Top 4 strategies for portfolio analysis

Dear Diary,

There is nothing more important when starting a process, any process, than setting an intention right at the beginning. Today, our intention is to learn helpful strategies for portfolio analysis.

Foster a partnership mindset

Creating a fundraiser’s portfolio is not just the job of a prospect development professional, but a joint effort between the professional and the frontline fundraiser. Understandably, the process (the prospect names, capacity ranges, fundraising stages, etc.) are organized and edited by the professional but the frontline fundraiser must know their role in the process. Having a partnership mindset consists of having the necessary conversations about comfortability with portfolio size, prospect names, grey areas, what is missing, stages in donor cycle, and how the fundraiser is addressing difficulties. In this partnership, each person knows their role, expertise, and communicates, knowing that they need each other in order for them to be successful. With this mindset, there has to be support from both sides.

Routine portfolio cleanup

The cleanup process can be a messy one, but only at the beginning. Once a schedule is created, it becomes easier overtime to move prospects around, adjust portfolios, set cleanup meetings with frontline, and discuss prospect management. Cleanups, in their truest form, entail a Professional assessing where the frontline fundraiser is with each prospect, moving people around in the portfolio, and learning what the next plan of action is.

Maintain portfolio balance

The questions for you to answer and manage:

How many prospects are in qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship?

Is there enough people in cultivation?

Who are the prospects in solicitation, and what is needed to make the Ask?

To make sure there is a balance to the portfolio, there needs to be consistent movement across the prospect stages. For example, are prospects being qualified at a pace that flows them into the next stages?

Encourage action plans for prospects in portfolio

Let’s lean into prospects in cultivation – they have been qualified, so, there is affinity and prospect research shows there is capacity to give, and a philanthropic giving history – what do you do next as the prospect development professional? What does the frontline fundraiser do next? Both roles must look into an actionable plan for the prospect that progresses the relationship. Think ahead and position a timeline for success (whatever that may mean to you and your team).

All four of these strategies work tangentially when analyzing portfolio breadth, depth, maintenance, and movement. The most important tool in all of these strategies is communication. What are your current communication methods and channels, and where can they improve to better serve the ways you analyze portfolios?

Until next time, July 15th!