[lgebhart@une.edu]

Two Questions for everyone out there regarding the Prospect Tab:

1. For the "Prospect Status" I'm curious to know what people are using in this field and what your definitions are? For example are you using a 1-5 scale where 1 is research, 4 is solicit and 5 is stewardship or.... what?

2. At what point do you create a proposal. Do you make one right off the bat once you've identified a prospect for a major gift or not until you're ready to make the actual ask or somewhere in between? This is under debate with the higher-ups and I could use some support to make my case.

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[hullsa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lgebhart@une.edu

Two Questions for everyone out there regarding the Prospect Tab:

1. For the "Prospect Status" I'm curious to know what people are using in this field and what your definitions are? For example are you using a 1-5 scale where 1 is research, 4 is solicit and 5 is stewardship or.... what?

We use "Identify" to indicate those in research, possibly unassigned or being proactively researched.

Basically, we use these for assigned prospects:
Qualify - Little or no relationship with prospect in this category, but an area of interest and capability is evident.

Cultivation- Relationship needs strengthening. Serious consideration of these prospects is just beginning. Gift capability is estimated and our relationship with the prospect may be new or weak.

Solicitation – Relationship with prospect is strong; interest in and area of giving is understood. Ask amount has been calculated based on research or primary sources. Prospect is ready to be asked.

Stewardship - Donors who have made a gift in the amount of $5,000 or more may be assigned a Prospect Manager. Donors who have made a gift in the amount of $3,000 to $5,000 will be classified for annual-fund (mid-level gift) tracking, and may be assigned to an annual fund officer for stewardship. Donors of major gifts for permanent stewardship may be assigned to a donor relations officer (as approved by the front-line fundraiser/solicitor).

We also have one status for "Listed" to indicate a foundation that appears on a large funding list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lgebhart@une.edu

2. At what point do you create a proposal. Do you make one right off the bat once you've identified a prospect for a major gift or not until you're ready to make the actual ask or somewhere in between? This is under debate with the higher-ups and I could use some support to make my case.

We ask our DOs to create a proposal when a prospect is at the (pre)solicitation stage. We used to have them start one at the beginning of the cycle, but many would never be asked or sent, so now they entrer them when they are sure they will be making an ask.

[lgebhart@une.edu]

Thank you Sarah. The prospect statuses are very helpful. Are your proposal statuses similar to the prospect status? And would you say that you create a proposal at the cultivation stage?

[Melissa Siobhan]

We currently have not been using the Prospect status field. I am thinking of using it for Assigned, Not Assigned and Do Not Assign so I can keep track of prospects that are not assigned to a solicitor and the difference between who needs to be assigned and who does not.

I do not feel it necessary to use statuses similar to my proposal statuses. It would be just too much to always check when one is changed to also change the other and what do you do when one proposal is in one status and the other is in another?

[lgebhart@une.edu]

Thank you Melissa. I really appreciate the feedback. We have been just using prosposal status too and not really utilizing the Prospect Status although I did set up a table for it but it was very similar to my proposal statuses. The thinking from my boss, is to use some sort of scale, say 1-5 for the prospect status, so say 3 is cultivation and 4 is solicitation. And they don't want to enter a proposal until someone gets to solicitation, when they are ready to make the ask. But then because there was no proposal before that stage, none of the actions get linked and there's no way to know how much our prospects in cultivation or pre-solicitation are targeted for.

[Melissa Siobhan]

That is exactly why we do create proposals as soon as a solicitor is assigned - linked actions. The solicitor is assigned as soon as they are verified as someone we want to cultivate and hopefully solicit.

We have a proposal status of canceled if the cultivation never leads to a solicitation but we have the actions all linked to that proposal to record the activity that was taken for historical purposes.

We are using the rating field to rate the probability of a gift (at the targeted ask amount) and the options are 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. We use this to discount the ask amount to report on expected revenue. We do this for all proposals so we can see if we have enough activity to bring us to our goal.

Someone with a low probability may show at 25% so on reports they only show at 25% of their ask amount. Presumably 1 in 4 of the 25% gifts will result in the gift so if 3 get canceled or declined then when the other one comes in we use the full funded amount on our reports. This is the best way we can think of to forecast - especially before cultivation has even begun and the numbers are based only on a capacity rating.

We are in a campaign so forecasting revenues from major gifts is a huge venture here.

[hullsa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lgebhart@une.edu

Thank you Sarah. The prospect statuses are very helpful. Are your proposal statuses similar to the prospect status? And would you say that you create a proposal at the cultivation stage?

We create a proposal at the end of the cultivation stage, during solicit (actually pre-solicit).

They are a little different. Our Proposal Statuses are:
Pending/Pre-Solicit - Initial status of a new proposal; ask to occur within 90 days.

Open-Asked/ Awaiting Response - Ask has been made; waiting for reply from prospect.

Open-Accepted-Verbal – Prospect has verbally agreed to make a gift at the level of the asked amount.

Closed-Funded - Full amount of gift has been given; proposal will be marked as inactive after TRE gift record is linked to proposal.

Closed-Partly Funded - Only part of ask amount will be given; no more expected.

Closed-Not Funded - Ask was refused; proposal will be marked as inactive.

Withdrawn – Planned ask was never made; proposal will be marked as inactive. Proposals will be marked as ‘withdrawn’ after four+ months of inactivity or if the prospect is not solicited. Officers can add new proposals at the time of a later solicitation.

Hope that helps,
S.

[lgebhart@une.edu]

Thanks for the feedback. It does help a lot!

[LCox]

This thread has helped me very much too - we are just starting to use the proposal function here, and your examples have really helped, so thanks to the person who asked the question and those who are answering!

Meanwhile, if I can add to the original question without seeming to hijack the thread - how are the "Purpose" and "Reason" fields in the New Proposal window generally supposed to be used? We aren't sure what use to make of them, and what canned reports they may be used on, etc.

Thanks in advance for the help, folks...

--Leslie
RVMC Foundation

[hullsa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LCox

how are the "Purpose" and "Reason" fields in the New Proposal window generally supposed to be used?

We use Purpose to show what the intended use of the generated funds will be.
Our table entries include: Capital Improvements, Classrooms/Lab Space, Clinical Research, Conference/Seminar, Deanship, Educational Program, Endowmed Chair, Endowment (Other), Equipment/Staff, Event Sponsorship, Fellowship, General Operating, Lead Gift, Lectureeship, naming, Professorship, Research, Restricted Program, Scholarships, Speical Project, Technology.

We use Reason a little differently than I think it was intended by Blackbaud. Here, the Reason field indicates what campus, school or dept the ask is for - we have 3 main campuses, 8 schools, and a bunch of health institutes...so it's the easiest way to for me to track them. Because it's a table, I can standardize the entries by campus and school - three of which have siimilar depts because they are all medical schools.

[LCox]

Oh, great, thanks! It sounds like you use purpose the way we guessed it was supposed to be used; that would work for us very well.

We aren't a school, though, we're a hospital foundation - I'm thinking the "Reason" field is one I'll need some more suggestions / help with.

Any healthcare folks out there got ideas I can use?

-- Leslie

[Melissa Siobhan]

We use reason only when the status has moved to cancelled or declined and then we have a list of simple reasons that a proposal was either cancelled or declined.

[lgebhart@une.edu]

I changed the name of the field Reason to Details and just use it for more details about the proposal, such as irrevocable or revocable for planned gifts.

For purpose, we also use it for the intended fund, like annual fund or endowment, because sometimes the fund may not be created until the gift comes in, like a specific endowed scholarship. But be careful with purpose. Unfortunately, this is a flaw in the proposal tab. When you go to export proposal information, it asks you what proposal you want to export and the only thing you have to choose from is purpose. So, for example, say a constituent has 3 proposals on their record, all with a purpose of endowment, but 2 have been funded and one is pending. When you go to export it, if you pick the purpose of endowment, it doesn't know which one you want and may pull over one of the funded ones instead of the one that is pending. To get around this, the best thing I've come up with is to make purposes like Open-Annual Fund, Open-Capital and then Closed-Annual Fund, Closed-Capital, etc. That way, ones that we're currently working with would be in the open category and once they are completed they would be the same "purpose" just closed.

I'm not sure if that made any sense, but I've found getting around that issue with purpose quite frustrating, so I wanted to make everyone aware of it.

We used to use the prospect status to track the capability and inclination to give based on a alpha numeric grading (1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B etc). However, now this information is on the proposal screen as the capability and inclination change depending on the project requiring funding. We now use the prospect status section to identify level of priority, i.e. priority 1, 2, 3.

The proposal status is used to track the proposal itself and we add an individual or organisation to the prospect module at the early stages. We have Potential Prospect, Evaluated -not a prospect, Cultivation, Approach made/proposal sent, Accepted, refused, Gift received - stewardship.

We use the reason field to identify the reason for approach. Former/current donor, Link to Director/Trustee, They approached us, passion for collection etc

So far this works really well.
Charlotte