Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition

The working relationship between prospect management professionals, data analytics, researchers and gift officers can make or break a shop’s morale, efficiency, and ability to reach its goals! In an ode to all the popular reality match making shows, we present to you the second season of Apra-IL’s series -Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition. Strengths and working style capabilities will be tested through random assignments so have some fun with us as we imagine a world where we could match our perfect prospect development team with a gift officer.

Narrator: Welcome back to Ordinary University, small town USA! Today, we are back at OU for a second season of challenges with the advancement office! Since Season One, this shop has been on the forefront of matching the skills and strengths of researchers to their development officers (Dos) in order to build new portfolios and garner new and large gifts. In this second season, we will confront a new challenge: collaborations within prospect development.

At OU, prospect development professionals are divided into teams and only conduct their specific tasks with little collaboration. Therefore, in this season we will watch as two teams explore how prospect researchers can work with prospect management professionals and how prospect management can collaborate with data analytics. Most importantly, we will see how they can work together, within their specific teams, when faced with a project that harnesses their skills.

In this season we will have two teams that consist of one prospect researcher, one prospect manager, and one data analyst. Both teams will face off to be matched with one development officer who will also be our challenge judge that decides which team ultimately wins Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition.

Let’s welcome our teams: team one is called The Builders, and consists of Melissa who is our season one winner and prospect researcher, Michelle from prospect management, and Juanita from analytics.

Team two has named themselves, The Cultivators, and consists of Charles from prospect research, Shayla from prospect management, and Lauren from analytics.

These two teams consist of professionals from different backgrounds, with different experiences in prospect development. They all have cultivated great relationships with their officers, and have their own process in delivering their products.

Over the coming weeks we will be introduced to each team, and follow them on their collaboration journey. They will be tested on a series of challenges that involve, prospecting and portfolios to analyze their skills and compatibility with the DO, and their approach to producing a requested product as a team. The final result will be given to the DO to be analyzed for its usability, relevancy, and other preferred skills deemed optimal, he finds his perfect development team match.

Now let’s switch gears and meet Anthony our DO. Anthony is an alum of OU, a small-town native, and has been working in development for two years.

Over the course of three challenges, Anthony will decide his perfect development team, and we will be watching the entire journey. We hope you will join us next week on Match Markers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition when Anthony meets the two teams and they begin their first challenge!