Any good gift officer would always want to be the one who is managing that one prospect who makes a transformational gift. And I’m assuming that’s why a lot of gift officers I speak to tend to keep prospects in their portfolios, even those that the officers have not yet visited. There are many reasons to overload a portfolio. Yet, trying to cultivate and steward too many people actually hinders the cultivation and solicitation process.
Let’s examine some ideas for improving prospect management, including making sure that everyone in your pool gets the personal touch that he or she deserves. We’ll look at the reason for keeping a prospect too long and then the unintended consequences, along with notes on best practice for managing your entire pool.
“There’s no one else to manage these prospects.” Any charity’s CEO will complain of not having enough staff, especially major gift officers. Frankly, I know very few nonprofit bosses who believe that they have enough help. However, a single gift officer managing a prospect pool of, say, 300 prospects actually diminishes her ability to solicit any one of them. Consider these unintended consequences:
- In the same way that having a closet with too many clothes causes one to take far too long to decide on his outfit each morning, having a huge prospect pool means combing through oversized reports, trying to remember too many details on too many people, and not seeing that key prospect just as she sells her company for a huge profit.
- Too many people to think about is overwhelming and can drown a gift officer’s best intentions. Where there is too much to handle, a person’s natural response is to freeze up or abandon the task.
- Plowing through an entire pool can be damaging to the gift officer’s relationships with other prospects. Imagine someone asking you for time in your office who then spends that time looking distracted and demonstrating that she clearly doesn’t know who you are. When I am buying groceries, I expect the cashier’s full attention. Imagine my reaction to not having someone’s full attention while she’s asking me for a $1 million charitable gift.
Best practice around this situation may not always involve hiring more gift officers. Not only is that not always an option, but also may not be the best idea. Consider instead using work plans to hammer out those prospects who will be actively worked by each member of your team. Those prospects who will not be seen in a given fiscal year need to be re-assigned to the annual giving program or to planned giving, or even stewardship for prior major gift donors. In other words, it’s often better to shift the prospect to somewhere where she will actually be solicited than it is to continue to ignore her.
“I’ve been working these prospects for years and should keep the relationship.” I have known gift officers who have cultivated prospects for years without a gift. The hope is that one more ask will land the gift. And, like someone who can’t stand the idea of yielding her slot machine in case the next pull lands the jackpot, one can be tempted to insist on a series of “one more try’s.” Let’s look at some unintended consequences of not giving up on one prospective major gifts donor.
- A prospect who defers a gift for years has reasons. We are not always in a position to find out what those reasons are, though, and that’s where our guessing can get us into trouble. Many reasons include:
- The prospect hasn’t heard the right project to support.
- The prospect is very interested in giving, but doesn’t have the assets to do so right now.
- The organization is not on the prospect’s top list of philanthropies.
- The prospect loves the attention but never intends to give.
- Asking for a major gift is an art, so setting hard limits on the amount of time that can be spent on a given cultivation is not a panacea to the issue of not being able to solicit everyone. However, there is a tipping point with a gift officer where it’s obvious that he’s keeping prospects for too long. Finding the right mix using good reporting, combined with the art of reading the prospect, is key.
- If I were a major gifts prospect and I were never visited by, say, my alma mater, even though my wealth is obvious, I would take it personally. It doesn’t matter why I get set aside and someone I know doesn’t: I would not know the reason and would therefore make one up. What matters is that I would perceive the organization as dismissing me. And that affects my likelihood to continue giving to the annual fund a planned gift.
Best practices around moving a prospect from a longstanding gift officer to someone else should include a lot of discussion since prospects are likely to be irritated by being handed off. However, I have also personally been part of solicitations where the prospect had a prior negative personal relationship with one of my co-solicitors, and, as you can imagine, those solicitations landed us with big goose eggs.
Careful analysis of what is going on with a prospect who will not respond definitively to a given gift officer will yield what the next best steps are. Here is our suggested decision tree:
- If the gift officer has not visited the prospect at all for a period of time that is indicated through good analytics, then the prospect needs to be re-assigned.
- If the gift officer is having difficulty getting through to talk to the prospect to make a visit request, then the department should find connections to the prospect, or fellow gift officers can make suggestions for the connection. However, at some point, refusal to take a call must be considered refusal altogether.
- If the prospect allows visits but will not allow a conversation about giving, then the prospect should be re-assigned to Annual Giving. It’s flattering to be visited by someone, and even better if one can get a free lunch or coffee from it, but it’s not productive for the organization to encourage its continuance. This is particularly true if the prospect keeps asking for favors or consideration, such as a trusteeship, without making investment-sized gifts first.
- If the prospect keeps talking about giving but does not seem to settle on an amount or project, then the gift officer may need training on how to listen and to derive the right project to spark the prospect’s commitment.
- If the prospect keeps sending the message, “Not now, but keep in touch,” then the research team needs to determine if the prospect has or is poised to have the resources to meet the implied promise. If the prospect’s wealth situation supports her assertion that the time is not right, then the prospect should stay with the same gift officer so she will know that her participation is meaningful to the organization.
- Other situations may occur and they require their own discussion. However, a gift officer repeating, “I know him. I know that he will give. Just give me time,” must be pressed to give more detail about the delay unless the gift officer himself has a significant record of bringing in gifts.
“I have to steward my prior donors.” This reason hits me both ways. My first reactions is, “You are not a stewardship officer. You are a gift officer and you need to bring in new money.” However, even while that is coming out of my mouth, I’m reminded of salesmen who have come into my house, sold me on their charm and promises, and then sent someone else to do the work. And a lot of what we agreed upon was lost in translation, and then the salesman couldn’t be reached. Hand offs are the most important (and often most neglected) part of fundraising. Let’s take a look at some unintended consequences to trying to both solicit and steward with one full-time position.
- Every minute spent on stewardship is a minute lost soliciting new gifts.
- The prospect’s relationship to the organization may get distorted into a relationship with the gift officer.
- Other giving and engagement opportunities may never be shared with the prospect.
- Someone in stewardship may not be asked for another major gift, or even a planned gift, even if his wealth increases.
Best practice in any shop must include good stewardship. If there is not a stewardship function in a fundraising shop, one must be created. Stewardship professionals know how to write high-quality acknowledgements, know when to build a stewardship event, and know what levels of giving earn what levels of personal attention.
Without a stewardship shop, the administration itself should manage these activities, not the gift officers. As we’ve said before, distracting gift officers from bringing in new gifts reduces the number of new gifts that they can bring in. Indeed, gift officers are a fundraising shop’s most expensive resource, and should not have to (or be allowed to) spend time on administrivia wherever it can be reduced or managed by someone who is in the central office every day.
These three topics pop up a lot in our discussions with clients, prospective clients, and fellow conference attendees. Yet all three are resolvable. The most important thing is that the right person should be in front of the right prospect at the right time with the right project.
If you’d like to discuss your organization’s portfolio management with us, including how to determine how many gift officers you really need, let us know at marianne@staupell.com.