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Stop Low-balling Your Donors: How to Confidently Ask for the Right Amount

• Mary Petersen

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Today we’re tackling one of the most common (and costly) mistakes I see major gift officers make: lowballing the ask.

If you’ve ever walked out of a donor meeting wondering if you should’ve asked for more—or felt afraid to offend a donor by going too big—this episode is your wake-up call. Because here’s the truth: donors aren’t offended by bold asks… they’re confused by vague ones.

We’ll unpack why fundraisers undershoot, how to calculate the right amount with confidence, and how to deliver your ask in a way that feels natural, strategic, and unapologetically bold.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

  • Why “playing it safe” with smaller asks is actually hurting your organization (and your donors).
  • The four biggest reasons fundraisers lowball their asks — and how to fix them.
  • The real cost of under-soliciting (hint: it’s not just lost revenue).
  • The confidence formula for determining the right ask amount using capacity, affinity, and readiness.
  • How to deliver your ask with precision — using specific numbers, clear impact, and confident tone.
  • What to say (and what not to say) when presenting different giving options.
  • The four-question Confidence Checklist to know you’re ready to make the right ask.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi friends, welcome to the Hey Fundraiser podcast. I'm your host, Mary Peterson, and whether you're a frontline fundraiser, an executive director, a board member, or someone just wanting to make an impact in your community, this podcast is for you. We cover all facets of fundraising and our main objective is to give you ideas and inspiration to help you raise more money. Join us as we grow, learn, and make an impact together. Hey fundraiser, welcome and come on in. If you are a major gift fundraiser and you want to raise more with less stress and frankly, a little more swagger, you are in the right place. So my name is Mary and today we're tackling one of the most common complaints I hear from my coaching clients. And that is, I feel like I'm always low balling the ask amount. And here's the thing too. Yes, it is a common complaint that I hear, but it's also a common complaint that I don't hear and I should from a lot of fundraisers. So if you're in my momentum group, if you are a private coaching client, you know that the ask amount is paramount. You get what you ask for. Now, you don't want to make it weird. If you have a meeting with Bill Gates, you're not going to ask for 5K. Like that would be very weird. So you want to always have the right ask amount. So we're going to really dig into this today. Now, why do fundraisers lowball? Well, mainly because they're afraid of scaring the donor. They're like unsure what the right number is, or they're kind of defaulted to like safe, I'm doing air quotes, safe asks instead of bold ones. So today I want to help you fix that. We're how to build confidence to ask for higher, more appropriate gift sounds, and how to back up your ask so it never feels random or aggressive. So let's get to it. So I want to start with some truth telling. Fundraisers constantly are undershooting. It's because they fear rejection. And I get it. I spent years so afraid to make the ask. I would actually cultivate so long. It was like serial cultivation. It wasn't great because I was just so scared to ask. And then I cultivated so long that when it came time to make an ask, someone literally said to me once like, oh, that's what this relationship's about. Oy vey. Like... Not great. So fear of rejection, which, you know, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Or fundraisers, they just don't know the donor's full capacity. There are so many tools out there to understand the donor's full capacity. You don't need fancy software. There are so many tips and tricks, which we will get more into. And a lot of fundraisers think that by thinking smaller and asking for less they're actually being more polite. No, that just, no, that's wrong. Just understand that that's wrong. And then frankly, it's, it's lack of confidence in your program's worth. Like a lot of fundraisers, I find low ball to ask them out if they're asking for a program that they don't, the fundraiser themselves don't believe in the program. So when you are fearing rejection, you don't know the donor's full capacity, you're, you think that smaller gifts equal being more polite or you're lacking confidence in the program, this is what's happening. You're leaving money on the table, lots and lots of money. You also confuse donors who could give more. Again, it gets weird. Like you're not going to ask Elon Musk for a$2,500 gift and they get stuck at this. Donors get stuck at the same giving level over and over and over. So So I want to make this very, very clear. One of the big reasons that I hear from my clients and my momentum members is that they don't want to upset the donor by asking for too much. In fact, I literally wrote this down the other day. Somebody said to me, I will offend a donor if I make a bold ask. Okay. No, no, no donor. Well, first of all, donors appreciate a bold vision, but secondly, donors don't get offended by bold ass. They get confused by vague ones. So one of the things that has happened to me, and I think back and it's, it's kind of cute and it's kind of funny. I've never ended a relationship by asking for too much. I've never had a at me for asking for too much. You will get what you ask for. If you want to ask Jeff Bezos for 10 grand, he's not going to be like, no, I don't want to give you 10 grand. I want to give you 10 million. That doesn't work. He would write you a check for 10K. So what happens when you go bold, if you go too bold? So let's say I'm soliciting you and I'm going to ask you for a Well, what happens if you ask someone for a million dollar gift and they can't give a million dollar gift, most of them first will laugh. Then they'll be like honored. They'll be like, wow, I can't believe it. You thought I could give a million dollars. Like that's kind of cool. And of course they'll be like, I can't do a million, but I could, I could do 250,000. But are they angry? No, they're flattered. So put that in your back pocket fundraisers. I mean, we're going to get into all kinds of tips and tricks here, but the bedrock of this content today is that donors don't get offended by large ask amounts. They are confused by vague ones. And when donors are confused, they don't give. So let's talk about the real cost of like playing small. There's a lot at stake. When you under solicit, and I'm talking under solicit when it comes to gift amount. I mean, there's a lot of pervasive under solicitation in the world in general, but let's just focus on the gift amount for now. When you under solicit the amount, you lowball your people, you diminish the urgency and importance of the work of your organization. You make donors who want to create transformational change believe that they are not needed. Your organization doesn't need them. And you also train your donors to expect to be asked for small gifts. I'm going to say those three things again, and I know it's bold. I'm feeling spicy today. When you under solicit dollar amounts, you're diminishing the urgency and importance of your organization. You are making transformational donors think they're not needed, and you are training your donors to think small. So here's a couple examples. You ask if you ask for a ten thousand dollar gift and they say yes immediately. You should be walking away thinking, I have under solicited. Could I have asked for 50,000? Now you have to wait another year or more to try again. Now, if you haven't heard my podcast, I do have a strategy on how often to ask. I wholeheartedly believe in ask once and thank for 364 days. You can kind of look at that podcast if you're interested in that. But I would recommend only soliciting once a year. If you ask somebody for 10K and they say, absolutely, here's 10K, it's weird. You're over soliciting if you go back and ask for another 50,000. Okay, so here are some factors to consider. Before naming an amount, please, please, for me, don't pull numbers out of thin air. So here's your confidence formula. One, look at this person's capacity. What do you know about their giving to other places? Do they have a donor advised fund? Do they have a family foundation? Do they sit on boards or make political contributions? I mean, use public data, use wealth indicators, Understand the peer giving. When you look at capacity, you can understand the range that you're asking for. Now, paired with that is affinity. Has this person ever given to you before and at what level? Now, most major donors, I mean, if you're cultivating and you're about to solicit for a pretty significant six or seven figure gift, 99.9% of the time, that donor's already given to you. They've been giving to you for many years usually. They have to have affinity. So has this donor been giving to you? Do they show up? Are they opening emails? Are they having conversations with you? Are they returning your calls? Are they coming to board meetings? All the things. Low capacity and high affinity still means opportunity though, because you don't want to make too many assumptions about people's capacity because you're People are very savvy these days about hiding their wealth. I mean, everybody has a trust. So it's hard to, when things are put, when assets are put into a trust, it is, you can't see them anymore. Okay, the third element to this formula is readiness. Have you talked about vision, impact, and timing with this prospect? And are they, do they have affinity? Are they giving big gifts elsewhere? Is there a connection to your organization? Are they kind of upgrading gifts on their own? And are they engaged? So your ask amount should reflect their readiness, not just your need. So there are three big things here, because I don't want you to pull numbers out of thin air. Like that'd be like, you know, the general Jeff Bezos with the 10K thing. Like it's just, you're just not going to do that. Everybody knows he has capacity. He's like the second wealthiest man in the world. So don't lowball. So you're going to look at capacity. You're going to look at affinity for your organization and you're going to look at readiness. Like, have you had meetings with this person? What are those conversations been about? Are they ready for a solicitation? The next thing is, You need to confidently deliver the ask. If you've done the research, you're ready to make the ask. You need to own it. So when you make that ask, I want you to do several things for me. First and foremost, I want you to use precise numbers. Would you consider a gift of$75,000? Feels very intentional. Would you make a gift somewhere between$50,000 and$100,000? Sounds unsatisfying. certain. Choose the former, please. I also want you to name the impact. Something like A gift of$250,000 would fund this pilot program for its first three years. So precise number, naming the impact. The third thing you want to do is match the tone to the donor. Some people, you can use a direct ask. Some people want to co-create with you. Some people like to negotiate. You need to make your ask in a way that's going to land with the tone of that donor, what that donor responds to. So I'm going to link in the description below another podcast video that I filmed about five ways to make an ask. Okay, you also want to keep your solicitation clean. No softeners, no apologies, no nervous energy. I want you to bring good energy confidence. You do not need to say, I'm sorry to ask, or I hope this isn't too much, or you don't have to make the gift this year if you're not ready. None of that. We're going to keep it clean. No softeners, no apologies, no nervous energy. And then last Lastly, I want you to be ready with options. So if the top number that you talk about doesn't land, you could have a follow-up ask that is still meaningful. It's still a meaningful amount for this donor. So if you're asking for$100,000 and they're not really giving you anything back, they're saying, you know, that's just too much. Does 75,000 feel better? Put another number out there. Don't go too low, but start naming numbers until they're like, okay, that's where I feel comfortable. So be ready with a couple options. Now, many fundraisers, and again, they under solicit because of the nerves. So I want to give you like this quick confidence checklist. So you need to ask yourself these four questions. And if it's a yes to every single one of these questions, then you need to get in there and ask with the right amount. So here are your four questions. One, did I do my research on this person? Two, does this number feel bold but reasonable? Three, is the ask aligned with what I know about this particular donor? And fourth, am I leading with mission and partnership? If you can say yes to those four things, you are looking at about the right number to solicit. Because Lowballing your donors isn't polite. It is a disservice. It is a disservice to your donor. It's a disservice to the organization, and it's a disservice to your fundraising efforts. So we've talked quite a bit, fundraiser, about lowballing. Please don't lowball. You do not need to be afraid. You need to know the right number. You need to have confidence, and you need to Go in there having done your research. So if you still need help choosing the right amount, I have a free download below that will ask you some like guiding questions and give you like a confidence scale to help you land on the number that you can say out loud without flinching. So I'm going to put those in the show notes. So fundraiser, if you leave with anything, please know you have have permission to ask boldly. You're not forcing generosity. You're inviting it. One of the big things that I talk to my major gift momentum clients about and my private coaching clients, we don't want as fundraisers, we should not be making decisions on behalf of our donors. You're making decisions on behalf of your donors when you're not presenting opportunities. And that's what we do. We present opportunities. They could say, gosh, no, that project doesn't really interest me, but I like this project over here. Cool. But you don't want to make those decisions. You need to put out all of the options so that the donors can make decisions for themselves. When you make decisions for your donors, you lowball, you only present certain things, you ask very rarely, like just know you should ask ask boldly with the right number because it is the absolute right thing to do. Okay, if this helped, follow us, leave a review, send it to a teammate who is about to make a big ask and they might be like kind of teetering or just nervous about making it. Okay, fundraiser, until next time. Hey Fundraiser, thanks so much for being here today. Did you know that we create a special page for each episode that contains helpful links, episode highlights, standout quotes, and freebies? Check it out in today's podcast description. If you loved what you heard today, would you kindly give us a rating and review? It really helps other fundraising professionals find our Hey Fundraiser community. I'm Mary Peterson, and thank you for listening.