By: Amy Caldarelli, Consultant
Amy Caldarelli
In a previous post (linked here), my wonderful colleague Anne Melton initiated a two-part blog adaptation of a session we presented at NEDRA in Providence, RI, earlier this year. The session focused on communicating and responding to misconceptions, feedback, and questions about capacity ratings from audiences who may find them confusing, frustrating, or insufficient. Anne’s Part I post took a broad view of where disconnects can happen between researchers and their audiences, along with proactive ways to build a foundation of stronger relationships, clearer communication, and shared understanding with our audiences.
Even with a strong foundation, miscommunications and challenges can still arise. In Part II, I’ll walk through a few examples of feedback and questions researchers may encounter—drawn from Anne’s and my own experiences—and offer possible ways to respond.
It took me a few years in prospect research—and experience at more than one organization—to understand the variety of ways capacity ratings can be used, and how they can interact with and reflect an organization’s broader systems, attitudes, and preferences. For example:
- One organization may want aggressive, maximum-potential ratings, while another may prefer more conservative estimates.
- CRM fields and reporting systems may influence whether an organization uses a range or a single number (for example, $100K–$249K vs. $155,000) for capacity ratings.
- The information your organization has about a donor—such as a home or mailing address a donor shared directly, or gifts that do not appear in published donor reports—can affect the data available to factor into capacity ratings.
- How your organization captures, makes accessible, and uses prospect data beyond capacity—such as affinity and philanthropic propensity—can shape how capacity ratings are expected to function.
Despite that variation, some of the same questions and criticisms have cropped up time and again for my colleagues and I about capacity ratings. I imagine some of these might sound familiar to you.
Question/Feedback:
“But I know they have a higher capacity, because…
- …they have a boat!”
- …a wealth screening tool said they’re rated much higher!”
- …they come from a rich family!”
Response:
It may not always be possible—or appropriate—to address your audience’s concerns directly. Sometimes handling feedback will take the form of directly clarifying the meaning of, or data behind, a capacity rating. Other times, the response is internal: revisiting your work, consulting colleagues, or reviewing whether methods or policies need adjustment. When you do have the opportunity to respond directly, these talking points may help:
- Prospect researchers—and capacity ratings—rely on visible assets and indicators in publicly available sources. Some assets and wealth are hidden from view, including certain property held in trusts or LLCs, stocks or securities held by individuals who are not “insiders,” and anonymous philanthropy.
- A lavish lifestyle does not always equal high capacity, for many reasons. As one example: some professions, including many in the entertainment industry, can involve large but unpredictable paychecks.
- Wealth screening tools are valuable for prioritizing prospects for further examination, but they have limitations. In a common example, what may appear in wealth screening results to be one donor with a real estate empire and prolific giving may actually be conflated assets and giving from multiple individuals with the same name.
- Family wealth can be especially difficult to navigate because there is so much we cannot know or assume about inheritance. Things like your organization’s preferences for aggressive or conservative ratings, what you know from news reports or direct conversations with the prospect or family, and many other variables may factor in.
Question/Feedback:
“How can this donor’s capacity rating be lower than their lifetime giving total?”
Response:
I understand why this can be confusing: shouldn’t an estimate of what a donor can give be at least as much as they have already given? The key distinction is that the industry-standard capacity rating does not estimate lifetime giving; it estimates total giving capacity over a five-year period. At one organization, we addressed persistent confusion by renaming a report field from “capacity rating” to explicitly labeling it “5-year giving capacity.”
Question/Feedback:
“I want to ask for more than that—are you sure that’s as much as they can give?” – or – “They’re never going to give that much to us!”
Response:
These are two sides of the same coin: both mistake a capacity rating for a suggested ask amount. Capacity ratings are not commands—or even direct guidance—about how much to ask for; they are one data point to consider. Gift officers may ask for more, or more often less, than a capacity rating suggests after weighing additional factors such as philanthropic propensity, affinity for your organization, and timing.
One way to address this is to use what is sometimes called a “gift officer rating” to estimate the portion of a prospect’s capacity your organization might reasonably expect to receive. That number may be lower than the capacity rating—or higher, if gift officers have credible knowledge of wealth that cannot be verified through public sources.
Question/Feedback:
“I keep seeing this person on my ‘top prospects’ list, but they’re never going to give to us. Why are they rated so highly?”
Response:
You might have an alum or past parent who has never given or hasn’t engaged with your organization since graduation, a donor who made one $100 gift 20 years ago and has not responded to outreach since, or a past loyal donor who became upset about an organizational decision. None of these means their capacity to make a charitable gift is low, but it might mean their affinity for your organization is low. This is where prospect management policies and data beyond capacity ratings matter. Tools such as disqualification, “not a prospect” coding in your CRM, or other indicators can clarify that someone may have the capacity to make a large gift but is unlikely to do so. If those mechanisms exist, your response may be to apply them to the prospect or ensure they are reflected in the data and reports your audience uses to identify “top prospects.” If they do not exist at your organization, it may be worth starting a conversation to develop them.
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all response to feedback or questions about capacity ratings. To return to a point from Anne’s Part I post, start by listening with curiosity: hear what your audience is saying, try to understand the underlying concern, and respond in a way that addresses the issue or clarifies a misunderstanding.
What common questions have you encountered in your work? How do you approach the important task of translating capacity ratings for your audiences?
