The working relationship between researchers and gift officers can make or break a shop's morale, efficiency, and ability to reach its goals. Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to match yourself with major gift officers based on strengths and work-style capability instead of random assignments? Apra-IL is having some fun imagining a world where we could pick our perfect research and gift officer match. In an ode to all the popular reality match making shows, we present to you - a new series, Match Makers: The Prospect Development Edition!

Final Installment 

Host: Welcome back, everyone, to the final episode of Match Makers: The Prospect Development Edition. That’s right folks, this is our final episode! So far, our researchers Xavier, Veronica, and Melissa have been tested by research requests to analyze their skills and compatibility with Jared, our major gift officer. Our researchers have built portfolios, conducted targeted research in "Whose boat is it anyway," and uncovered a family’s inheritance. In today’s challenge, the researchers will work with a special guest on Jared’s portfolio, and at the end of this challenge Jared will decide who will be his perfect researcher match.

Xavier, Veronica, Melissa, and Jared, welcome back! I hope you all are ready for today’s challenge.

Let’s welcome our surprise guest Ericka. Ericka please introduce yourself to our audience, tell them what you do here, and fill them in on today’s challenge.

Ericka: Hello everyone! My name is Ericka and I am the Prospect Manager at Ordinary University. I manage the plans that Fundraisers like Jared put in our database on prospects, I work with each fundraiser to restructure portfolios, ensure that each fundraiser has a set number of prospects in his or her portfolio, and I analyze how the prospects are being moved along the cultivation pipeline. My job involves a lot of data and collaboration with researchers and fundraisers.

Today’s challenge is going to be very different. As we all know, Jared is fairly new to OU and has adopted a lot of the previous fundraiser’s portfolio. As a result, Jared is beyond the limit of prospects for his portfolio. Therefore, each researcher will get a chance to review some of the data I’ve compiled on Jared’s portfolio and suggest a "collaboration plan" that would help us as a Development team clean up Jared’s portfolio. This challenge is called,

 C is for Collaboration

Veronica: Hi everyone, so I was the first to meet with Ericka. As I was looking through Jared’s portfolio I saw a lot of prospects that had old ratings, so I told Ericka that my collaboration plan would consist of updating the prospects’ ratings through quick screenings. Jared’s portfolio is full of prospects with 10-year-old ratings and several principal gift donors. I think it’s important that we as researchers update these ratings and consider distributing some of Jared’s prospects to their second units of interest, if necessary.

Host: Great plan Veronica! Time to hear from Xavier.

Xavier: Hi! So, as I looked through Jared’s portfolio with Ericka, I presented her with a collaboration plan in which research and prospect management would work together to redistribute Jared’s portfolio so that it would decrease the number of prospects. In fact, I am familiar with the prospects within Jared’s portfolio because I provided several of the researched profiles.

Host: Xavier that makes a lot of sense! Thank you for that plan! Melissa?

Melissa: Hello everyone, when I met with Ericka and looked over Jared’s portfolio, I realized that the best collaboration plan would consist of reviewing Jared’s prospects, and conducting some updated research. I also felt like it would make sense for us to figure out which prospects would remain in the portfolio based on the progress recorded on each prospect's plan. Jared is coming with his own strategies so we need to make sure his portfolio reflects this.

Host: Melissa, great plan! Ericka? It's time to decide who won this competition after reviewing their collaboration plans. What do you think?

Ericka: After speaking with Jared about each researcher’s collaboration plan, we really believe that Melissa’s plan won. It was a thorough plan that considered all aspects of how we needed to construct and clean up Jared’s portfolio.

Jared: And the winner of Match Makers, and my new researcher will be Melissa! All the researchers have done an extraordinary job! But I believe Melissa has been one inch ahead in the game. Thank you to everyone for participating!

Host: Folks this is so exciting! Thank you, Ericka, Jared, Xavier, Veronica, and our winner of Match Makers: The Prospect Development Edition, Melissa!

I believe we have learned a lot from our researchers and Ericka. Thank you all for participating! And thank you to our audience for being a part of this journey!