If you make the case, they're apt to give. Your current crop of top donors can also help. Asking them to serve as annual fund chairs or volunteers, for example, makes them feel good and lets you reach more people without increasing your staff. Challenge gifts can be another successful strategy. Tell your alumni that a chair, trustee, or major donor will match all annual fund contributions greater than a certain dollar amount.
Campaigns are also a natural springboard to larger annual gifts.
Use the campaign to generate excitement. Institutions are coming up with new ways to attract interest in high-level annual gifts, such as annual scholarships, in which a donor commits to a scholarship gift every year for four years to assist a particular student. In return, the student sends an annual thank-you letter and other types of communications to the donor via the development office. At the end of the four years, the contributor can start again with a new student. As you begin spending more time with those at or near the top of your annual fund scale, you'll find that this is an area of tremendous growth for both the campus and the annual fund staff.