Prospect Status
With moves management, your organization develops donors' interest in your mission through a standard process to identify and acquire prospects, cultivate personal relationships, and generate major gift opportunities. As you determine this process, we recommend the following milestones as typical stages to track as prospect statuses.
Identification
At this stage, you first discover the prospect, such as through wealth screening, database analysis, or word-of-mouth from a board member, staff member, or volunteer. Research and analyze the prospect's wealth to determine their capacity for major gifts and uncover any pertinent business connections, career information, and philanthropic giving or affiliations. For information about how to track this analysis, see Prospect Research.
For further cultivation and management, we recommend your organization assign the prospect to a fundraiser. For more information, see Fundraisers.
Tip: We recommend you create an opportunity at this earliest stage to accurately track all the prospect's chances to give, measure the effectiveness of your prospect management efforts, ensure research is completed, and track the evolution of the relationship. For information, see Proposals.
Qualification/Disqualification
At this stage, the fundraiser or development officer contacts the prospect to start the conversation to determine whether a viable gift opportunity exists. You may decide to disqualify the prospect after three attempts within a specific time period, such as four to six weeks.
Cultivation
At this stage, build your relationship with the prospect and create forward momentum toward the gift, through frequent visits, events, and other personalized interactions.
Solicitation
At this stage, prepare the appropriate materials for the ask, request the gift, and update the opportunity with a realistic gift amount and date to expect from the prospect.
Stewardship
After you receive the gift, acknowledge and thank the donor, and continue to grow the relationship for the next gift opportunity.
Tip: To help maintain your relationship with the donor, plan and track interactions with the constituent. For information, see Actions on page 1.
For information about how to change, edit, or delete a prospect's status, see Manage a Prospect's Status. For information about setting up statuses and past-due thresholds for your moves management process, see Configure Prospect Statuses.
Tip: In the database view, you can manage a prospect’s current status on the Prospect tab of their constituent record. However, we recommend you manage a prospect's moves in the web view instead. For details why, see Prospect Status: Web or Database View?.