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. This is our final week and challenge!

On the last episode, our two teams, The Builders and The Cultivators, competed in the challenge "There is Always a Twist," and had to create lists of people based on an RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) model. But there was a twist: each person had to have a capacity rating above $50,000, could not have active steps, and could not be managed by a DO. The Cultivators won the challenge, bringing us to the finale of the competition with a tie.

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 is called, 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 be our challenge judge.

Audience, our third and final challenge is called "I’m the Map."

The objective of this challenge is to create a map and visualize the top 50 people from Anthony’s portfolio based on one specific code in the University’s CRM. Each team must decide their own code and why they chose this method. The challenge will ultimately help Anthony focus on a specific group in his portfolio.

Once the visuals 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 everyone. 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 Cultivators, please choose your spokesperson that will speak for you during this deliberation, and tell us how you built your list.

Charles, prospect research: Hello, my name is Charles and I will be speaking for my team this week. To tackle this project, we began by deciding on a code to use to filter, and concluded that the top 50 people should have the committee member code. We thought it would be great to map out the top 50 people in Anthony’s portfolio who were members of a committee and where they were clustered in the country.

We found that many were located in the Midwest region, and also found this to be extremely helpful for Anthony’s travel schedule and further engagement plans.

Host: Thank you. Great work, team! The Builders, please choose your spokesperson that will speak for you during this deliberation, and tell us how you built your list.

Melissa, prospect research: Hello, my name is Melissa and I will be speaking for The Builders this week. My team chose to pull the people in Anthony’s portfolio that were coded to have prospect research profiles. The research profiles validated the ratings and helped Anthony know his prospects’ capacity range. We chose the top 50 people, mapped them and found that many with profiles and major gift capacity ratings were closer to Ordinary University, and in the surrounding cities. This seemed like a perfect group for Anthony to email or call for visits based on proximity to the University. It would also be easy to bring these prospects to the University for special tours and meetings, for additional engagement.

Host: Great work team!

This is going to be hard Anthony, but what do you think of how both teams worked together, and their visuals?

Anthony: You are right this is hard. Both teams have done a fantastic job! The Cultivators really focused on people in committees, which is very important. I did not know that so many people in my portfolio were members of a committee at the University.

The Builders did a great job as well by focusing on people with prospect research profiles, and then mapping it out to reveal their proximity to the University.

Host: Anthony, it is time to tell us who is your perfect team match because whoever wins this challenge wins the competition. Who is the winner?

Anthony: Well, first I would like to thank you all for participating in this competition. You are all amazing fundraisers that are skilled in different ways that support and strengthen Ordinary University’s fundraising strategies.

With that said, the winner and my perfect team match is The Builders! The Builders won this challenge and ultimately have the title and role of my perfect team match.

Host: Folks this is so exciting! The Builders you are our winner!

Thank you to The Cultivators for participating and sharing your skills, not only with Anthony, but with our audience!

Thank you to Ordinary University for welcoming us back for Season 2!

And most importantly thank you to you, our audience, for being a part of this experience.

This has been Match Makers Season 2 The Prospect Development Edition.