Who are your most valuable donors?
The answer feels obvious.
The people who give the most. The names attached to the larger numbers. The people who have carried meaningful pieces of the mosad over the years.
For a long time, that was often enough.
But today, some of the most important value has become easier to miss.
The issue is not that you don’t have big donors. It is that you may be measuring value only by the size of the gift.
Many leaders still look at donors through a lens that worked well for a long time. The larger the gift, the more attention the relationship naturally received.
But some people end up giving much more than their own gift.
They bring other people with them.
And some of the largest gifts do not.
This becomes very visible during campaigns.
The largest part of a campaign often does not come from its largest donor. Instead, one connected person brings others with him.
I have often seen one donor end up driving 10% to 25% of an entire campaign.
Not because of his own gift.
Because of what moved through him.
And not everything valuable announces itself early.
What looked small was not actually small.
It was a beginning.
You usually only see it clearly looking backward.
Attention naturally stays where results have usually come from.
Which means leaders sometimes keep looking for value while quietly looking past it.
The next level may not only come from finding different donors.
It may also come from paying closer attention to people you may be underestimating.
© 2026 Avraham Lewis & Co.