A Giving Pyramid Model: Wealth Screening to Strategy

The Office of Advancement at Illinois Wesleyan University had been through key staff changes, a fast-paced CRM conversion, and had not done a comprehensive wealth screening in several years. With these hurdles in mind, we were also tasked with preparing for a campaign. In a small shop with limited resources, we found it necessary to find ways to combine the wealth screening data with internal data to present segmentations that not only considered the data we collected from the wealth screening but also the knowledge we had gathered from prospects. Our process needed to be data-driven but also have the capacity to be donor-centric.

We had several intertwined objectives and though they were at times challenging to manage, we feel enhanced the outcome.  Our three main objectives after completing the screening were:
1. Segment the data to allow for an in-house verification plan of major gift assignments and to identify and a pool for both major gift and annual fund assignments.
2. Segment the data to align with current communication tactics with an eye towards how the CRM tools are developing, future communication tactics, and the ability to sub segment to analyze support for campaign initiatives.
3. Design the prospect research and management structure in our new CRM to support current and future segmentations with focus on usability for our primary end user, the major gift officer.

Our process is simple enough for any school to follow while quantitatively displaying key data points to stakeholders. Since we’ve shared the model we have seen major gift officers be more proactive with their portfolio clean-up, annual fund gift officers have more focused segmentation, and our Board of Trustees used the data to gauge campaign readiness.

This session is worth (1.25) CFRE points.