In this moving three-minute audio clip, Connie Phillips, the executive director of Sojourner Center, a domestic violence shelter in Phoenix, Arizona, talks about what it was like to get a million-dollar donation.
As she tells it, she and the donor were at a low-budget salad bar for lunch when the donor made the offer. She said after she nearly fell off her chair, they both teared up.
"It was a holy moment," she said.
Phillips told this story on a conference call to groups enrolled in Raising More Money's Five-Year Sustainable Funding Program. Sojourner Center is one of just a handful of groups at the 401 Workshop level, so Phillips came on to talk about her group's experience.
Phillips said if anyone told her a few years ago that they would be getting million-dollar donations, she would never have believed it.
"We're not the symphony or the ballet," she said.
But Sojourner Center understands the importance of personalized donor cultivation. This particular donor initially came to Sojourner looking to give away $10,000 for tax purposes. He said the other nonprofits he called hadn't been very responsive. But Sojourner Center welcomed his involvement and cultivated him as if he could be a long-term supporter of their mission. They had no idea he could afford to give away a million dollars.
After he made the million-dollar gift, Phillips said the donor thanked her for allowing him to do something so worthwhile with his money.
