My company does not have the Prospect Module and we are beginning the process of prospect management.  I want to find some consistent way to identify prospect records with the potential they have for giving, etc.  Is the Attribute tab a solution where I can assign different giving levels?  I would love to hear of some other ideas that you have come up with for managing your prospects in RE?

 Sue Tucker. Development Associate

Father Martin's Ashley

Hello Sue

Before we purchased the Prospect Module we used a variety of attributes to keep track of all of our prospects. 

We recorded the following:

• Prospect Status: Identified, Cultivation, Ask, Close, Stewardship
• Ask amount: A numeric field that allowed the fundraiser to enter an exact figure
• Project Area: Scholarships, Equipment, Capital and so on
• Expected ask date

It did work well in terms of producing reports but users found it quite difficult to read the information in a record due to the amount of other codes we stored in Attributes.

Regards

Peter

Sue,

We do not have the prospect module either.  We recorded giving level in attributes and our ask amount also.  As our campaign began shortly after implementing RE, we did not have a lot of other attributes so it worked fine for us.  I can see where a large # of attributes could be a negative.  (Ask amount/goal on assigned solicitor screen was not an option for us as we prepared individual prospect packets prior to prospects being assigned to solicitors. Worked fine for us.)  I would recommend using tables (preset choices to pick from) whenever possible for the 'description' for consistent entry.

Best wishes

This is an old thread but I have a question about using what I understand to be constituent attributes to track prospects:  what happen when you move to the next proposal/solicitation?  How do you group the information pertaining to one proposal versus the new one?  Has anyone consider entering a gift of "other" with gift attributes? 

That is quite a big question. Attributes are so specialized and tailored to each organization or I am not sure this would help you. That is the point of attributes - they are custom fields.

If you have the sample database you can look at the prospect tab (I am assuming you do not have this, else you would not be using attributes) and see what info is held there and what you would want to make into an attribute

We have the Prospect Module but are not using it fully - something that I'm tasked to implement.

As for attributes we have way too many - a generic Prospect attribute, an Interest attribute, and even an Attn attribute.  Prospect puts the consituent in a general bucket, Interest is just that (like our programs), the Attn attribute is to narrow down the Prospects for a particular attention of a staff member.  We also assign Solicitors but that pool can be large which is another reason the Attn attribute is used.

Sounds like you are using it for much of the things the prospect tab is for.

• prospect attribute should/could be in prospect classification
• interests should/couild go in philanthropic interests.
• Attn sounds like a solicitor, is it not?

Why bother having huge prospect pools. I have seen that as a HUGE issue which simply results in people not getting contacted. Keep people unassigned and out of the MG prospect pool until there is adequate room in a prospect's portfolio to truly cultivate them. Otherwise have a middle donor program for those best annual donors who you can not get assigned to a MGO who get special mailings/stewardship but are not yet officially a MG prospect.

Agree about moving the values.  Something I'm tasked to do it's just we have SO many custom reports that uses these values that when I go to move one field over it will "break" many reports.

Agree the pool is too large - not my business call - plan to get some our Major Donor Officers together in a room (if possible) with to sort this out ...