The word in the sector is that donor pools are shrinking. Trustee networks can’t deliver prospects at the required rates, and prospects have too many events to choose from.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s a new generation of donors on the rise in the UK, but charities need to invest in research to find them.
Revisit your table of gifts
Re-evaluate your table of gifts. What is your fundraising target? Once you understand that, you can plan and manage your prospect pipeline properly.
Look at the bigger picture and consider your three-to-five-year fundraising objective. A long-term approach increases the scope of relationships you can have with your prospects, allowing for stewardship and a multi-gift approach rather than a one-off donation.
How many gifts do you need to reach your target? Consider:
- What’s the minimum value for a major gift?
- What kind of gifts will be transformational for you?
- Do you have prospects that can give high and mid-value gifts?
Younger donors are more likely to give smaller gifts as the relationship builds, so you may need to identify more prospects giving at the lower end.
The stages of pipeline development
There are four key stages to pipeline development:
- Identification – the initial research to find new prospects, which may involve wealth screening your database or using prospect research to identify new names.
- Qualification – more in-depth research to understand your prospects’ capacity to give, alignment with your cause, and flag any potential issues.
- Cultivation – find the right person to connect you, introduce your cause, and build the relationship.
- Ask – make sure the right person makes the ask. Younger donors are more impact-driven, and if they have a strong relationship with someone on the delivery side, they may not appreciate an ask from the chief executive.
Publicly available research sources
If you want to bring your research in-house, there are plenty of publicly available sources to get you started.
- Companies House – search for an individual’s name to find all the companies they’re a director of, or search a company name to find all the directors and owners.
- Charity Reports – reports from similar charities can help you find prospects aligned with your cause.
- Media Coverage – identify new philanthropists coming up the ranks.
Before you start your research, you need to be clear on who you’re looking for and what they can support you with.
What matters more: wealth or connection to your cause?
Connection trumps wealth every time, although it’s good to have a balance of both. A mid-level donor who’s really connected to your cause may surprise you by giving a gift at a top level. But someone very wealthy, without a connection to your cause, will take much longer (and much more work from you) to give that same gift.
Ideally, every pipeline would contain a mix of both. If your pipeline is stacked towards people who are very connected with your cause but have lower wealth, they’ll need to be very warm to give that high-level gift.
Wealth screening is often the first step in pipeline development
On Thursday, 30 April, we’re hosting a free webinar to help you get the most out of it.
Our CEO, Kerry Rock, will answer many of the most commonly asked questions about using wealth screening to identify new donors. We’ll also cover:
– Wealth screening and data protection
– Planning your wealth screening to be GDPR-compliant
– Key steps for undertaking a screening
– How to make the most of your screening results
– Convincing colleagues that screening is right for your organisation
Places are going fast, so book now to secure your spot.