Many nonprofits use wealth screenings to find supporters who could make hefty donations. But conventional methods for identifying major-gift prospects often fall short when fundraisers focus on people who are new to giving or have less traditional donor profiles, such as women.
“We know that when you put a woman and a man in a screening in the same household, a man frequently scores higher — which is not fair, but that’s true,” says Jennifer Filla, president of Aspire Research Group and a leading prospect-research consultant. This means charities looking to beef up gifts from women often need to dig a little deeper.
Filla uses a customizable scoring system to help her nonprofit clients find wealthy women who may support their cause. After screening supporters and potential donors, Filla often uses this ranking tool as an additional step to refine results and ensure they zero in on the best opportunities.
Filla then works with a charity’s development staff to define criteria for key prospects, assign numerical scores to these characteristics, and conduct research — often looking for information online and calling potential supporters directly — to rate each lead. She typically starts with just five to 10 prospects, then evaluates how well her criteria are working before researching any more candidates. “This is really subjective and a bit of an art,” Filla says. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone with my first set of criteria.”
Any organization can use Filla’s system to vet and rank potential women donors — or any group of prospects. The ranking helps focus efforts on those most likely to give generously, she says. But before defining your scoring criteria, it’s worth taking the time to flesh out your fundraising priorities.
It’s vital to understand what characteristics you’re looking for in a strong prospect, one that “pops” as Filla puts it. These criteria may include whether she holds a certain job title, works in a particular industry, or has a certain giving capacity. These priorities will help determine your criteria, she says, as well as the weight each one should receive. For example, if you are primarily seeking to raise money from wealthy women, rather than encouraging them to volunteer or engage with your organization in some other way, your wealth score should weight “capacity to give” quite heavily.
Here are more tips from Filla on how to create criteria that define the most desirable prospects and adapt her scoring system for your nonprofit.
Define one or more criteria that disqualify prospects from further research. For example, if you’re only interested in women donors who have made a public gift of at least $1,000, you should search for evidence of such giving and eliminate the rest.
Limit your criteria to no more than five characteristics. “In most cases if you can’t identify three to five criteria — and five would be a lot — with a quick disqualifier, then you need to take another look probably,” Filla says. “I wouldn’t want these to be too complicated or you’re going to spend forever researching.”
Expect to make lots of phone calls whether you’re working with an outside consultant or doing the research in-house. “We can find evidence of things in the public domain,” Filla says of prospect researchers, “but frequently we can’t find interests, what are the person’s passions — and the more minority or nontraditional they get, the harder it is for us.” So it’s up to fundraisers to try to fill in this information through phone conversations. And because it’s likely that only one of 10 people you call will speak to you, you’ll need to be patient, Filla says.
Create a “wild card” category and assign a value to it to capture important characteristics that don’t fall within your criteria. For instance, Filla says, you might learn from an online article that one of your prospects has inherited money and wants to give it to charities like yours. “Sometimes you just see that flaming red, neon-lit sign — ‘Call me, call me’ — and it’s just nice to have that [wild card score],” she says.
If your nonprofit is small or new to major gifts, start with your existing connections. For example, if you have a list of potential women donors with no ties to your organization, ask your board members if they know any of them. If they do, begin by scoring those, and focus on turning them into supporters at any level before cultivating them for large gifts.
Don’t expect to get your criteria right on the first try. “This is like, ‘Let’s be quick and dirty and start generating some lists,’ " Filla says. “And, yes, you’re going to have to make a lot of calls so put on your thick skin.”
Download Filla’s work sheet, which explains how to use her scoring system to identify the women who have the best potential to become donors.
