Before going any further,
we must acknowledge one fundamental fact about any prospect management system.
Having one requires additional work from the entire fundraising staff.
Allowing a prospect to drift aimlessly toward a gift may not be every efficient,
but at least it doesn't require a lot of data recording.
Intentional prospect management, however,
cannot happen without reports that show progress towards a goal.
And those reports will be meaningless unless the development staff
takes the time to record their actions.
Now most development officers didn't get into fundraising so
they could do a lot of data entry.
So there may be some reluctance to spend the necessary time
inputting data into the database.
Furthermore, unless they are provided meaningful data on prospects and gifts,
many development officers did not see a need to be involved in data collection.
Nevertheless, these efforts are absolutely essential to the success
of a prospect management system.
The chief development officer must be fully committed to seeing that this work
is accomplished.
The director of development must insist that the staff put in the necessary time,
that reports are meaningful and ultimately that the organization reaps the benefits
of a systematic and measurable fundraising program.
To make prospect management reports work,
specific information must be systematically collected and recorded.
This is not information collection for information sake.
You need to think about what information your program needs for
its essential reports and then record only that.
Here are some data points that would be common to most organizations.
Gift expectancies.
This is a fundamental unit with which a prospect management system is concerned.
Many fundraising databases refer to this as a proposal.
Important attributes of a gift expectancy or proposal, include anticipated
gift amount, gift purpose, anticipated gift date and progress or
absence thereof toward solicitation or stage of that particular gift.