capacity ratings Archives - Helen Brown Group

May 28, 2015 By Helen Brown

Going beyond capacity ratings

In case you missed it (and click here if you did), last week on this blog Melissa Bank Stepno shared her knowledge and some wise words from her colleague, David Lamb, on capacity ratings.

Capacity ratings are an important factor in every major gift effort. They will not be perfect, (let me repeat that – they will never be perfect) and capacity rating are just one of several data points we use, but they are an important tool to help us rank our very top prospects.

One of the common misconceptions of capacity codes is that some folks new to the profession might think that capacity means “How much will they give us?” It doesn’t.

A capacity rating says, “what is this person’s total ‘wallet’ for philanthropic giving in a year to every organization they support?” [Read more…]

May 21, 2015 By Helen Brown

The Artful Science of Capacity Ratings

It is a great pleasure to welcome Melissa Bank Stepno as this week’s guest writer on The Intelligent Edge. I’ve long admired Melissa’s gift in seeing the big picture in prospect development and her ability to eloquently communicate and train on its finer details. So when she and I were chatting between sessions at the recent NEDRA conference, I grabbed the opportunity to ask her to share her thoughts here on capacity ratings, which has been a hot topic lately on the prospect research discussion forum, prspct-l.

How much can they give? What should we ask for? How rich is she? What’s his net worth?

Such short questions. Such common questions. Such important questions. [Read more…]

December 11, 2014 By Helen Brown

Capacity Ratings, 747s, and Volvos

Mark Noll, AVP of Research and Development Services at the University of Rhode Island started a conversation earlier this week in an article titled “Why Capacity Ratings are Bunk and What You Can Do About It.” In the post, Noll discusses the difficulties of assigning an accurate capacity rating to prospects. There’s just too much we prospect researchers – and frontline fundraisers – will never know about the totality of someone’s assets and their liabilities. Noll provides a solid lesson on what actually goes into a capacity rating. And what is logically missing. [Read more…]

May 29, 2014 By Helen Brown

Ratings: What happens when you drop a prospect status ball

Keeping track of one or two major gift prospects isn’t too difficult, but when there are scores of donors you need a system to make sure that no one gets forgotten.

Imagine your horror to discover that a loyal donor [Read more…]

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