A Webinar Review - Building Bridges, Not Lists (Hosted by Apra Illinois)
Dear Diary,
I am thrilled to share that all Diary entries that provide recaps and reviews of Apra webinars will now be found in a new series called Need Professional Dev. This is a great opportunity to ensure that any reader who cannot attend a session can still review my notes.
On January 27, at 12PM Central Time, Apra Illinois hosted a webinar by Caltech's Associate Director of Prospect Management and California Advancement Researchers Association (CARA) President Cynthia Mikimoto on Building Bridges, Not Lists – Turning Portfolios into Pipelines That Perform. I was enthralled by this presentation and would love to dissect a lot of the learnings and benefits of building bridges and not lists.
Cynthia began by setting the tone of her presentation. The agenda included how she and her team kept portfolios clearly focused on asks; Ensured strong pipelines; Kept data action oriented; and partnered with fundraisers to support goal achievement.
When discussing clarity, she mentioned the following guidelines that have led to success for the team – clearly aligned stages; Only prospects with gifts strategy are in portfolio; and prospects for qualification must be distinguished from portfolios. She continued by sharing that prospects in qualification were not in portfolio – only when qualified (meeting accomplished) can a prospect be moved into cultivation and then added to a portfolio, this is decided by the fundraiser if they want the qualified prospect added to portfolio. Yes, you’re reading that correctly – in this case, a portfolio is only made up of active prospects – prospects in cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. And even in stewardship there has to be a plan for reengagement and a new ask. Solicitation was also defined as an ask made, not hoped for, not thought of or living within a proposal – the ask date mattered.
In that moment, I wish you could sense my excitement and intrigue because of the clarity and strictness. This is great boundary setting, and as you can imagine, the webinar’s comments section was ignited with inquiries. The parameters for time in stage is also 18 to 36 months, Cynthia highlighted that although this caused concern for some fundraisers, with the partnership of the prospect development team there has been great headway, progress, compromises and great conversations.
When it comes to qualification, she shared that, again, they do not live in portfolios and can instead be found assigned as Tasks. These are Tasks that are managed by the prospect development team with the expectation that the fundraiser will qualify these individuals that were presented by the researchers. As a “proactive shop” Cynthia and her colleagues are consistently prospecting and conducting research, they provide five to ten new names for qualification a week. Fundraisers receive credit for their outreach attempts.
This portfolio format has also allowed the team to set portfolio sizes to under 100 names (regardless of a fundraiser’s role in major gifts or principal gifts). I find this extremely interesting because how many of us would love for our fundraisers to have more manageable portfolios? How many of us have had to consistently trim and clean, clean and trim down overreaching portfolios in the 200-300 range? I’m sorry, that was my trauma speaking. Well, Cynthia and her team have found the secret sauce – choose intentionality over busyness. Choosing intentionality is also a two-way street that encourages partnership with fundraisers and ensures that there is healthy movement in, through, and out a portfolio. Whoever goes in is a quality and qualified prospect. Whoever is sitting in a portfolio is an active prospect who is about to be solicited. And whoever is removed or “deferred” is a prospect that can either go into an annual fund portfolio or needs to be revisited. Either way, Cynthia continued to emphasize intentionality.
She discussed the need to evaluate if someone in portfolio was a “friend” versus “someone you can solicit.” This was an exercise she did with each fundraiser, going line by line through each name to ensure that when a portfolio was being curated and cut, the fundraiser was involved and the portfolio was within their set rule.
Aside from the extensive discussion on stages and portfolios, she also shared an example of her team’s portfolio health dashboard that was helpful for inquiry and reflection from fundraisers. She discussed how prospect development could help with engagement notes and research that could help fundraisers with qualification, for example, sharing wealth events that can help the fundraiser send a congratulatory email. To ensure data is actionable, she mentioned that “proposal activity translates into prospect stage changes.” I think at this moment many of us started to think about stagnant proposals.
Finally, she closed her presentation discussing fundraiser partnership, conducting portfolio reviews, tightly defined prospect stages and movement, and how all of this data feeds into the fundraisers’ clear goals for the year.
I ended the presentation by asking how she was able to shift mindsets for adaptation to this structure. Although she joined Caltech slightly before the system for introduced and adapted, she shared that this shift took time and that fundraisers needed to feel empowered that this new system was going to help them with time management, and to answer the great question of who they “should” be soliciting. Again, it was another great emphasis on intentionality.
Cynthia concluded with great advice stating that to start a system like this, start by providing fundraisers with some new prospects, maybe five, for qualification so they can have some wins.
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Thank you to Apra Illinois and Cynthia Mikimoto for another meaningful webinar that really gets professionals thinking about their current portfolios, enriching partnership with fundraisers, and so much more.
Until next time,
March 15th!
