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Encouraging major gift officers to jump into the deep end of the donor pool and start having conversations with such prospects without first making sure they know how to swim can be a colossal mistake. You need to make sure your major gift officers know exactly what they’re getting into and how connected these potential donors are to your organization. All of this should happen before your major gift officer ever meets with a potential major donor.
At some point early on in the planning process, there must be a realistic intersection between the financial goals of the organization and the short-term philanthropic potential of your base of prospective major gift donors.
To determine whether you can realistically achieve these targets requires an assessment of your donor prospect pool. This normally requires input from several members of your team, both staff and volunteer, who help determine where each prospect sits in the cultivation cycle. Here are the six major prospect stages you should use to define a donor’s current status:
Careful determination of the prospect stage of each donor prospect is a key step in the assessment of the philanthropic potential of the overall prospect pool. Identifying where your potential major givers are in this process impacts everything you do, from the way you interact to the information you share.
Are you issuing an RFP to find a partner to help take your fundraising program to the next level? We’d love to be considered! As an agency built by fundraisers for fundraisers, Pursuant has helped hundreds of organizations raise billions of dollars through our direct response, direct mail, digital, and analytics services. Reach out to a member of our team here or email us at info@pursuant.wpengine.com.