Best way to track Prospective donors for future capital campaign

Lynnette Fisher

Hi from Montana!


We are gearing up for a major capital campaign in the next few years. We are trying to figure out the best way to label our donors once they have been identified as prospective donors for this particular campaign so we can target mailings and social media to them alone. We are wondering how everyone else handles these situations. I was thinking that an attribute could be the way to go for example "Fortin Prospective Donor" that way when we want to pull a list for mailing we could use that as a filter.


Any help / ideas would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you!!

Mark Guncheon

Prospect tab is a great place - prospect status or prospect classification. Otherwise, an attribute makes sense. And I always recommend when adding a code like this, add a note explaining what was done. If you use a specific title for your note, it's another way of filtering these prospects. For example, when we assign a solicitor to a prospect, besides adding the type of solicitor to the relationship tab, I also add an "assignment" note explaining the assignment. Very easy to pull all assignments out this way and the note date helps too.


Good luck with your campaign.

JoAnn Strommen

Hi back from South Dakota!


As Mark Guncheon‍ said, prospect is good place if you have the module.


If they are records in database, attribute is probably best option IMO.


Previous org when we were adding lists in masse of prospective donors we actually used that as constituent code.

Mark Guncheon

We once used a couple as constituent codes also but it is really not the place for it IMO.


And hello from snowy Virginia!

Lynnette Fisher

Thank you so much for the advice! Stay warm. We are a balmy 60 degrees here if you can believe it.

Lynnette Fisher

Thank you neighbor!!

Christine Cooke

Like Mark Guncheon said -- Prospect Module -- and if you do not have that then you can use an Action in a similar manner.

Lynnette Fisher

Thank you!

Faith Murray

If you are just wanting to bulk add mass quantities to a mailing list, Solicit codes can work very well. However, if you ant more detailed data with targeted asks and segments recorded, use a Proposal under the Prospect tab, or use an Attribute. We segmented our campaign donors into Visits, Leadership, Direct Mail, and Prospect groups, with their assigned campaign solicitor and target ask amounts.


Proposals are made just for this, but they work best for major gift work. For bulk lists of varied donor types, Proposals don't pull as well in queries and are not the first line of data reception in importing bulk lists from an outside wealth prospecting tool. For example, in a mailing list, you can query on donors who have a campaign proposal + donors who have a $20,000+ proposal ask, but those criteria may or may not live on the same proposal if you have been using proposals for a long time and have several of them in a donor record. The other complication is that in the Prospect tab, there is only one space for a Donor Classification or Prospect Status, so if you are already using this field for marking monthly donor, major donor, or planned giver types, it cannot hold that and the Campaign Prospect classification at the same time. So in these bulk file instances, an Attribute works better.

Lynnette Fisher

Thank you so much!!