount of money needed for your campaign, how much as been raised, and how many gifts of certain amounts have already come in.
You could set up a simple chart, keep it updated as the campaign progresses, and then print out a copy just before you meet with a prospective donor. Your gift chart would be based on the one you set up for your campaign (see sample) but would show how many of the gifts in a particular category had been received. So if your gift chart called for four gifts of $20,000 and two of those had been received, the chart would show that two more are needed for a total of $40,000, and so on through the gift levels.
The gift chart provides a quick, graphic way for the donor to see exactly where the campaign is and where he or she might fit in. The gifts officer or volunteer meeting with the donor can make a suggestion based on the gift chart. If that is beyond the donor's reach, another gift on the chart might work.
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