Getting Started with Optimized Opportunities

Optimized Opportunities requires Prospect Insights Pro to identify, score, and manage prospects. Before you can optimize opportunities, you must first enable and configure Prospect Insights Pro in your environment.

Complete all steps in the Prospect Insights Pro setup guide to:

• Set up fundraiser roles and permissions

• Assign users to those roles

• Brief your team on how to use Prospect Insights Pro

• Begin qualifying and managing prospects in your major gift pipeline

Once Prospect Insights Pro is set up, return here to continue with Optimized Opportunities setup.

Explain to your fundraising team how Optimized Opportunities works and how to use it in their daily workflow.

• What optimized opportunities are: Opportunities that combine three elements: an Ask amount (reflecting a prospect's giving capacity), associated actions (steps to move the prospect toward solicitation), and a fundraiser assignment (so everyone knows who owns the relationship).

• How Prospect Insights suggests amounts:

  • Ask amount — an aggressive goal within the prospect's target gift range

  • Expected amount — either the lower range of the target gift range or the maximum cumulative giving from the past three years (whichever is larger)

  • Deadline — based on your organization's fiscal year settings

• Key principle: These are recommendations, not mandates. Your team should adjust amounts based on their donor relationships, strategy, and what they know about each prospect's giving capacity and intentions.

• The workflow: Start with the Undergiving queue (prospects who should be giving more). Use the Optimization status filter to find prospects missing opportunities, actions, or giving at below-target levels. For each prospect, create or edit opportunities to match Prospect Insights recommendations, add actions to build cultivation sequences, and track progress.

• Timing and outcomes: When a prospect reaches their target gift range, dismiss them from the queue and record the outcome. This helps your team stay focused on prospects who truly need attention.

Training: This video demonstrates how Prospect Insights Pro customers can use a new modal to create an Action Plan from an Opportunity in a queue.

Use Prospect Insights Pro's Optimization status filter to quickly identify prospects who need attention.

1. Go to Portfolio > Prospect insights > Undergiving.

2. At the top of the list, select Add filter. Search for and select Optimization status.

3. The filter identifies prospects who need attention because they:

   • Have no active opportunity

   • Have an ask amount below their predicted giving capacity

   • Have no action plan in place

4. Prospects are listed in priority order, so start at the top. The highest-priority prospects are those closest to reaching their target giving and most ready for solicitation.

Learn more about Prospect Insights Pro filters

For each prospect in the Undergiving queue, ensure they have an active opportunity with a properly-valued ask amount.

1. From the Undergiving list, select a prospect to view their Prospect management section.

2. Check whether an active opportunity already exists for this prospect.

   • If no opportunity exists: Select Add opportunity. Prospect Insights automatically populates the opportunity with a recommended Ask amount, Expected amount, and Deadline date based on the prospect's giving capacity and your fiscal year.

   • If an opportunity exists: Review the current ask amount. If it's below the prospect's predicted capacity, select Accept recommendations to update it to Prospect Insights' suggested value.

3. Adjust the suggested values if needed to match your organization's strategy or your knowledge of the donor.

4. Ensure the opportunity is assigned to a fundraiser (yourself or a colleague).

5. Save the opportunity. You're now ready to add actions to support this opportunity.

Note: Opportunity values are recommendations. Adjust them as needed to fit your organization's strategy.

Learn more about Prospect Insights opportunity recommendations

For each opportunity, create a sequence of actions to guide the prospect toward solicitation.

1. With the opportunity created and saved, look for the success message that appears. It will offer Create an action plan (if your organization has enabled Blackbaud AI).

2. Option A — Use AI to generate an action plan: If available, select Create an action plan from the success message. The Action Plans premium feature will generate a structured cultivation sequence with up to seven steps, built backward from your ask deadline. This gives you a ready-made pathway to solicit the prospect.

3. Option B — Create actions manually: If Action Plans is not available or you prefer to build your own sequence, go back to the prospect's record and select Add action to create individual activities (calls, meetings, emails, research tasks) that move the prospect through your pipeline.

4. Ensure each action is associated with the opportunity you just created, so they're linked together when you review the prospect later.

Learn more about creating and tracking actions

Learn more about the Action Plans premium feature

Continuously monitor and move prospects from identification through cultivation, solicitation, and gift closure.

1. Return regularly to the Undergiving queue filtered by Optimization status to track progress on your optimized opportunities.

2. For each prospect, review:

   • Assigned fundraisers (ensure the relationship owner is clear)

   • Upcoming actions (are the next steps scheduled?)

   • Current opportunities and their ask amounts (is the ask still aligned with capacity?)

   • Giving activity (has the prospect given? Are they moving toward their target?)

3. When a prospect reaches their target gift range or closes a gift: Go back to the Undergiving queue and select Finish review > Permanently remove from this queue. Record your reason for dismissal. This keeps your queue focused on prospects who truly need attention.

4. When a prospect's giving capacity drops below your major gift threshold: Consider reassigning them to general fundraising instead of major gifts, or temporarily dismiss them until their capacity recovers.

5. Use Prospect Insights' predictive data (Target gift range, Major giving likelihood, Giving indicators, Giving behavior) to shape your cultivation strategy and build momentum toward solicitation.

Learn more about managing the Undergiving queue