As a major gift officer, effective prospect management is paramount to your success. We understand the importance of having a well-structured plan in place to navigate your prospect pool efficiently and focus your efforts on promising opportunities. That’s why we’ve developed a prospect tracking spreadsheet to assist you in this endeavor.
This spreadsheet is designed to keep you on track, ensuring that you effectively guide prospects through the donor pipeline. Let’s delve into how it works and the columns to fill in on the spreadsheet:
Prospects:
Begin by populating the first tab with all the prospects in your portfolio.
Solicitation Timing:
In the Solicitation Timing column, you’ll make strategic decisions about which prospects you’ll approach for a gift within the current fiscal year or those you’ll engage for a gift in the upcoming fiscal year. This subset of your portfolio becomes the primary focus of your development efforts, demanding the majority of your time and attention. For the prospects you intend to solicit for a gift in either the current fiscal year or the next, select one of the following options:
- Current Fiscal Year Gift
- Next Fiscal Year Gift
Typically, you’ll have 10-15 prospects falling into each category, totaling 20-30 prospects out of your entire portfolio. Leave all other prospects blank.
Gift Amount:
This column specifies the amount you plan to solicit from each prospect as a gift.
Activity to Move Prospect:
This column provides detailed insights into the specific activities aimed at advancing each prospect along their donor journey. You’ll find engagement activities organized into five levels, each suggesting progressively deeper involvement. The objective here is to offer engagement ideas that will enhance a prospect’s affinity as higher levels of engagement are implemented. The pull-down menu offers the following options:
- Level 1: Event Volunteer, Event Judge, Individual Meeting with Faculty, Class Guest Speaker, Career Services
- Level 2: Student Mentoring, Free Tickets to Events, Research Project, Meeting with Department Head
- Level 3: Department Alumni Award, Department Advisory Board, Event Keynote Speaker
- Level 4: Meeting with President, University Alumni Award
- Level 5: Board of Trustees
For guidance on creating a tiered engagement activity list tailored to your university, refer to this article.
Geo Code:
This column identifies the prospect’s location, indicated by their geo code (e.g., Boston Chapter). This information proves invaluable for planning your travel and prospect visits.
Notes:
Use this section to input pertinent details about the intended direction of the gift and any other essential information you deem relevant.
Once you’ve filled in all the necessary data in the spreadsheet, you can sort it to create a well-structured plan for the year. Start by sorting the prospects by “Solicitation Timing” in descending order of gift amounts. These high-priority prospects should be your immediate focus. For a secondary sorting, consider using “Geo Code” to plan your travel efficiently, focusing on prospects who are closest to the solicitation stage.
In summary, this spreadsheet is a powerful tool to help you better manage your prospect portfolio, prioritize prospects, and track the engagement activities designed to bring them closer to making a gift commitment. It streamlines your major gift strategy, making it more organized and effective.
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