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Five steps to build your prospect pipeline in 2025

Build your 2025 prospect pipeline with our five-step guide to major gift fundraising success. Set clear goals, rank prospects, identify new donors, and create personalised outreach plans for lasting donor relationships.

Successful major gift fundraising depends on a strong prospect pipeline. In this article, we’ll explain how to take a strategic and systematic approach to building your prospect pipeline so you can focus on what matters most, cultivating meaningful relationships with your major gift donors. 

Understand your fundraising target

You can meet your fundraising goals if you don’t know what they are. Take some time to think about what you want to achieve with your fundraising in the long term and how the money will be spent. 

Creating a simple table of gifts helps you understand how many prospects you need to meet your fundraising target. Below is a sample theoretical table of gifts to get you started.

% of target Number of donationsGift sizeTotal value
10%1£100,000£100.000
20%2£50,000£100,000
36%4£25,000£100,000
52%8£12,500£100,000
68%16£6,250£100,00
84%80£3,125£250,000
100%160£1,563£250,000
Total270£1,000,000

Audit and rank your current prospects 

Take stock of your existing prospect pipeline. Are all your prospects still relevant? Have any relationships stalled or advanced? We use six categories to rank prospects:

  1. Cold prospects: they can afford to give, but you don’t know if they’re interested in giving.
  2. Cool prospects: They can afford to give and have given to your kind of cause in the past.
  3. Lukewarm prospects: They have the ability to give and are already in your database.
  4. Warm prospects: Given the right treatment, you think they will give.
  5. Hot prospects: You have met them, they are interested, and they can make a significant gift.
  6. Red hot prospects: Potential donors whose behaviour indicates a major gift is likely soon.

Identify new prospects

Make the most of your supporter database and identify new major donor prospects through research tools like prospect research and wealth screening. Prospect research is the process of gathering information about potential donors – helping you find new prospects or secure funding from grantmakers.

Wealth screening involves comparing the information of your supporter database with a Wealth Intelligence Database to find matches. A match is a HNW individual who appears on both databases, making them a potential major donor for your cause.

Develop personalised outreach plans

Once you’ve identified new prospects, get to know them better. Gather information that provides insight into their interests, motivations for giving and financial capacity. These insights can help you create a personalised approach for each prospect.

Match your communication to their interests and preferences, plan your donation requests according to their giving capacity, and consider organising personalised events for high-potential donors. A personal connection will help you build meaningful relationships that encourage long-term support.

Measure success and track your progress

Define what successful prospect pipeline management looks like for you. This could be the number of prospects added each quarter, how long it takes for a prospect to go from cold to hot, or closed fundraising asks.

Collect data on your prospect pipeline using a spreadsheet, CRM or prospect management tool. This will help you track your progress throughout the year and build your pipeline strategy next year.

Building a strong prospect pipeline is the only way to guarantee major gift fundraising success in 2025. 

If you’re ready to embrace research-based fundraising, we can help.

At Prospecting for Gold, we specialise in research, wealth screening, consultancy and regulatory compliance, making fundraising more effective and successful.

Get in touch to get started on your research-based fundraising journey.