Over the last week, I have had several clients contact me about identifying new prospects for them. The organizations are different, from global NGOs to educational institutions, and they are looking for new donors in different places, from here in the US to countries around the world. These requests to find new donors made me want to share a few thoughts about the prospecting process.
Schools, colleges, and universities have built-in prospecting pools. Generally, these kinds of organizations look for individual donors who are alumni or parents. This type of prospecting project starts by looking for overlooked prospects in an in-house database and build from there.
For other kinds of nonprofits without a defined universe of potential prospects, the process of looking for new individual donors can seem a bit daunting. How do you start? Where do you end?
In either type of organization, identifying new prospects involves answering these five questions:
1. How many gifts do you need – and at what level?
If you haven’t already identified your fundraising goals in terms of numbers of gifts at specific giving levels, start here. Knowing that you need X number of new donors who each can make gifts of at least Y dollars will help you focus your prospecting work. (If you need help with this step, please let me know.)
2. Do your potential donors have the financial capacity to make gifts at the level you are seeking?
There are lots of ways to assess financial capacity. Common methods involve finding asset values (such as the value of real estate holdings) or compensation and then plugging those numbers into standard (read: US-based) estimated net worth formulas. If you are looking at potential donors who live outside the United States and a handful of other countries, you may need to modify your formulas to make sure you are taking country-specific asset allocation norms into account.
3. Have these potential donors made gift(s) at your target level in the past?
Financial capacity alone does not a prospect make. If a prospect has the financial capacity to make a gift at the level you seek but has no interest in making large gifts, you may be wasting your time trying to cultivate this prospect.
4. Would they be interested in your organization’s work?
What kinds of organizations do they currently support, as a donor, a volunteer, or board member? Do the missions of those organizations have a similarity to yours?
5. How could you connect with these potential donors?
Of course, you will need basic contact information. Beyond that, however, you should understand how a potential donor’s network might cross paths with the networks of your board and staff. Who would be the best person to make an intial contact and why?
So where do you find information that will let you answer these five essential questions? The best sources will depend on what kind of organization you work for, what type of project(s) you are trying to fund, and where your potential prospects live.
If you would like to discuss your prospect identification needs, please be in touch. I can conduct prospect identification projects for you, and I also can help you start this process on your own through hourly consultations. For starters, you can schedule a free 30-minute introductory Zoom call with me. I look forward to helping you find the prospects you need to fund your organization’s important work.