Harnessing the Power of Prospect Rankings
When we are looking at a long list of prospective donors and not exactly sure where to prioritize our efforts, often Donorly Consultants recommend one powerful step: Prospect Rankings. Different from a Wealth Screen, which is an automated process in which a list is run through a database, Prospect Rankings entail a manual process by which our researchers review a list of prospective donors and assign each of them an A, B, or C ranking, based on whether the individual has a clear capacity to make a gift, and an inclination to give to an organization like the one providing the list.
For instance, let’s say the first name on our list is Jane Smith. In our system, Jane would get an A ranking if she met both of the following criteria:
She has indicators of high capacity - Perhaps she owns some very valuable property or has a history of making very large charitable gifts.
She has indicators of high inclination - She sits on the board of a peer organization, or she already gives to charities whose missions are similar to that of the organization that has identified her as a prospect.
If Jane has high capacity but low inclination—or perhaps no verifiable record of charitable giving—then she would be assigned a B (likewise in the reverse, high inclination with a low verifiable capacity).
Finally, if Jane has a low capacity to give and a low inclination, she would be given a C ranking.
Although rankings are quick to produce (only about five minutes per prospect) and should certainly not be the be-all-end-all of your research on a good prospect, they can a very powerful tool!
Here are three key scenarios in which we recommend turning to rankings first:
You’re about to meet a group of new people. Perhaps you have a cultivation or other public event coming up and you’ll be introduced to a group of people you’re not yet familiar with. Since you don’t yet know if anyone on this list is a viable prospect, it’s probably not worth your researcher’s time to do a deep dive on every single one of them. Instead, a quick ranking will give you a cursory overview of who is in the room. You can use the rankings to formulate a list of the people who you must connect with personally that evening.
You want to refresh your prospect pool. This is a fantastic exercise for organizations that have free and low-cost memberships and subscriptions; when you have a built-in list of people who are already interested in your work, the likelihood that some of them have donor potential is high. So, start with a ranking. Once you identify your A-ranked people, you can get some deeper research and organize a cultivation strategy around that group of individuals.
You want to verify the results of an automated screening. Perhaps you recently ran several thousand prospects through an automated wealth screening and found 400 that screened high. Rankings quickly remove false positives from your screening results while also providing you with useful information about a prospect’s giving history and capacity as they relate specifically to your organization.