Is anyone using Tessitura to manage their prospects through the cultivation process (identification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, etc.)? If so, can you share with me how you are using Tessitura? I think this process can be done in Soliciations or Attributes--any thoughts?
Terri,
Solicitations fit the bill for this. I support several organizations who all use them slightly differently but they work well. I think the biggest consideration before beginning is to determine what phases your process has. You listed one possible set of phases but I know that there are several different schools of thought, each with their own vocabulary for such things.
The upside of solicitations is that you can tie actions to them and assign the actions to specific people (Ticklers/Tasks depending on the documentation). As a data nerd, my favorite tool is the Mass Solicitation screen. Add/Edit solicitations across a large list of people quickly (for instance, at the beginning of the campaign).
It does take a large degree of commitment to the system from the development folks. The tendency will be for them to feel that it is too much work maintaining accurate solicitation records and they will try to drift into external spreadsheets, managing things in outlook or whatever their personal favorite tool is. But the end result of managing the process in Tessitura is that you have all this wonderful data about how successful things have been. How many touches to get new donors? How many to renew an existing donor? Are emails more effective than letters, or phone calls? If all of the touches are in Tess, you can start to build a picture of what works for each segment of your donor pool.