This CEO’s better approach to fundraising allowed him to raise the largest donation ever for his organization

Students For Liberty CEO Wolf von Laer walked into the 7-Figure Fundraising workshop with a story we see a lot in the nonprofit leadership world.

Wolf had joined Students For Liberty six years earlier, just out of college, as a bright, driven and passionate advocate for freedom and free markets and quickly rose within the organization to leadership roles before becoming CEO in August 2016. Like far too many nonprofit leaders, Wolf stepped into the role of not only leading his organization but managing fundraising efforts with little prior fundraising experience.  But Wolf decided to proactively learn how to be a great fundraiser.

Students For Liberty happily experienced growth after Wolf assumed his role as CEO. However, seizing these opportunities came significant financial demands. Wolf knew he needed to find a better way to fundraise if he wanted to provide a sustainable, secure growth path for Students For Liberty. He needed to capture the momentum and historic opportunities, literally around the world, for leaders who understood freedom, free markets, and how to inspire others.

And that’s exactly what Wolf has done.

Just two months after taking the 7-Figure Fundraising workshop and adjusting his fundraising approach, Wolf’s overhauled donor pitch inspired the largest donation ever gifted to Students For Liberty.

This didn’t happen by accident or dumb luck. After his 7-Figure Fundraising training, Wolf knew some major changes needed to happen in his development shop if he wanted to streamline his fundraising process and begin fundraising at the 7-figure level for Students For Liberty.

First, Wolf completely changed the way his development team was structured from the traditional pyramid development model to the funnel model taught in the workshop. Instead of relying on a single development director working with multiple entry-level staff, Wolf reorganized the development roles with the 7-Figure model to support better donor relationships, better donor retention, and a steady stream of prospect meetings leading to new donors.

Wolf then incorporated a customized and focused system for tracking and analyzing donor data based on recommendations provided in the workshop. This new system gave Wolf’s team deeper insight into how donors became connected to Students For Liberty in the first place, how they increased over time, and how to apply that analysis to supercharge his new development machine. Tuning into actionable information also helped the entire development shop make better decisions in real-time to increase productivity and maximize effectiveness.

The results of all these changes? The new development team has tripled their number of donor interactions, with an efficient team of specialists focused on each of the 3 Levers of Nonprofit Growth.

Not only is Wolf’s fundraising system much more effective, but he and his staff that meet with donors are also able to take more donor meetings than ever before.  And each person is more confident than ever walking into those donor meetings.

Instead of entering a donor meeting like many of us often do, filled with uncertainty and a few vague bullets, Wolf now knows exactly what he’s going to say and uses the pitch framework he learned in the workshop to keep his message simple, clear, memorable and powerful to the donor every time.

“I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to say at a donor meeting,” Von Laer said. “I don’t have to come up with a piecemeal approach and reinvent the wheel each time... It makes life easier and I know my pitch works because other donors have responded
positively.”

Wolf isn’t just taking more meetings, he’s inspiring larger gifts from his donors as well. Just two months after completing our workshop, Wolf moved a $10k donor up to $90k, which he credits to the pitch he crafted through the workshop’s extensive one-on-one coaching and his continued practice.

Wolf’s winning streak hasn’t stopped there. Wolf’s polished pitch, increased confidence, proven system, and newfound momentum helped him inspire the largest donation ever for Students For Liberty and move a donor from $250k to $500k.

Wolf took two days of fundraising training and achieved almost half a million dollars in donations in just two months after transitioning Students For Liberty’s development shop to the 7-Figure Fundraising model. Last fiscal year, they raised over 5 million dollars--a record for the organization. Wolf emphasized the importance of putting what he learned in the workshop:

“I have attended all kinds of different training.  You get two or three ideas, but it’s not life-changing or organization-changing. I implemented basically everything [from 7-Figure Fundraising]. It makes perfect sense. It makes my life so much easier.”

Wolf isn’t the only nonprofit leader seeing dramatic results like these. We’ve cheered alongside the successes of more than 200 other nonprofit leaders who are transforming their organizations with the 7-Figure Fundraising model just like Wolf.

If you want to learn about a better, more effective way to fundraise major gifts for your nonprofit, click here to learn more about the 7-Figure Fundraising workshop and development model.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  We offer a 100%/100-day money-back guarantee, where if you don’t see the value you get your money back.  Period.

You can be a Wolf too if you learn what he learned and apply it as he did.  But it starts with learning for yourself.

If you’d like to learn these tools, we host a handful of these small-group workshops per year where we walk nonprofit leaders through a new way to fundraise and set up their development shops.

Register for our next live workshop while seats are still available and start your own path to becoming a 7-figure fundraiser for your organization today.