Identify Target Prospects

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Summarize how to target prospects using NPSP.
• Define Levels in NPSP.
• Discover options for integrating donor research into NPSP.

Moves Management Overview

In nonprofit fundraising, moves management is the term used to describe the actions that an organization takes to move someone to deeper levels of engagement. While the process looks different for every nonprofit, it’s generally organized into the stages of identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. Moves are all the activities that, well, move a prospect through those stages to more meaningful engagement.

That’s how it works at our (fictional) nonprofit No More Homelessness (NMH), a social service organization that helps people without reliable, safe housing and those dealing with hunger. NMH raises a significant portion of their annual budget from individuals — and moves management is the backbone of their donor-engagement strategy.

NMH's Director of Development, Aniyah Thompson, uses moves management to:

• Identify prospective donors.
• Segment them based on their giving potential or level of engagement.
• Facilitate the nurturing of prospects.
• Analyze the results to drive improvements.

NPSP includes a number of tools that help Aniyah more efficiently manage this process. In this unit, we’ll explore those tools and how Aniyah uses them.

Identify, Score, and Segment Target Prospects

There are several ways to identify, score, and segment prospective donors in NPSP, but the first step is to define the prospect groupings and criteria, ratings, and related processes that are most important to your organization.

After interviewing dozens of current donors and analyzing Salesforce data for patterns of success, the NMH Development Team defined a set of giving personas for their organization.

Here are simple notes from an interview with NMH donor Gabrielle Nazarian. Her demographic information, giving, goals, communication preferences, common objections, and perspective on homelessness are all captured.

Using interviews like this, NMH can find similarities to develop their donor personas. For example, Gabrielle has similarities with other data-driven annual donors with the potential to give more.

Using these similarities and differences, NMH outlined action plans to move donors to the next level. They shared these action plans with their Salesforce consulting partner, who customized NPSP to meet their needs using several key features, including Levels and Engagement Plans.

NPSP Levels and Engagement Plans

NPSP Levels are a way to track and group stakeholders’ commitment and engagement based on criteria such as total gifts or number of hours volunteered, two of the many data points that NPSP summarizes for you on the contact record. You can also use custom rollup fields or formula fields to define levels with more complex criteria.

Levels work with Engagement Plans in NPSP to outline what, who, how, and how often to communicate with a stakeholder and keep them moving towards increased engagement. We’ll look at Engagement Plans in more detail later.

This table describes how the NMH organization has defined its giving levels in NPSP.

At NMH, the levels are included on contact records in their own Donor Research and Scoring section. (If you use similar fields, your admin may have placed them in a different section on the page.)

When the source data for a level changes, the level is changed as part of NPSP’s nightly batch process and the level for that contact won't change in real-time. Your admin can manually force an update of your levels at any time if you can't wait.

Custom Fields and Apps

In addition to (or in place of) levels, your organization might choose to add a custom moves management section to your contact or opportunity records.

NMH worked with their consulting partner to create some custom fields for their contact records, including a Propensity to Give Score, Estimated Total Assets, Estimated Annual Charitable Giving, and Suggested Next Ask.

NPSP is highly customizable, so your organization may already have a custom moves management process. Check with your admin or a consulting partner if you think your organization might benefit from custom fields, unique scoring formulas, or other types of summaries.

Integrate Wealth Intelligence Apps from the AppExchange

Another option for identifying and rating prospects and donors in NPSP is integrating a third-party wealth screening or prospecting app from the Salesforce AppExchange. 

Many nonprofits already use these apps to uncover fundraising insights. Some of these apps offer an integration with NPSP that allow you to bring wealth data and scoring on to contact and account records. Plus, many provide the fields and formulas you need out-of-the-box so you don't have to build them yourself. Again, check with your admin to see if you're using a third-party app to support your donor research and qualification processes.

Whatever options you choose to identify, score, and segment your prospects in NPSP, the next step is to plan and track your cultivation activities. We'll take a look at that in the next unit.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Create and Manage Levels
• Trailhead: Engagement Plans and Levels in Nonprofit Success Pack
• Video: NPSP How-To Series: Levels
• Video: NPSP How-To Series: Levels With Engagement Plans
• AppExchange: Search for Wealth Scoring Apps
• Salesforce Trailblazer Community: App Advice and Consumer Reports