After you identify major gifts prospects, you can create a moves management workflow in Bloomerang CRM.
This article explains the Personal Cultivation Plan and helps you set up and execute a moves management workflow in Bloomerang CRM.
The Personal Cultivation Plan
At the heart of the moves management workflow is the Personal Cultivation Plan. This plan is a multi-step process for prepping, soliciting and then stewarding major gift prospects. Here are the stages of the plan:
Discovery — During this stage, the prospect’s giving capacity is determined, an initial contact is made, and how the potential gift could be used in your organization is decided.
Cultivation — This stage involves phone calls, coffee, and conversation. During this step you are preparing the prospect for an opportunity to ask for a major gift.
Permission to Ask — During this stage, a meeting or phone call is arranged to ask for permission to ask for a major gift.
Solicitation — The solicitation stage is when the gift is officially asked for by the solicitor. This can take place in another meeting or phone call, etc.
Stewardship — The stewardship stage is the final stage, after successfully soliciting the gift. This stage involves acknowledging the gift, keeping the donor up-to-date with how their gift is helping the organization, and generally working towards adding the prospect back into the major gift pipeline.
Moves Management Workflow
After you identify major gifts prospects and create the necessary custom fields in Bloomerang CRM, you can add prospects to a moves management workflow:
Start a New Workflow
Begin a new workflow by going to the constituent profile of a prospect and clicking Edit. Scroll to the Prospect Management section and fill out the constituent custom fields.
Next, create a new note.
Create a note for each specific planned ask. The date on the note should be the Target Ask Date, and the note itself should include the Personal Cultivation Plan. See below for a template you can copy and paste into the note:
Open Opportunity - Personal Cultivation Plan
Discovery
Determine Capacity
First Solicitor Contact
Determine Impact Area
Cultivation
TBD (site visit, call, coffee)
TBD
TBD
Permission to Ask
Date
Solicitation
Date
Outcome
Stewardship
Donor Acknowledgment
Gift Impact
TBD
At this point, you have entered information about the prospect on the prospect’s profile and created a note to use with the Personal Cultivation Plan. The note should remain pinned to the top of the timeline since you gave it a future date.
You can now work through the workflow to solicit a major gift with the prospect.
Work Through the Workflow
The note with the Personal Cultivation Plan is at the center of the moves management workflow. As prospects are moved through the workflow, you’ll be updating the note to reflect progress and milestones. You can also use tasks to delegate work to solicitors, and interactions to reflect completed work. Always keep the note up-to-date with the latest information.
The following works through the Discovery step on a prospect’s note, as an example:
Determine Capacity — After assessing the giving potential of the prospect, determine the giving capacity. You can add the date this is completed on the note and update the giving capacity constituent field on the prospect’s profile.
First Solicitor Contact — Add the date in the future for when the solicitor should first contact the prospect. You can also assign a task to complete this step if the solicitor is a user in Bloomerang CRM.
Determine Impact Area — The solicitor may be able to accomplish this step during the first contact, or it might occur during a second interaction. You can create a second task or include this with the First Solicitor Contact task. Add the date this completed on the note.
Update the note’s custom fields as the information becomes available and click Save.
At this point, the note is up-to-date with the status of the Personal Cultivation Plan. Now the solicitor can complete their assigned work:
Complete the assigned tasks that were created for the Discovery stage. Remember you can convert a completed task to an interaction, which will save you some effort. If you’re not using tasks, you can still create new interactions to show that contact has been made.
Add the current step on the interaction’s custom field and click Save.
Update the note as needed, remembering to advance the Current Stage as the moves are completed.
Repeat these steps as you work through the stages of the Personal Cultivation Plan. Eventually, the gift will be won, tabled for later, or closed.
Next Steps
If the gift was secured, congratulations! You can move on to donor stewardship with the prospect. Donor stewardship may look different from organization to organization, but some ideas for stewardship include:
Gift Acknowledgment — Discuss with your donor to find out if they’d prefer to remain private or would appreciate a public acknowledgement of the gift.
Keep Donors Informed — Make sure you keep your major gift donors informed with how their gift is being utilized by your organization.
Major Gift Pipeline — Consider adding the donor back to a major gift pipeline, and begin planning for the next time you can solicit another major gift. If the donor is enthusiastic about your organization, this could be the first of additional major gifts.
If the gift was not secured, it’s time to assess and plan for what’s next. Some things to consider:
Is the donor still a good fit, but now was a bad time for a major gift? If so, keep them in your usual fundraising pipeline and consider plans to solicit a major gift in the future. Consider your process to see if anything could be improved to land the major gift next time.
Is the donor not a good fit for your organization? Did the donor express disinterest in ever making a major gift? If so, you should remove them from your major gift pipeline and focus on prospects that might be a better fit.