Love Song to My Major Gift Prospect List!

I’m admitting it. I’m warped.

By Gail Perry

Updated October 2025

Here’s my confession: when I was a front-line fundraiser, I just loved my major gift prospect list. Even more, I loved the hunt to find lovely, generous, wonderful major gift donors.

What was so much fun for me?  For one thing, I love deep reconnaissance, when I try to find out what’s in a prospective donor’s heart and mind.

In addition, I love hearing these generous donors’ own personal stories. And I really enjoy figuring out how – just how – can I develop this person to become a passionate donor.  It’s like a treasure hunt with interesting, nice people to work with!

But, on the other hand, let’s look at the down side of Major Donor Prospect Lists:

What happens if you DON’T have an up-to-date Major Gift Prospect List?

Then, you really don’t have a plan. There’s no master source anywhere that you use to keep track of everyone and everything that happens with your prospects.

The worst thing is – you don’t have a systemized way to figure out what to do next with your prospects.  If these people are not rated and qualified, then you have no way of knowing how to set your own priorities.

• Should you have coffee with the nice widow who lives down the street?
• Or should you focus on your board chair’s golfing buddy who is president of the local bank?
• Or what about the retired journalist your board member keeps mentioning to you?

So what happens? You go here, there and yonder, spreading yourself too thin. You waste your travel budget. And, you never focus on anyone long enough to really get to know them and ready them for an ask.

No prospect has a systematic followup plan because you are always on the road calling on people, too busy to file call reports or plan thoughtful next steps.

If your boss asks you, what’s your fundraising pipeline look like, you can’t respond!  Not only that – you are exhausted and you don’t raise your goal!

So why don’t you join me in singing a love song to our Major Gift Prospect Lists?

Why? Because finally we are becoming organized. We have, in one place, the list of folks who have the potential to change the world at our organizations.

Your Major Gift Prospect List tells you so much interesting information on one simple sheet of paper.

You can see – in one glance – exactly what you have to work with.

It tells you how much financial potential from major gifts might be available to your organization.

It’s your portfolio.

Your assigned list is your work plan. Your road map.

It’s your work LIFE, in a way, for the next few months.

It’s also an exciting place of possibility and vision – because it represents what’s really possible for your wonderful nonprofit.

I like to rate and rank the names of potential donors on my list – over and over.

For example, I’m constantly asking myself things like this:

• Is this executive really a potential million dollar prospect?  Or should we focus more on a smaller gift from him?

• Might this lovely older lady be our big investor? I know she loves our cause. What can I do to make her even happier with us?

• Should we approach this foundation again so soon? One of their board members is on our team and can help us. What could they give?

When I was a staff fundraiser I used to be thinking about my top prospects all the time.

I’d be saying to myself, what can I do today to make them love us even more?

You need to be thinking about your top prospects all the time too.

You need to know who they are. It’s a good idea to constantly evaluate them for their giving ability and their interest level.

Why? Because information about prospects changes often – they have life events, they may sell a business – anything that would impact their generosity.

Your Major Gift Prospect List will take the fuzziness out of the major gift fundraising process. (and make your boss happy.)

My boss, the Dean of the Business School, would sometimes wonder if I was just out there socializing around.

Before he and I developed our Major Prospect List, we worried that sometimes we were just shooting from the hip. We were guessing at who to see and when to see them.

Then we did the hard work of analyzing our true potential, and ranking potential donors for their financial capacity and their interest level. And, their timing.

After that, our list because our guide that we consulted and revised regularly.

And my boss knew, when I was out of the office, that I was spending my time at its highest productivity. And, he knew how much money we were working on raising, and how far we were from closing the bigger gifts.

BOTTOM LINE

Your Prospect List is your essential tool for raising major money for your organization.

Keep it fresh and keep it alive. Use it regularly and you’ll raise more money!