Unsolicited Major Gifts Tracking/Use of Prospect Management correctly

Jason Chmura · October 2020

Hello everyone,

First post here, but wanted to ask for a bit of a logic-check regarding best practices for Prospect Management/Moves Management. One of my main responsibilities is to ensure that our private fundraising teams are utilizing BBEC effectively, is to ensure that our yearly revenue pipelines are populated correctly as well as ensure that revenue is tracked for higher-end reporting requirements for our Senior Management teams. Where I am having some issues is in the tracking / categorization of revenue that comes in that is unsolicited in nature from donors who are new to our organization.

The way that I and many of my colleagues view what a Revenue Pipeline is defined as is that it is the general high-level report that shows revenue that we have planned to receive over the course of the year, and as the year goes on, these projections change based on the opportunities that are placed on existing donor records.

Where we have a bit of a divergence here, is that obviously over the course of the year we see new donors come to our organization and make gifts via different income channels (Web, Check, CC, etc.) It is a current business rule that these unsolicited gifts are not put into the pipeline as they were never part of the planned revenue of the current fiscal year. We can still track unsolicited gifts by querying different appeals/ documentation that is applied by our finance team, so that as we review the difference between Pipeline and YTD Agency raised, we can see the variance.

My question(s) to the collective here are as follows:

1. Does that logic / definition regarding pipeline make sense to you?

2. Regarding Unsolicited gifts, do you keep them out of your pipeline?

3. Is there merit in adding these unsolicited gifts to our Pipeline via plans and opportunities on these new donors, or is it enough to be able to query those gifts separately?

I ask this because I'm being challenged by someone who would like to include all Unsolicited gifts (at a specific dollar threshold) in the Pipeline by creating plans and opportunities to capture the unsolicited gift, so that they fall into our pipeline by querying our current opportunities. My opinion on this is that this is not what Prospect Management and plans and opportunities should be used for. New to agency donors who make these gifts did so without any interplay from our fundraising staff, ergo, how can it be part of a plan, and the definition of opportunity means that the donor would have to be a known entity to us in order to be considered as an opportunity.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that as far as trying to tie agency revenue totals to pipeline makes for a neat and tidy report, however, my view remains unchanged as to what the purpose of a revenue pipeline is meant to be.

Would certainly appreciate your input on this.

All the best,

JC

Crystal Bruce · October 2020

Hi! Is this question better suited for a product/solution community? If so, can you let me know which product you are asking about and I can move it over? Thanks!

Jason Chmura · October 2020

Hi Crystal,

I don't think its product related question. Its in reference to how do organizations best track unsolicited gifts. Do they add them to revenue forecasting pipelines, or do they keep them outside the forecasting pipleines.

Crystal Bruce · October 2020

Ok! Just checking. Will leave it in best practices :-)

Claudia Bickel · October 2020

Hi Jason,

Your logic rings true to me!

I want to support you in your conviction that proposals/opportunities are distinct from the count of unsolicited major gifts. In other words, I would not create an opportunity for a major gift that was not intentially solicited by one of our staff or volunteers. I hear your pain, however, in wanting to acknowledge major gifts that are unsolicited. Right now, we are just trying to get our arms around use and tracking of opportunities, but I am thinking that if we want to gather "major giving" we have received outside the moves structure, I would suggest querying on a pledge or one-time gift of a certain amount or more or cumulative fiscal year giving of a certain amount or more per fiscal year. Hope some of that helps!

Claudia

Rachel Kave · November 2020

Hi Jason,

I am also in agreement with you. We do not (well at least I do not condone) putting in an opportunity for unsolicited gifts. When that happens we of course assign a gift officer to steward and hopefully get to another gift with an opportunity. We really view pipelines and opportunities different from revenue-while they clearly cross over, opportunities are the real measure of our team working directly with donors as opposed to our revenue generated overall.

Funded opportunity amounts are directly related to gift officer performance and goals.

Hope that helps.

Jason Chmura · November 2020

Thanks for those who responded. I am still involved in this discussion internally for our organization. Its interesting to hear why people want to include Unsolicited in Pipeline, but mostly it boils down to reconciling revenue between agency/financial raise reports and getting the pipeline to report the same amount. I think a lot of the rationale for why they want to push these unsolicited gifts into the pipeline is because they have reports where they want unsolicited to roll into them without having to query it separately. I understand that, however as pointed out in prior responses, Pipeline is meant to measure what fundraisers are doing, or trying to get, not trying to reconcile revenue.

Thanks!

Leslie Mabray · November 2020

Hi Jason

In the past, when our Annual Campaign is going on I assign a campaign and appeal codes to the gifts that come in. For example, we have donors the give annually every year to their scholarship. They are solicited through our Annual Campaign mailing as well. If they don't return the solicitation part of mailing with the donation. I assign an appeal code NLA "No Letter Attached". This tells me that the donor did not return the solicitation with the donation. I also assign a campaign to the gift. Because on the donors record we put a letter was sent for the Annual Campaign. When I run a query on the campaign I include the appeals. This tells me how the campaign did with the different solicitations sent out.

Leslie Mabray

SCCCF Accountant

Faith Murray · February 2021

I think that unsolicited major gifts should be included in Major Gift projections for the year, but cannot imagine attaching them to a specific donor record. You should be able to pull revenue for the past 5 years and obtain an average dollar amount of unsolicited major gifts - which is useful in estimating the number of new potential prospects that would come through annually for your MG team. Ergo, projecting the growth of the MG program and gaining a better holistic understanding of how the MG program feeds off, and depends on, the Direct Mail and Event programs (two major sources of unsolicited major gifts).

However, that being said, I could not see this fitting into a Proposal record. The whole point of unsolicited major gifts is that you aren't expecting them and may not know which donor will generate them. They may come from a new donor who does not even yet exist in your organization. And, while the information is important in estimating future Major Gift activities and staffing needs, it does not reflect the current year's solicitor performance, as those donors have not yet been assigned to a solicitor portfolio. So by all means, find a way to estimate the income and include it in reports, but not through the Proposals records.

Unsolicited Major Gifts Tracking/Use of Prospect Management correctly

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