Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition

The working relationship between prospect management professionals, data analytics, researchers and gift offers 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 whit a gift officer. 

Host: Welcome back, everyone, to Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition. It is a new week and a new challenge!

On the last episode, our two teams, The Builders and The Cultivators, competed in the challenge To Inherit or To Not Inherit, to create lists of people that Anthony could inherit from a previous DO’s portfolio. The Builders won the challenge and set the tone for the rest of the season.

Remember that both teams consist of prospect researchers, prospect management professionals, and data analytics professionals that need to collaborate within their specific teams, and harness their skills to win different challenges in order to become one development officer’s perfect team match at Ordinary University.

Let’s reintroduce our teams-

Team one, The Builders, Melissa who is our Season One winner and prospect researcher, Michelle from prospect management, and Juanita from analytics.

Team two, The Cultivators, let’s welcome Charles from prospect research, Shayla from prospect management, and Lauren from analytics.

And our development officer (DO) Anthony who will also be our challenge judge.

Audience: our second challenge is called There is Always a Twist.

The objective of this challenge is to see how each team can successfully prospect and create a list of people based on an RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) model. But there is a twist, each person must have a capacity rating above $50,000, cannot have active steps, and cannot be managed by a DO.

Once the lists are in, we will hear from the teams about how they made their decision and Anthony will determine the winner of this challenge.

Teams, you have until the end week. Good luck!

*End of the week*

Host: Welcome back. It is time to review the lists that both teams have created for Anthony. Remember, Anthony will decide the winner based on how the teams worked together and came to their conclusion.

The Builders, please choose someone to speak for you during this deliberation, and tell us how you built your list.

Juanita, data analytics: Juanita here and I will be speaking for The Builders during this challenge. To build this list, our researcher put together a list of people who had the capacity to give above $50,000. Our prospect manager used that list to weed out all the people who had active steps and were managed by a DO. I took this list and organized the people based on their RFM score by segmenting (or grouping) them by their last gift date, how often they have given within the last three years, and their total gift amount within the last three years. We felt that three years was a good time frame to measure these individuals. Each group was ranked from one to five.

Host: Great work! The Cultivators, please choose your spokesperson and tell us how you built your list.

Lauren, data analytics: Hello! I'm Lauren and I will be speaking for The Cultivators. Everyone really worked together on this project: we began by pulling a list of all the unmanaged prospects who had given in the last fiscal year. We then narrowed the list down by how often they had made a gift and then segmented the list based on their capacity rating. We then created a ranking system and segmented the list based on total giving in the last fiscal year.

Host: Great work, team! Anthony, what do you think of how both teams worked together and built their lists?

Anthony: Both teams did an amazing job working together to build their lists. They are making it really hard for me, because they created great lists. I believe both lists are important and most likely overlap. The Builders did a fantastic job and I liked their ranking system.

The Cultivators also did a great job, but they produced a list I could use right away because I liked their time frame and focus on the last fiscal year.

Host: Who is our winner, Anthony?

Anthony: The Cultivators!

Host: The Cultivators have won the second challenge! This Season is really heating up! Both of our teams are tied! 

Who will be Anthony’s perfect team match!?

Remember, these challenges are only going to get harder, and with one more challenge left, make sure to join us next time on Match Makers Season 2: The Prospect Development Edition. At the end there will only be one match.