Prospects

Where do you look for potential donors? Here are some shortcuts to help you identify the right donor prospects who can take your cause to the next level. 1. If you need funding, go to your current donors first. 2. Start with your most committed donors and move them into larger gifts. 3.  Look for people who have both wealth and affinity for your cause. 4.  Don’t expect cold calls to yield anything. 5. Focus on your top level donors. 6. Set priorities relentlessly. 7. Use your informal networks to identify prospects. 8. Pay attention to the ladies.

Finding your "Moveable Middle" prospects requires good data and patient recruiting. But the donors you get will reward your hard work and then some.

Nonprofits spend lots of time trying to figure out who qualifies as a good fundraising prospect for their organizations. As your development team is looking for donors to make contact with and insert into your fundraising funnel, you don’t want to waste time. Who can you truly call a good “donor prospect?” Far too many organizations reply “everyone is a prospect” or “everyone with enough money is a prospect.” This is a mistake that costs nonprofits valuable time and resources.

If you're looking at a major campaign, don't embark on it without the benefit of a study. There are many good firms that can help you. And when you embark on a study, carefully consider the findings and recommendations. In doing so, you heed the counsel of some of your brightest, most loyal friends and prospective major donors.

Everyone knows what a donor is. But I’m not so sure that everyone knows what a prospect is. When I’m presenting a workshop, I often ask people, “What is a prospect?” And fundraisers and their board members often respond, “Someone you hope will give money.” Nope. No. Nada.

Here’s what I think a prospect is: an individual, business or some entity that has demonstrated an interest in your organization, your mission or your cause. In some way, that individual raised her hand expressing interest.

Three fundraising professionals shared 30 ideas for fundraising success at Fund Raising Day in New York. Here are ideas 11-20.

These 12 strategies aren't the only things I'd do to transform my donor-development office. They may not even be the most urgent things I'd do, or even the most important. But they are the things I'd do that I think would have the most lasting impact. They would make the most difference to converting my imaginary donor-development department from the under-funded, misunderstood appendage to the fundraising function that I found on joining the organization into the finely honed, high-
earning core activity that I'd like to leave behind when, in the fullness of time, I move on to pastures new (you have to indulge me a little here, in this fantasy). Anyway, here we go.

Talisma Fundraising's Dan Germain offers five steps for effective donor cultivation on the heels of a poll revealing optimism in the fundraising sector.

Nonprofit brand strategy consultant Michele Levy provided 11 marketing communications best practices that fundraisers should utilize in their communications strategies in a recent webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do.

At the Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association Year-End Luncheon, veteran fundraising expert Roger Craver, founder of DonorTrends and editor of The Agitator, shared five fundraising trends to get on top of in 2011.