Simplify Your Prospect Pipeline
Every successful fundraising operation relies on a prospect pipeline to ensure prospects are moving as efficiently as possible through the donor cultivation process. In many organizations, the responsibility of managing that pipeline falls with prospect development.
With this great responsibility, how should prospect development wield it? For most organizations, it is best to approach this task with simplicity. Creating a prospect pipeline with numerous statuses may allow your organization to report out with greater detail, but what happens when frontline fundraisers incorrectly process data entry? Who cleans that up? Who teaches the frontline, in the first place, what the pipeline is, what each status represents, and how to operate within it? These responsibilities fall with prospect development and it’s not the most effective use of their time.
Instead, look to simplify the pipeline.
Combine like statuses to reduce redundant steps and create distinct separation between each status move.
Invent simple definitions for each status to reduce confusion fundraisers face when learning the system.
Limit exceptions to the rules so everyone is operating on an equal level playing field and to ensure the rules don’t favor one area of the organization over the other.
By simplifying your prospect pipeline, you reduce the confusion the frontline faces when they interact with it, thus increasing the likelihood they use it effectively. You take data clean up work off your plate which then can be filled with more strategic tasks. And you help your organization raise more money more efficiently.
