Prospect Research products tied to Prospect Management

For small prospect development shops, there is not enough time in the day to do all the work that needs to be done. What makes this worse is that prospect development is even more important for a small shop compared to a larger one that has resources to throw at their problems. So, what can a small organization do to ensure they are covering everything within research and management?

Directly link your research products to your management process.

Say you have four prospect statuses in your pipeline, Identification, Cultivation, Solicitation, and Stewardship. For each status, create one specific product. So your identification product contains only information specific to identification. And your solicitation product contains only information designed to move the prospect from solicitation into stewardship.

This way, not every research request is a deep dive that takes days to complete. Instead, it is a targeted approach designed to maxmize the effectiveness of the information you find. And it serves the ultimate goal; helping a fundraiser move their prospects through the pipeline. With the added benefit of reinforcing your management system and making sure fundraisers actually use it.