Principal Gift Strategies LLC
The Principal Gift Checklist can help you get there. Start with the original — or go deeper.
A system created by Ben Porter · Author of The Principal Gift Checklist: How to Cultivate and De-Risk Gifts of $5M–$100M+ (© 2019 Council for Advancement and Support of Education. All Rights Reserved.)
Principal gift fundraising is human-to-human trust.
And the best relationship wins.
Eight-figure fundraising requires two aligned pipelines:
Ben Porter
Founder, Principal Gift Strategies LLC
Creator of The Principal Gift Checklist and the 4×90 Lens.
23 years inside higher education advancement at Harvard, Northwestern, Kellogg, and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. Campaign experience ranging from $120M to $6B.
Now, here are four ways to use what I've learned.
Start Here
Start with the original Principal Gift Checklist.
The free, simple tool.
The original Principal Gift Checklist is a practical way to pressure-test a live principal gift opportunity.
Bring a real $5M+ prospect. Work through the 17 questions. Across two studies and 353 surveys, successful gifts typically had 12 or more.
Try the Principal Gift Checklist →Operated by Principal Gift Strategies LLC under a license with Ben Porter and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
For Repeated, Institutional Use
Checklist 2.0 — a critical second opinion.
Everything I know that stops $10M asks from becoming $1M gifts.
Experienced VPs already know these lessons intuitively. Checklist 2.0 puts that judgment into a repeatable process — so gift officers, deans, and other partners can share a common vocabulary without senior leaders having to reteach it every time.
50 critical questions. One integrated diagnostic.
Designed for repeated use across multiple prospects and gift officers, it produces a six-page report testing the amount, the timing, the idea, the asker — and whether you've earned the right to ask.
Built from 20 years of experience and data. Refined with top VPs on live eight-figure asks. Even includes quarterly office hours with me.
Checklist 2.0: It remembers what others forgot.
Run it every time.
Your Top Families
When a checklist isn't enough, you need The Turn
We go off the map — and into the land of maximum creativity.
Your five most important donor families will set the bar for your entire campaign. They are irreplaceable, and require your highest and best work.
That is what The Turn is for.
Defining the transformational proposition — transformational to the problem. To the organization. And to the donor's story.
For Institutions With a Record of Success
I can build you a checklist.
The simple tool, customized for you.
If your institution has raised enough significant gifts, there is something worth studying.
I'll reverse engineer your successes and build your checklist from the ground up. You set the parameters — grateful patients, parents, a $1M checklist — whatever success you want to replicate.
We'll use your data, my data, and the questions I've learned to ask over 20 years.
The result is a custom tool built around what works in your context, delivered through a dedicated HTML website that's yours to keep. Put it in the hands of every gift officer you have.
Yes, I do trainings. With an asterisk.
Usually part of a deeper engagement. Once I understand your world, I can build a training around it. All trainings are in person.
Dean + Development Director Training — "The Critical Path"
Limited availability.
How academic and advancement leaders work together — and across the university — to raise the largest gifts.
Major Gift Officer Training — "How to Work with Your Three Best Prospects This Year"
Limited availability.
Your three best prospects are not the same as the rest of your portfolio. Leave with concrete plans for getting to the ask.
Need help building the conditions for more principal gifts? I also do focused program optimization engagements.
Powered by data. Grounded in practice.
Ben Porter
Creator of The Principal Gift Checklist and the 4×90 Lens
Ben spent 23 years inside higher education advancement.
From 2022–2025, he served as Chief Advancement Officer at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, where he designed the Tuck 125 campaign, which secured more than $120M for unrestricted endowed scholarships, nearly doubled endowed scholarship funds, and generated scores of new six figure annual fund pledges. The campaign later received a CASE award.
He spent 16 years at Northwestern University, including as Associate Dean at Kellogg during its $520M campaign and as AVP for Principal Gifts during Northwestern's $6B We Will campaign. Earlier Northwestern roles included Executive Director of Development for Engineering during its successful $220M campaign, Regional Director for Major Gifts in Chicago, and Director of Leadership Annual Giving.
He began his advancement career at the Harvard Kennedy School in Annual Giving.
A.B., Princeton University.
What advancement leaders say
"Ben Porter is one of the most creative fundraisers in our field."
— David Lively, VP, Northwestern University"Ben Porter's insights and teachings are foundational to our principal gifts work."
— Amanda Peters Hopkins, AVC, University of Colorado BoulderField Notes & Research
Get in touch with Ben.
Not sure where to start? Tell me what you're working on.
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