The first step is about narrowing the field of possibilities and beginning to build viable and qualified portfolios for your gift officers, board and CEO. One place to start is to think first about your program goals and how many prospects you will need in order to achieve your goals. Several factors are important to consider:
How many prospects you’ll need to reach your goals. Below is an example gift pyramid for a $4 million goal. For planning, it’s important to know how many prospects you will need to “ask” in order to reach your goals. In many cases, you will need to ask three to four qualified and cultivated prospects for gifts in order to succeed at soliciting support. Make your own using our Excel template.
How much time each gift officer can fully devote to managing his/her portfolio. Many nonprofits consider a portfolio of 150 qualified prospects/donors : 1 FTE MGO at any given time to be a productive ratio (remember the portfolio will shift as you qualify donors or eliminate them from your list). If you have other duties, you’ll need to scale accordingly.
Creating your initial prospect portfolio
This chart indicates the target. Much like a dart board, the closer you get to the middle, the more likely you’ll be successful at securing major gifts:
Despite many who assume that we are looking first to “wealthy” donors, the true hierarchy of those we are searching for should be weighted as follows:
1) They are interested in your station and its mission.
- They have a passion for and/or an interest in news/information (making sure their community is informed through trusted services), music, arts, public media.
- They are listeners and understand the mission of your station.
2) They have a relationship with leadership in your organization.
- It could be your General Manager, a staff person, board or other volunteer leader.
3) They have been or are supporters, and perhaps long-time donors at any level to your organization.
- They may have served on your board or other organization committees.
- They may have volunteered for your station in some way.
4) They can have a big impact on the organization.
- They have capacity as indicated by other charitable giving and/or wealth screenings.
- They have connections to others in the community that can help.
The place to start is with a list. Here’s who to put on your initial list for consideration:
- current and past board members or leadership volunteers
- past senior staff members
- station founders
- donors who have contributed over $10,000 cumulatively to your station
- donors who give $1,200 or more to your station in any of the past five years
- donors who have given to your station for over 10 years (you can narrow the field further by increasing to 15 or 20 year donors)
- any donors that meet priority 1 or 2 based upon wealth screening (if conducted)
- donors who made gifts of $5,000+ to previous capital campaigns
- donors who have made a single gift of $10,000 or more to your station
- any individual or company in the community that should be included based upon conversation with board members and staff or knowledge of their interest in your mission, financial capability, significant support of like-organizations and causes, and influence in your community
This larger list should evolve and change as time goes on. After all, you add new donors and meet new people over time. Be sure that you have some methodology for keeping track of whether you remove someone from the larger list and why.
So, at the end of this exercise, you should have a long list of prospects for further qualification in the next step: discovery.