Ops Insights #058 - Fundraiser Fast Start Initiative (Part 2 of 2)

January 30, 2025 | Read Time: 4 minutes | Written by Jenny Kleintop

Building off our prior edition, we are going to walk through how we cleansed portfolios and filled gaps in portfolios to lock and load them.

We held three 1.5-hour sessions over a 4-week period.

Session 1 - Review and Remove

The objective of the first prospect review session was to go through all the existing prospects and portfolios and ask the questions: Are these viable prospects that you currently carry? So viable that you will be able to have a meaningful interaction with them in the next 90 days?

• We moved names around to other fundraisers.

• We dropped non-responsive prospects.

• We got the portfolios to a more realistic place for each fundraiser.

We kept it simple and used a combination of a spreadsheet and the database to make sure we covered what we needed to in the 1.5 hours. The spreadsheet allowed us to quickly group and sort by relationship manager, stage, and last action. We had one spreadsheet for individuals and another for organizations. Then the database allowed us to click into any prospects where we had additional questions to answer.

I didn’t update in real-time as I wanted to keep us moving. Rather, I keep the notes in the first column of the spreadsheet to make the updates after the session.

See below for a screenshot of the spreadsheet we used along with a list of the fields we used.

Session 2 - Review and Fill in Gaps

The objective of the second prospect review session was to view the balance or make-up of the portfolios, fill in gaps with new prospects that we had in identification, and shift prospects around if needed to meet the overall objective.

• We assigned new prospects to fundraisers that needed more.

• We shifted some prospects to other fundraisers.

• We filled in the gaps in portfolios, so each fundraiser felt good about being able to make meaningful interactions with each prospect in the next 90 days.

We used the same method as session one with a spreadsheet and database as well as keeping notes, especially on the next step, so I could add that to the database after. This simply made us go faster than trying to make all the updates in real time.

See below for a screenshot of what we used to view the balance/make-up of portfolios.

Session 3 - Review and Lock in Portfolios

The objective of the third prospect review session was to do one more review of all portfolios and lock them in. The CDO referred to this as “locked and loaded.” In this session since portfolios were in a good place, we had more time to take down the next step on many prospects keeping in mind we wanted to ensure we could do a meaningful interaction within the next 90 days such as:

• Handwritten note.

• Personal call.

• Email forwarded of a newsletter or other already created asset, with a note that we wanted them to see something that we thought they’d be interested in.

It proved to be more helpful than the CDO and I realized at first because we had some less experienced fundraisers in the room, and they were able to learn from the other fundraisers.

I made the commitment to make all the updates from these three sessions in the database for the fundraisers to get us ready. And the CDO and I set the expectation with them that they would enter their activity from here.

Now we were ready to launch. The portfolios were “locked and loaded” and in a good place to launch the Fast Start Initiative.

Reference materials

For session 1 here is a view of the spreadsheet we used for portfolio reviews:

Additionally for session 1 here is the list of fields we used for portfolio reviews and the bolded fields are ones we referenced the most:

1. 9/5 Session Notes

2. Cons ID

3. Ind or Org

4. Sort Key

5. Name

6. Spouse Name

7. Primary Contact

8. Cons Code - Primary

9. Relationship Manager

10. Relationship Manager Former

11. Classification

12. Prospect Status

13. Wealth Screening Rating (1-1, 1-2, 1-3 means it's a good Major Gift Prospect)

14. Wealth Screening Estimated Capacity

15. Wealth Screening Largest Gift Found

16. Wealth Screening Quality Score

17. FY2020 Giving

18. FY2021 Giving

19. FY2022 Giving

20. FY2023 Giving

21. FY2024 Giving

22. Last Gift Date

23. Last Gift Appeal

24. Last Gift Campaign

25. Last Gift Amount

26. Last Gift Type

27. Largest Gift Amount

28. Largest Gift Date

29. Largest Gift Campaign

30. Largest Gift Type

31. Last Action Date

32. Last Action Category

33. Last Action Description

34. Open Action Date

35. Open Action Category

36. Open Action Description

For session 2 here is a view of the pivot table we used to see portfolio’s balance/make-up:

Additionally for session 2 we used the same spreadsheets (refreshed) from session 1 but focused on which were top rated but did not have an assignment.

Take Action

➡ Review part 1 of 3 to get moving on cleansing and locking in portfolios.

➡ For part 2 of 3 follow the steps above to cleanse portfolios and fill gaps in portfolios to lock and load portfolios.

➡ For part 3 of 3: See how it was time to launch and get moving with the Fast Start Initiative.

You’ve got this!  

👋 See you next time,

Jenny

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