Ratings - gift capacity vs recommended gift ask amount?

Corinne Shannon 2

We're looking to add ratings to RE through the prospect tab and my prospect researchers brought forward a bit of a dilemma and so I'm wondering what others are doing. 


Do you record ratings in RE based on gift capacity or recommended solicitation ask amount? Just because a prospect can give $1M, doesn't mean our first ask to them will be $1M. But I don't know if I want to rate a donor who has capacity to give $1M as a $50K donor in RE because eventually we'll want to get them to $1M. 


What do others do? Include both ratings? 

Ryan Hyde

Corinne Shannon:

We're looking to add ratings to RE through the prospect tab and my prospect researchers brought forward a bit of a dilemma and so I'm wondering what others are doing. 


Do you record ratings in RE based on gift capacity or recommended solicitation ask amount? Just because a prospect can give $1M, doesn't mean our first ask to them will be $1M. But I don't know if I want to rate a donor who has capacity to give $1M as a $50K donor in RE because eventually we'll want to get them to $1M. 


What do others do? Include both ratings? 

I'm not sure which rating tool you're using, but it seems like you should import both ratings with different categories. Maybe something like "Potential to Give" and "Next Ask Amount." We have used both Target Analytics and DonorSearch for ratings info, so we have a boat load of different rating categories that we can sift through.

Sheri OlanderWaters

Corinne Shannon:

We're looking to add ratings to RE through the prospect tab and my prospect researchers brought forward a bit of a dilemma and so I'm wondering what others are doing. 


Do you record ratings in RE based on gift capacity or recommended solicitation ask amount? Just because a prospect can give $1M, doesn't mean our first ask to them will be $1M. But I don't know if I want to rate a donor who has capacity to give $1M as a $50K donor in RE because eventually we'll want to get them to $1M. 


What do others do? Include both ratings? 

We currently ONLY put in gift capacity, mainly because we have such a wealth of ratings that we don't want to further muddy the waters. It is also quite a pain to pull specific ratings from RE. Our written reports contain recommended ask amounts. Ideally, I would want both in RE - I say "go for it!"

Rachel Slager 2

I would record their capacity for $1M and tag it as an internal rating while you're at it, to differentiate from wealth screenings and external ratings.  If you have the proposals tab, then I recommend putting ask amount in the proposal and not the ratings.  We had "next ask amount' ratings all over our system and because there was no method for upkeep, a donor might have already been asked, exceeded the amount, and the next solicitation is looking at that old ask amount.  It has a tendency to create limits for solicitors rather than speak to potentials.