Best Practices for Classification & Prospect Status

Cathy Englin

What and how is "Classification" & "Prospect Status" different on the Prospect Tab in RE (database) and how is it used to differentiate a donors. What are best practices for our Gift Officers to use?

Faith Murray

@Cathy Englin
You can go multiple directions with this one. Prospect Status is generally what stage of solicitation a donor is in: qualification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, etc. If you have webview, NXt is built so that you can set time limits on each stage, to prompt your major gift officers not to let a donor stagnate on their donor journey.

Classification is much more grey. Many people use this to identify what kind of prospect a donor may be: major gifts, estate gifts, monthly gifts, etc, which is how we use it. This field is entirely optional. You could also use it to identify what mission-connection your donor has: perhaps, labels such as “event sponsor”, “building namee”, “north region sponsor”, “grantor”, etc. Find out what kind of classification works best for you to sort your top donors based on your organization's workflow and solicitation/fundraising channels.

Cathy Englin

@Faith Murray
Thank you for this insight. It was very helpful, we are just starting to revamp how we do this and we want to get it accurate the first time. Just gathering information from others to see what works best for our process.