• Replies 2 replies
  • Subscribers 411 subscribers
  • Views 112 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Tracking Prospect Group

Erik Privert (Past Member)
$organization

Hi all,

We are starting to segment out groups of donors (current and prospects) based on their interest, industry, or engagement with our organization.  The goal is to group these names in Tess for easy reporting in preparation for making asks.

Here are my thoughts to choosing one for the following, but wondering if anyone had any experience with these ways or have other new approaches:

1) Plans 

  • Pro - easy to report out groups and track related notes/actions
  • Con - we currently have multiple plans for donors already (campaign, annual), so one more could create a long list of plans for donors (especially ones that fall into multiple groups)

2) Attributes

  • Pro - easy to pull in reports, able to upload/edit in Manage Attributes utility
  • Con - less detail and notes that relate to each donor.  Also lose detail in different levels of engagement within each group (unless we create multiple Attributes)

Thanks for all your help!

Erik

Parents
  • $organization

    Hi Erik,

    We primarily use attributes for this and we're pretty happy with the way it works for us. 

    We have one attribute called Prospect For which is a drop down of values of potential categories that we would fundraise for.  It also includes values for our gala and "general solicitations and communications" for people we want to receive our newsletter, annual appeal, etc.  These two values are generally used in the last segment of an extraction to catch people who did not fall into the other segments we identified to receive the communication.  As new potential projects come up, we can easily add new values to this list.  This attribute can be added multiple times to a constituent record if they are candidates for multiple areas.

    There is another attribute called Donor Interest which is otherwise an exact copy of the Prospect For attribute.  Prospect For is only used on people who have never donated to our organization, and Donor Interest is used on people who have.  If a prospect donates, we remove their Prospect For attributes and replace them with Donor Interest with the same values.

    We only use plans on high-level prospects and donors who are or will be in an individualized cultivation or stewardship process, but these people can also have the prospect for or donor interest attribute.  We do not have plans on constituents who are following our regular donor pipeline as we can track that through promotions.

    I hope this helps!

    Anne Mullane-Stevens

    Manager, Institutional Advancement Data & Operations

    Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum

Reply
  • $organization

    Hi Erik,

    We primarily use attributes for this and we're pretty happy with the way it works for us. 

    We have one attribute called Prospect For which is a drop down of values of potential categories that we would fundraise for.  It also includes values for our gala and "general solicitations and communications" for people we want to receive our newsletter, annual appeal, etc.  These two values are generally used in the last segment of an extraction to catch people who did not fall into the other segments we identified to receive the communication.  As new potential projects come up, we can easily add new values to this list.  This attribute can be added multiple times to a constituent record if they are candidates for multiple areas.

    There is another attribute called Donor Interest which is otherwise an exact copy of the Prospect For attribute.  Prospect For is only used on people who have never donated to our organization, and Donor Interest is used on people who have.  If a prospect donates, we remove their Prospect For attributes and replace them with Donor Interest with the same values.

    We only use plans on high-level prospects and donors who are or will be in an individualized cultivation or stewardship process, but these people can also have the prospect for or donor interest attribute.  We do not have plans on constituents who are following our regular donor pipeline as we can track that through promotions.

    I hope this helps!

    Anne Mullane-Stevens

    Manager, Institutional Advancement Data & Operations

    Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum

Children