major donor status

Rebecca Falck

We are changing the structure of our team and have staff transitioning to major gift officers, we have an annual fund officer, and others.  Basically we are trying to become a more mature development team.  We just got the prospect module, which will be helpful.  As I am thinking through all the processes and how we will manage running people through the moves management cycle and assigning / removing people from portfolios one of my questions is: If someone has a relationship manager and then we flag them as having potential for a major gift, but then it is deemed they are not appropriate to pursue them, what is the best way to note that information.  I wouldn't want them to keep coming up in our list of prospects since they have already been deemed not appropriate for a major gift.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

Jen Claudy

How are you flagging them as a potential major donor?  I would suggest adding an option in the same space to indicate that they were considered, and removed from the prospect list.  Or whatever levels you want...we have some donors who have the capacity, but there are reasons we need to not solicit for a major gift this year.  We use the Prospect Status field on the Prospect Tab (not on the Proposal Records, on the Tab itself).  There is also a Classification field there.



If you are considering moving to RE:NXT, that user interface is being built out by role, with this first/current role being the Fundraiser Role.  It is structured on Solicitor Relationships, and may be a big asset to your organization, as when you sign in, you see your entire portfolio, alerts for actions that are due, overdue, or coming up, and there is a new Tag system, where RE helps you find constituents with giving potential (and then you can edit the tags as needed).  If there is any chance you might consider moving to NXT now (or in the foreseeable future), I would explore those options before laying out a new system in RE:7...you may chose to do some things differently, in preparation for NXT.

Christine Cooke 2

As Jennifer mentioned.  Do you have a place that you have already been tagging folks that have major gift capacity/likeliehood?  If so you can add a "do not" or "postpone until a later time" status to those options.



In utilizing the Prospect Module. in the General Section there is are two fields one is Prospect Status and the other is Prospect Classification.  In the departments I have worked in that have had a Moves Management strategy/plan/program, we have used those to fields to indicate the priority in which to group the folks you are cultivating.  So Classification would be: Tier 1 - highest potential, Tier 2 - 2nd highest potential and Tier 3 - 3rd highest (which most often ends up being those that really don't have much if any likliehood in giving because of interest(s) in philanthropy or what type of orgs they tend to give to.

Then the Status is used to indicate the Moves part of the process, and so you change the Prospect Status and the constituent is "moved" through the cultivation/ask/stewarship process.  We have used: 1-Discovery, 2-Cultivation, 3-Solicitation, 4-Stewardship, 8-Revisit (at a later time), 9-Drop (as in never approach again or ever)



We used the same Statuses on the Actions Tab for Action Status, so that all could see where each interaction fell in the grander picture and you could also see where the constituent moves fell overall in the prospect tab.  Worked quite well.

Rebecca Falck

Thank you both for your replies...no there isn't a specific spot where we are tracking that at the moment other than if someone has a solicitor then they are in a protfolio.  Is there a reason you use the classification to put their likelyhood and not the rating?  

Cheryl Cummings

Perhaps because ratings can be more detailed and have multiple sources, so they have their own place on the Prospect tab.  Classification and Status are on the Prospect\\General screen.  Rating information is often stored in Prospect\\Ratings.