Would They Give the Same Gift? What the Best Fundraisers—and the Best Volunteers—Have in Common
A few weeks ago on A Legacy of Generosity, Josh Birkholz of BWF Zuri shared a research finding that I haven't stopped thinking about.
His firm studied over a thousand fundraisers, trying to figure out why a small group of them—about 20%—were raising 80% of the dollars. They found a few predictors, but the one that stuck with me most wasn't about training or tactics. It was about belief.
Here's the question that separated the top performers from everyone else. Researchers asked donors: think about the last person who called on you and asked you for a gift. Do you think they would give that same gift themselves, if they had your resources?
Donors who said yes were far more likely to have given to fundraisers who ranked the mission itself—not salary, not their coworkers—as the number one or two reason they loved their job. Donors who said no had usually been asking, "for this person, is this just a job?"
As Josh put it: "that's infectious for the donors too—that I care so much about this, I would do the same gift that I'm asking you for."
Donors Aren't Just Buying the Mission. They're Buying the Messenger.
This tracks with something I've felt in every solicitation I've ever been part of, on either side of the table. People don't give because a case statement was airtight. They give because they trust the person in front of them actually believes what they're saying. A donor can tell, almost immediately, whether an ask is coming from genuine conviction or from a script someone handed a staff member on their way out the door.
That's a hard thing to fake, and it's exactly why it works as a filter. If a donor can sense that you would write this same check if the roles were reversed, your ask stops feeling transactional. It starts feeling like an invitation to stand next to you.
Which Brings Me to Volunteers
Here's the extension of Josh's finding that I think doesn't get talked about enough: volunteers pass this test automatically.
Nobody has to wonder whether a volunteer would give if they had the resources—their time already is the resource, and they're giving it for free. There's no salary to complicate the picture, no job security riding on the outcome. A volunteer's presence is the "yes" answer to Josh's donor question. They are, quite literally, people who believe in the mission enough to act on it without being paid to.
That makes volunteers one of the most underused credibility assets a nonprofit has. When a donor meets a passionate staff member, they're trusting that person's judgment. When a donor meets a volunteer, they're seeing proof.
A Few Ways to Put This to Work
Put volunteers in front of donors, not just in the field. If a volunteer is willing, having them speak at a donor event, sit on a panel, or simply be introduced by name at a campaign gathering does something a staff testimonial can't—it shows the mission has pulled in people who have nothing to gain from saying yes.
Ask your own team the "would you give this gift" question. Not as a performance review, but as a gut check. If a gift officer or solicitor can't honestly say yes, that's worth a conversation—not about their commitment as a person, but about whether they've been given the tools, stories, and proximity to the mission to actually feel it.
Let volunteers tell you why they showed up. Their answer is usually more compelling than anything in your case for support, because it's unprompted and unpaid. Capture it. Use it—with their permission—in the moments where a donor is deciding whether this organization is worth their trust.
Stop treating volunteer engagement and major gift strategy as separate lanes. They're both answering the same underlying donor question: does anyone actually live this mission, or does everyone just work here? The more visible your volunteers are, the easier that question is to answer.
We Already Have Proof This Works
This isn't a theory. Organizations like Wounded Warrior Project, Susan G. Komen, and the American Heart Association have built entire fundraising engines around it. Their peer-to-peer and team fundraising programs—think Race for the Cure teams, Heart Walk fundraisers, or a community member creating their own WWP fundraiser in honor of someone they love—work precisely because the person doing the asking isn't staff. They're a volunteer, a survivor, a family member. The donor isn't being asked by an organization. They're being asked by someone who has already put skin in the game for free.
That's the same mechanism Josh's research points to, just at scale. When the fundraiser IS the proof of belief, the ask gets easier for everyone.
It's Why We Build Steering Committees Into Every Capital Campaign
At Growth By Design, this is a big part of why we build volunteer steering committees into every capital campaign we support. A steering committee made up of donors and community members who've already said yes—with their own time and their own gifts—does something a staff-led ask can't. They're not selling the campaign. They're already living proof that the campaign is worth believing in.
But here's the thing: this shouldn't be a strategy that only shows up during a capital campaign. If peer fundraising, volunteer visibility, and "proof of belief" are this powerful when the stakes are highest, they deserve a permanent home in your annual fundraising strategy too—not just the once-every-decade campaign push.
The Bigger Point
Fundraising training tends to focus on the ask—the framing, the number, the follow-up. Josh's research is a good reminder that donors are evaluating something upstream of all of that: whether the person in front of them, staff or volunteer, would still show up if there was nothing in it for them.
Volunteers already clear that bar. The opportunity is making sure your donors get to see it.
If you want to build this kind of thinking into your own fundraising strategy—not just for a campaign, but as a permanent part of how your organization asks—Fundraising for a New Era now has fall and spring cohorts open for registration. We spend real time on exactly this: how to move fundraising out of the "ask" alone and into the relationships, credibility, and belief that make the ask work in the first place. Learn more and save your spot here.
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Want to hear the full conversation with Josh Birkholz on the Giving USA 2025 Report—including this research and a lot more on donor community, bequests, and generational giving trends? Catch the episode here on A Legacy of Generosity.
