RENXT Prospect Status - Moves Management

Mark Palfrey 3

Hi everyone

We are looking to use the Prospect Management tile and from the BB guidance it looks like the Prospect Status is used to track the key stages of the Prospect Management life cycle. I am aware that they also advise on using Action Types to track contact with constituents using the stage as the Action Type e.g. Cultivation, Solicitation etc… Then I have seen that Opportunities status could be used to track that specific opportunity with the same stages as the moves management. It feels like this isnt all linked up very (apart from Actions and Opportunities) well and duplicating information and you can have conflicting values if not entered correctly. How are people using these all in tandem together? I have seen posts where some organisations have opted to use these differently and in specific ways where it would be only Actions or Actions + Opportunities etc… but I would like to ensure we fully use all the features where possible.

The second question is if you are using Prospect Status for recording moves management stages and a prospect ends up being at the Stewardship stage because they donated, how long do they stay there for? I appreciate this could differ by organisation but I am assuming if there is open engagement with the donor but they have just not given since their first donation they just stay at Stewardship? Or would you move them to another stage in the cycle? What happens if you are still in conversation with them for a long period (e.g. 24 month) but just not committed to give again yet? I am assuming you just dont drop them as they are still openly engaged just not financially. Thoughts?

Elizabeth Johnson

@Mark Palfrey I'm also very interested in how people might answer this as we are working on building this out right now too. I've struggled a bit with the fact that we are in our first comprehensive campaign and so we may need to do multiple opportunities for the different funds we might be asking them for. We have also been in this campaign for a while but it is gearing up so some people may have already given and we are posed to give again. So one opportunity for an individual might actually be stewardship while another might be cultivation. Having the ability to have multiple statuses is really proving to be useful. I am also assuming that people are either away or heavy into the gift entry right now. If you don't get an answer this week you may want to respond to me the after the year end dust settles. . .

Karen Diener 2

Hi Mark,

I've seen / used the moves management components in various ways and it is important for each organization to be very thoughtful about it. Sometimes I use Blackbaud suggestions and sometimes I don't!

Prospect Status: Definitely an important field, which I generally consider to represent how close - or far - a constituent is to giving a gift. The constituent will potentially cycle through prospect statuses one or more times if they have a long-term relationship with your organization.

To specifically answer your question about Stewardship stage, organizations I've worked with generally use this to represent the time when someone is paying on a pledge. If you are considering soliciting them again, they will return to a stage of Qualification or Cultivation - whatever stage would indicate that you are evaluating their capacity / interest for another gift. If someone gave an outright gift instead of a pledge, they might return to this stage sooner, but that will be up to your organization to determine.

I've also worked at an Organization where the policy was to move a constituent out of “Solicitation” if they had been there for more than 3 months. Unless it was a VERY large gift and required a lot of negotiation it would be okay, but for the most part, if someone did not respond within 3 months, they were not ready to be asked.

Action Type: I've never liked using the type to represent a Prospect Status. It is a type of Action that often doesn't have anything to do with the Prospect Status of a constituent. That being said, if an Org does not have the Prospect module, I would use the Action Type to help with moves management.

Action Types depend quite a bit on what types of things your organization records as actions. I've worked with organizations who added each mailing to the Action tab instead of using the Appeal tab because we did not want an Appeal record for everything. Action Types were used to help differentiate the “meaningful” actions for major gift work from the “non-meaningful” actions that represented mailings or casual conversations / meetings.

Regardless of their type, Actions can be linked to Opportunities which I think is an overlooked feature. You can see all actions on a constituent record, but could see only those linked to an Opportunity if you are on the Opportunity itself.

Opportunity Status: I've never really understood the need for an Opportunity Status but it was definitely elevated to a new level with Webview. Examples I've heard of are that you could use it to track the status of an Opportunity that is being drafted, which is separate from the status of the Constituent who is going to be given the Opportunity. If you use the Prospect module for grantseeking activities - and I think every organization should! - you could use these to indicate the status of the LOI or the final proposal if you are asked to submit one.

Some of the scenarios above came from a large organization that raised $70m per year and had probably 15 gift officers. But a lot of this is applicable to smaller organizations too. Hope that is helpful as you work through developing your processes!

Karen