How Prospect Identification Is Different for Small Organizations

I think it’s important to discuss why some of these screening tools, the prospect identification tools are important for some very, very, very large organizations–and why it isn’t an area to focus on as intensely if you are starting with a smaller list.

Nobody has an unlimited budget. Nobody can justify marketing planned giving to tens or hundreds of thousands of donors. Say you’re a national charity with millions and millions of names on your list. It’s not cost effective or practical to wallpaper the country with marketing solicitations to people that you don’t really have a connection to.

But for a lot of smaller organizations: community hospitals, independent schools and small colleges, the need to shrink your list for marketing and budgeting purposes is not nearly as significant as when you are dealing with millions and millions of records.

My encouragement to smaller organizations is: don’t put yourself in the same position as the mega organizations are in when they’re doing the prospect identification, when they’re doing a wealth screening.

They have no option except to pare down their list to the best prospects because their lists are just too big. Small organizations don’t have that problem. Granted, you probably have a smaller budget. Granted, you have to be smart about how you manage that budget.

But you don’t have to limit your marketing to the very cream of the crop. And when you open up your marketing efforts, you’re able to discover untapped resources that would have been filtered out by your prospect identification tools and wealth screening software.

Want better results from your planned giving marketing? Schedule a call with Jeff

More Resources:

• Email Template One: Download, personalize, and send to donors. 
• Email Template Two: Download, personalize, and send to donors. 
• PSA One: Drunk Dialing Donors 
• PSA Two: Donors Don’t Care About CARES 
• PSA Three: Unicorns of the Planned Giving World 
• PSA Four: Messages that fill the donor pipeline 
• PSA Five: Slow Down So You Don’t Lose Donors
• Article: What Makes Marketing a Planned Gift Effective? 
• Mission Minded Marketing: An Immediate and Effective Communication Plan for Fundraisers