Spring is well and truly sprung! Now is the perfect time to re-evaluate your prospect research strategy and give it a spring clean. This involves, revisiting your pipeline, updating your CRM, making sure your support and cultivation plans are still fit for purpose and reconnecting with your lapsed donors.
Revisit prospect pipeline
When was the last time you ranked your prospects? Are they still on the hotter end of the spectrum? If not, it’s time to do some research! We use six categories to rank prospects.
- Cold prospects: they can afford to give, but you don’t know if they’re interested in giving.
- Cool prospects: They can afford to give and have given to your kind of cause in the past.
- Lukewarm prospects: They have the ability to give and are already in your database.
- Warm prospects: Given the right treatment, you think they will give.
- Hot prospects: You have met them, they are interested, and they can make a significant gift.
- Red hot prospects: Potential donors whose behaviour indicates a major gift is likely soon.
Once you’ve re-ranked your prospects, remove cold leads who you have no hope of re-engaging, double down on the warm prospects you think will give soon and carry out some research to identify new prospects for your pipeline.
Update your donor CRM
Before the summer events season takes off, update your donor database. These steps will help ensure your CRM is accurate with up-to-date job titles, contact info, interests and recent engagements.
- Run a CRM audit to identify missing or outdated information.
- Use LinkedIn for job titles and roles – as well as confirming current positions look out for signs of wealth changes like new ventures, promotions or retirements.
- Review marketing and event engagement – check your email marketing platform for recent interactions, opens, clicks, and event attendance.
- Add donor interests to your database using previous giving history, survey data, event sign-ups, or one-to-one donor conversations to tag things like environment, health, education and capital appeal.
- Carry out a wealth screening to identify your top prospects who sit on our Wealth Intelligence Database.
Make sure your case for support is aligned with your prospects
Revisit your funding needs and priorities, have these changed since the start of the year? If not, the prospects you identified in January will likely still be a good fit (unless their philanthropic priorities have changed).
However, if your funding needs have changed, your case for support needs updating along with your prospect pipeline. Now that your CRM is updated with your prospect interests, it’s easy to search and verify if the prospects you’re trying to engage are still aligned with your funding needs.
Review your cultivation plans
Are your prospects moving towards a gift or stalling in your pipeline? With this knowledge, you can adjust your outreach accordingly to bring you closer to securing a major gift.
- Map where each prospect is in your pipeline – with your CRM track if they’re in the identify, research, cultivate, ask or stewardship stage.
- Set next steps – every prospect in your pipeline should have a clear next action with a specific date. If they don’t, plan one.
- Review engagement – who last contacted the prospect, did they respond, have they attended events or opened recent emails?
- Identify blockers – is there too big a gap between communications, is your case for support aligned with their values, are they interested in the invitations you’re sending? If progress has slowed, find ways to refresh your approach.
- Re-prioritise based on ranking – focus on warm, engaged prospects interested in your cause. If those are few and far between, undertake research to find new ones.
Reconnect with lapsed donors
Donors who have made a major gift before are likely to do so again. Run a CRM search for donors who haven’t engaged with you in the past 18-24 months, and review their giving history, previous connections and past interests. Use LinkedIn to check if their career, location or other interests have changed.
If they’re still aligned with your cause, re-engage with a personal update on the impact of their past gifts, and include a low-pressure way for them to get involved with your cause again. Make sure this communication comes from the right person at your organisation. That may be your CEO, a trustee or a service delivery lead they’ve engaged with before.
At Prospecting for Gold, we specialise in research, wealth screening, consultancy and regulatory compliance, making fundraising more effective and successful.
Successful major gift fundraising isn’t just about securing a donation. It’s about building relationships, understanding people’s motivations and aligning their interests with your cause.
Our wealth screening and data summary report is free when we screen 2,000 or more of your UK supporters. Ready to transform your major gift fundraising? Contact us today.