Prospect Research Services
What is Prospect Research and why is it important to your organization?
Your organization depends upon those individuals, foundations, and corporations who have the capacity and willingness to support you—and you need to have a method in place for finding them since they are NOT going to come to you!
Prospect research is a process used to identify, evaluate, and qualify prospective donors in order to ultimately cultivate them for a major donation. It is the initial step in the overall cultivation of a prospective donor. Prospect research tells you who you must focus your cultivation efforts on.
It is not simply a support role—and should not be thought of in this way. Prospect research must be considered a partner in the overall fundraising process.
No matter how big your organization is, you ought to have this function in place if your aim is to achieve significant fundraising success!
Below is what a comprehensive Prospect Research function should do for your organization:
Identification of Prospects
- Identify potential donors that have both the capacity and willingness to donate to your organization and create a “prospect pool” consisting of these donors.
- This “pool” should consist of individuals, corporations, and foundations and should include prospects that you currently have a relationship with and ones that you do not have a relationship with (but could possibly be cultivated).
- Individuals, individuals, individuals!!! Your prospect pool should be heavily weighted towards individuals! Why? – Because individuals represent the largest piece by far in the charitable donation pie (greater than 80% of total giving) year after year. They represent your best chance to grow your base of donations and your mission is to find and cultivate them!
Profiling of Prospects
In-depth information about your pool of prospects that will ultimately allow you rate and prioritize them—and will help you determine the best approach with each donor as you build a cultivation plan. Below is the type of information found in a prospect profile
- Personal and family background
- Career history
- Wealth holdings (salary info, stock holdings, property etc.)
- Philanthropic interests and prior donation history
- Board affiliations
- Personal and business associations
Rating of Prospects
Based on the information you gather regarding your “pool” of prospects, you must analyze them so that you understand the following about each prospect:
- Capacity – how much can this prospect donate to you?
- Propensity – how likely is it that this prospect will donate to you?
- Timing – at what point will the prospect be able to donate to you?
Prospect Data Management
This is the key that ties together all of the above: a prospect management system will store the data you have on your “prospect pool” (ex. Prospect background, philanthropic interests, board associations etc.) and act as a central data repository to track all the important work you are doing to bring donor dollars to your organization’s door.
This system will also allow you to document all the activities that take place in order to engage and cultivate your prospect. You will be able to easily see the various “moves” you have made in order to engage a particular prospective donor. Also, you will quickly understand which activities you are spending the most time on and be well-positioned to re-prioritize activities or staff functions as needed.
Remember, there is an ocean full of potential donors out there . . . . however, you have limited time, money and staff to find them! Prospect research allows you to focus your limited resources on a pool of targeted prospects which represent your best chance of fundraising success.
Donor Cultivation Services
What is Donor Cultivation and why is it important to your organization?
If you have invested in the essential Prospect Research function, then your work is not done—it has just begun! Research has identified a prospect “pool” for your organization and now donor cultivation planning must take effect to bring donor funding through.
Donor Cultivation is really just an organization wide process of learning about donors (their background, their goals, their philanthropic interests) in order to initiate and respond to contact with them so that the organization can develop a meaningful relationship with them.
Your organization must begin implementing cultivation strategies specific to each prospect to ensure the best chance of success.
Donor cultivation, if done properly, will grow your base of loyal supporters. Here are some basic tenets regarding donor cultivation:
- You must earn donor loyalty and support; do not think that you are entitled to it . . . so once you gain it, you must work equally hard to retain it
- Donor cultivation is hard work and is achieved through meticulous preparation and diligence by your organization
- You must be constantly focused on cultivation efforts—this must be happening all the time year-round
Here is what a good Donor Cultivation program encompasses:
Relationships, relationships, relationships . . .
To successfully cultivate donors, your organization must begin developing relationships with them. The donor must start feeling connected to your organization! When the connection with your organization reaches sufficient depth, your donor is likely to make a gift to your organization. The deeper the connection established, the greater the size and frequency of gifts from that donor!
“Moves” Management Tracking
All the tremendous effort your organization is putting in to cultivate donors needs to be tracked and monitored so that you understand what activities you are focusing your efforts on.
You can only build a successful development prospect pipeline by tracking where you are with particular donors in the cultivation process. Tracking and monitoring “moves” with particular donors will allow you to initiate and respond to donor contact at the right times!
Donor Outreach and Contact
To make sure that donors are keeping your organization top of mind, you need to do a lot more than keeping in touch! Take advantage of easy, non-invasive methods of communication such as e-mail to regularly stay connected with your donors.
Make sure that during final stages of cultivation efforts as you get ready to ask for a gift, you have done additional just-in-time follow-up research to ensure that the donor’s wealth status or priorities have not changed fundamentally – be totally prepared when making the ask!
Prospect/Donor Relationship Continuity
What is Prospect/Relationship Continuity and why is it important to your organization?
Once donors have contributed to your organization, you must take huge efforts to make sure that they continue to donate to you and keep your organization top of mind.
Prospect/Relationship Continuity refers to the process behind tending to existing relationships with donors so that they feel their relationship with your organization is valued highly and therefore feel compelled to continue supporting your organization long after an initial gift.
Too often, organizations fail in properly tending to existing relationships with donors after receiving gifts thus hurting chances to generate future gifts.
In order to prevent this from happening, your organization must make it a priority to implement a formal stewardship program that accomplishes the following:
- Thank donors appropriately for their gifts – determine whether or not the donor would like to be thanked publicly or not (this is personal and to be determined between the donor and your organization). Make sure to create a formal Donor Recognition Program and give this process high priority in the list of development to do’s.
- When communicating to your donor base to thank or update them, do not mix these actions with asks or solicitations! Have a plan in place to continue communicating with your donors but be clear on the intentions and goals of your communication plan.
- Establish a periodic newsletter that highlights important things your organization is doing and make sure to highlight and recognize gifts from donors within the newsletter if appropriate. Use other communication means that give you an easy and broad outreach to your audience such as your website and social media forums to keep your message out there.
- Remember, non-profits still have to market themselves! While companies use marketing to sell products and services to customers, non-profits use marketing to sell their mission and its importance to potential donors. Make sure to have well-crafted marketing materials (pamphlets, annual reports, website and content, and branded products) that convey your organization’s mission effectively. These are items that you can use when having large events and can be great tools in helping keep your organization top of mind for donors!
