General Notes:
- Proactive gets pushed to the back burner many times. Some try to use “offensive calendaring” to block days/time for proactive work.
- Gift officers want new names but aren’t always following-up or feedback is informal.
Metrics/Tracking:
- For some teams, proactive identification is not a specific department/team goal or metric but keep track for personal year-end reporting. May vary by team member based on individual roles.
- Some track proactive identification but less formal procedures or policies or expectations for gift officer follow-up. Typically, after a period of no real outreach the follow-up is simply “drop assignment.” Cincinnati Children’s started a more formal “blitz” process (scheduled work-flow in NXT) where each newly assigned prospect is mailed, emailed, called, etc. so many times before they can be dropped. Based on capacity and giving levels, more outreach attempts are expected if higher rating and/or giving.
- Building a dashboard (very new)
Identification of individual names:
- Review internal lists on regular basis: new donors, donors over $500, volunteers, event attendees, DAF donors, IRA donors
- Review names associated with affiliations of current board members or donors
- Review WealthEngine / iWave screenings – donors to similar/relevant organizations (arts org for Art school; donors to pediatric cancer organizations)
- livealumni and RelSci mentioned
- Peer review of lists by board members but it can be time consuming and often hard to get consistent follow-up from volunteers
- News alerts/other alerts can generate an overwhelming number to read through unless very specific criteria. Many times never get reviewed! Using vendors such as aidentified or Insightful can help with curating/targeting alerts (news around IPOs, stock transactions, investment, relationship mapping).
- Names presented generally meet certain criteria (capacity, giving, connection). Very rare to get gift officers to follow-up on high-capacity, lower connection prospects but depends on department/unit and need for new prospects.
How are names presented/shared with gift officers:
- One-on-one meetings with gift officers
- Regular meetings with all gift officers
- Regular meetings with just lead gift officers. Larger meetings can turn into free-for-all discussions.
- Generally basic information is shared
Corporate/foundation prospecting:
