Canceled donor meetings are disappointing, but they’re just a part of life. Mobile-friendly technology can turn donor meeting cancelations into an opportunity to connect with folks that have fallen through the cracks for years.
Frontline fundraisers are accustomed to planning on-the-fly. Things like receiving last minute cancelations when they’re en route to meet with a donor are par for the course for advancement road warriors.
In the world of gift officer travel (and in the world, in general), luck favors the prepared. But who needs luck, when you’ve got EverTrue? Frontline Fundraisers can use EverTrue to build out a strong trip itinerary, prepare for the unexpected, and turn canceled donor meetings into an opportunity to bring new prospects into the fold.
To see this in action, let’s step into the shoes of a Major Gift Officer who’s heading into New York City for a day of donor visits…
Building out a trip in EverTrue
Let’s say you’ve got the lofty goal of having 4 meetings per day over a 3 day period. You’ll need an easy and effective way to keep track of who you’re meeting with and when.
There are a lot of factors that go into planning a well-rounded trip. We built the Trips & Meetings feature in EverTrue to help fundraisers prioritize, schedule, and coordinate trip details all in one place.
In EverTrue, fundraisers can dynamically add prospects to a trip, add prospect notes to a constituent’s profile, and tag in other team members (such as Executive Assistants or other Gift Officers that might be joining you on a trip).
With the “drag and drop” feature, it’s easy to start a “draft” trip centered around anchor visits, and bring the itinerary to life as new visits are added.
In preparation for your trip into the city, using EverTrue filters, you can view folks in your portfolio who, for example, live in Midtown Manhattan, and have given a gift in the last six months. (Easy anchor visit outreach!)
And to round out the trip and bring some new major gift prospects on the radar, you can opt to view folks who are not in your portfolio, haven’t had an interaction in two years, are engaging with your institution on Facebook, and have significant wealth indicators. (“Filler” visits, done!)
Three steps for filling a last minute canceled meeting
Canceled donor meetings are disappointing, but they’re just a part of life. And it’s a whole lot easier to navigate a last-minute itinerary change when you can operate right from your phone.
So the next time you receive an apologetic email from a prospect you’re scheduled to meet, follow these 3 steps in EverTrue’s mobile app to quickly identify other prospects to reach out to.
Step 1: Draw-to-Search
The “Draw-to-search” Map feature is a great way to find and filter nearby prospects right from your phone. The EverTrue app allows you to draw a radius around the area where you’re headed and view a list of prospects in the area. From there, you could drill down with more advanced EverTrue filters, like job titles and wealth indicators.
Step 2: Review AI-generated profile summaries
While on the road, gift officers don’t have time to sift through tabs of donor data in the alumni database. AI-generated profile summaries in EverTrue allow gift officers the 30-second version of a prospect research report, right from their mobile phones.
Step 3: Conduct outreach on the fly
Constituent profiles are constantly refreshed with up-to-date contact information in EverTrue, which means that you’ll be able to fire off a handful of text messages to newly-found prospects directly from the EverTrue app.
Keeping track of it all
It’s a tale as old as fundraiser time that contact reports often fall through the cracks. Fundraisers are so busy that almost as soon as they land back on campus, they’re on to planning the next trip, and summaries and follow-up notes can often get left behind.
In EverTrue, fundraisers can voice-dictate their contact reports directly into the mobile app while in the taxi on the way to the airport. And since all of their planned meetings live in the dynamic trip in EverTrue, it’s easy to look back and review which meetings still need a contact report after the fact.
Bonus feature: All interactions in EverTrue are searchable by key word, which can come in really handy when planning future asks.
EverTrue’s powerful mobile features allow you to focus on the important work of building relationships. Let us do the rest!