Every prospect development professional knows the question that inevitably comes up during budget season: What are we actually getting for our investment in research? 

For decades, our answers have often relied on activity measures, success stories and the reasonable conviction that better information leads to better fundraising. We can count profiles completed, prospects identified and screenings conducted. Connecting those activities to measurable fundraising outcomes has been considerably harder. 

New research is helping change that conversation. 

In the 2026 Prospect Development Benchmark Study, a first-of-its-kind study conducted by Kindsight and Apra International, 500 organizations across the United States and Canada shared how their prospect development functions operate, what resources they have available and how consistently they apply practices that support fundraising performance. 

A deeper analysis of 131 large organizations allowed us to examine how those findings change when institutions have more substantial staffing, budgets and research infrastructure. 

Together, these datasets offer something our profession has needed for a long time: a clearer picture of what is typical, what distinguishes more mature operations and where additional investment or changes in practice may make a meaningful difference. 

Perhaps most importantly, the findings suggest that the next frontier for prospect development is not simply producing more research. It is ensuring that research influences decisions and advances the fundraising pipeline. 

First, understand what normal looks like 

One of the most valuable findings from the study is simply how lean most prospect development operations are. 

Across all 500 organizations, the median research function consisted of just 0.75 full-time equivalent staff, an annual research budget of $50,000 and approximately one researcher for every six major gift officers. The median annual investment in research technology was $17,500. 

More than half of participating organizations had just one or two major gift officers. In fact, 39% fell into a micro-shop category, with less than half of a research FTE and one or two gift officers. 

For these organizations, prospect development is often one responsibility among several. Research competes with gift processing, database management, reporting, event support and countless other priorities. 

These are not unusual circumstances. They represent a substantial portion of the profession. 

Now consider the comparison with larger institutions. 

Among the 131 large organizations, the typical operation reported five research staff, an annual research budget of $225,000 and approximately one researcher for every five gift officers. 

Those are materially different operating environments. 

Yet these differences do not necessarily mean that small organizations are failing or that large organizations have solved every challenge. They mean the available resources, organizational expectations and opportunities for improvement are different. 

For a small shop, the relevant question may be how to establish consistent research practices without additional staffing. For a large shop, it may be whether existing research capacity is being deployed effectively across the fundraising program. 

A useful benchmark is not a staffing prescription. It is a way to understand your organization in context. 

What maturity actually measures 

To move beyond headcount and spending, the study introduced a Prospect Development Maturity Index (PDMI) built around five operational practices. 

The index examines whether research findings are consistently documented in the CRM, whether gift officers act on recommendations, whether organizations track qualified prospects through assignment and solicitation, whether unresponsive prospects are removed from portfolios and whether the research function can demonstrate improvements in fundraising efficiency. 

Organizations were classified into four maturity tiers: Emerging, Developing, Advanced and Leading. 

Across the full sample, 42% of organizations were classified as Emerging or Developing. The median maturity score was 65 out of 100. 

Among large organizations, 76% were Advanced or Leading, compared with approximately 58% across the full dataset. 

This difference is not entirely surprising. Larger organizations often have more people, more sophisticated technology and better-established processes. 

But the findings become more interesting when we look at which practices improve with scale and which do not. 

To see how your organization stacks up, try Kindsight’s Prospect Development Maturity Index (PDMI) self-assessment tool. 

More resources solve some problems, but not all of them 

Across the study, investment was strongly associated with research production. 

Research staffing, overall research budgets and technology investment all showed substantial positive relationships with the number of prospects qualified. 

That finding matters enormously for practitioners advocating for additional resources. Research capacity is not simply an administrative expense. It is associated with an organization's ability to identify and qualify fundraising opportunities. 

The study also found substantial differences in reported research-influenced revenue across maturity tiers. Across the full sample, the median increased from approximately $50,000 among Emerging organizations to $3 million among Leading organizations. 

Institution size contributes to those differences, so the numbers should not be interpreted as the financial return produced by maturity alone. Nevertheless, they demonstrate why the relationship among research investment, operational discipline and fundraising outcomes deserves greater attention. 

For small organizations, however, investment may not be an immediately available option. 

A solo practitioner cannot always hire another researcher or purchase new software. What they can influence is the consistency of existing processes. 

The study found that donor research frequency was the strongest behavioral predictor of maturity across the full sample. Seventy percent of organizations conducted lookups at least weekly, including 38% that did so daily. 

That is an encouraging finding because establishing a consistent research cadence does not necessarily require significant additional funding. 

For a small shop, checking donor information before every substantive meeting, recording findings in the CRM and following up on recommendations can be a practical starting point. 

For a larger operation, the challenge is different. It is ensuring that greater resources translate into reliable institutional practices rather than simply higher volumes of research activity. 

And this is where the data reveals a surprising weakness. 

The surprising advantage smaller shops may have 

Large organizations outperformed other organizations on four of the five maturity practices. 

They were substantially more likely to record research in the CRM (83% versus 49%), demonstrate improvements in efficiency (68% versus 46%) and regularly remove low-quality prospects from portfolios (64% versus 34%). 

Yet on one critical practice, the relationship reversed. 

Only 55% of large organizations reported that gift officers consistently acted on research recommendations, compared with 63% of other organizations. 

Think about that for a moment. 

An institution can have dedicated research staff, sophisticated systems, comprehensive profiles and standardized procedures, yet still struggle to get frontline fundraisers to use the intelligence being produced. 

Smaller shops may benefit from proximity between the researcher and the fundraiser, fewer organizational handoffs and more direct communication. Those are plausible explanations, not conclusions, established by the study. 

What the data does demonstrate is that additional staffing does not automatically resolve the problem of adoption. 

Within the large-organization analysis, gift officer adoption was the practice showing the widest difference between maturity tiers. Only 17% of Emerging organizations reported consistent adoption, compared with 81% of Leading organizations. 

Greater adoption was associated with healthier portfolios containing fewer unresponsive prospects, although the analysis did not establish a reliable direct connection between adoption and revenue. 

That distinction is important. We should resist attributing financial outcomes to practices when the evidence does not support such claims. 

But the practical implication remains consequential. We should be as interested in what happens after research is delivered as we are in how that research was produced. 

For a small shop, this might mean creating a simple process for documenting whether a gift officer acted on a recommendation. 

For a large shop, it might mean examining the handoff between research, prospect management and frontline fundraising. 

In either case, the objective is the same: making research actionable and ensuring someone takes responsibility for the next step. 

The research production question: How much is enough? 

Another important finding concerns the volume of qualified prospects. 

Among large organizations, those qualifying fewer than 100 prospects annually reported median research-influenced revenue of approximately $750,000. For organizations qualifying 500 or more, that figure reached $15 million. 

The association remained meaningful even after accounting for institution size, research staffing and budget. 

Qualification throughput appears to be an important part of the research value proposition. Yet this raises a question familiar to practitioners at organizations of every size: How much time should we spend researching each prospect? 

The study revealed a tradeoff. 

Organizations spending less than an hour per prospect produced approximately 900 profiles per researcher annually, with a reported solicitation rate of 38%. 

Those spending more than three hours per prospect produced approximately 220 profiles annually, but reported a solicitation rate of 56%. More time per prospect was associated with higher solicitation rates, but considerably lower production volume. 

These findings do not establish which strategy produces better overall results. 

Deep research may help identify stronger opportunities, while lighter qualification may allow organizations to identify and advance more prospects. Different programs and different points in the fundraising process likely require different levels of effort. 

For a small organization with limited research capacity, this suggests the value of distinguishing between initial qualification and comprehensive research. Not every prospect requires a detailed profile before a fundraiser can take the next appropriate action. 

For large institutions, it suggests the importance of matching research depth to the decision being made rather than applying the same level of effort to every request. 

The goal should not be maximum profiles or maximum research hours. It should be the most effective use of research capacity to support fundraising decisions. 

The measurement problem belongs to all of us 

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for the profession is improving how we measure the movement of prospects through the fundraising pipeline. 

Across the full study, more mature organizations reported substantially higher assignment rates than less mature peers, approximately 37% compared with 12.5%. 

Yet the deeper analysis of large organizations revealed significant gaps in the information needed to explain pipeline performance. 

Among large shops, 85% tracked solicitation rates, 78% tracked assignment rates, 70% tracked close rates and 66% tracked cycle time. 

Only approximately one-third tracked all four measures. 

Organizations tracking all four reported a median maturity score of 75, compared with 65 among organizations missing one or more. 

Most strikingly, 64% of large organizations could not confidently estimate what a 25% increase in research investment would produce. 

Even more than half of the organizations claiming they could demonstrate research value could not answer that question. 

This highlights an important distinction between reporting what research has influenced and understanding what additional investment might accomplish. 

It also reveals an opportunity for organizations of every size. 

For a small shop, measurement does not have to begin with a sophisticated dashboard. It can begin with a simple, consistently maintained record of prospects qualified, assigned, solicited and closed. 

For a larger operation, the opportunity is to connect these measures across departments, identify bottlenecks and better understand how staffing and resource decisions relate to pipeline performance. 

The purpose is not measurement for its own sake. It is to understand whether opportunities are advancing, where they become stalled and what changes might improve the process. 

That is a strategic function, not merely an administrative one. 

Different sizes, different priorities, shared goals 

The findings do not suggest a single operating model for every organization. Instead, they offer different opportunities depending on institutional circumstances. 

For small and solo operations: Make consistency your advantage 

If your research function represents a fraction of one person's time, establishing reliable habits may be more valuable than attempting to replicate the practices of a large institution. 

Prioritize regular donor lookups, ensure that research findings are documented and create a clear process for following recommendations through to the next action. 

Be selective about research depth. Consider what information is essential for the decision at hand and what can wait until a prospect advances. 

And begin tracking at least one measure of pipeline movement that you cannot currently report. 

Small teams may have limited resources, but their simpler communication structures can offer opportunities for close collaboration between research and fundraising. 

For growing teams: Identify when capacity becomes the constraint 

Organizations expanding their major gifts programs often reach a point when informal research arrangements can no longer support increasing demand. 

For these teams, the benchmark data offers evidence for considering dedicated prospect development capacity. 

Moving from fractional research support toward a dedicated role may create opportunities to improve qualification throughput, establish consistent prospect management and strengthen measurement. 

The critical question is not simply whether another person is needed. It is what that additional capacity would enable the organization to accomplish. 

A compelling investment case connects new resources to clearly defined operational outcomes. 

For established and large operations: Focus on adoption and pipeline performance 

For organizations already investing substantially in prospect development, adding capacity may not address the most important constraint. 

The large-shop findings suggest evaluating whether gift officers consistently use research, whether portfolios are regularly reviewed and whether the organization can follow prospects through each stage of the fundraising pipeline. 

Staffing ratios also provide useful context. Among large organizations, those with one researcher for every three gift officers or richer reported a median maturity score of 79, with 90% classified as Advanced or Leading. Organizations with ratios leaner than one researcher for eight gift officers reported a median maturity score of 62. 

These are associations, not universal staffing targets, but they provide useful context when assessing whether research capacity aligns with fundraising expectations. 

Ultimately, the goal is to connect staffing, processes and research outputs to meaningful organizational decisions. 

The opportunity ahead for our profession 

Prospect development has changed enormously over the past several decades. 

We have moved from manual research and isolated databases to sophisticated information platforms, predictive analytics and increasingly accessible artificial intelligence. 

These advances will undoubtedly continue to transform how we work. 

But the findings from this study suggest that technology and capacity are only part of the profession's future. 

The larger opportunity is to strengthen our role in the fundraising decision-making process. 

For small organizations, that may mean building dependable practices that make limited resources more effective. 

For growing programs, it may mean demonstrating how dedicated prospect development capacity supports qualification and pipeline management. 

For large institutions, it may mean shifting attention from producing and distributing intelligence toward ensuring that information is actually used, understanding prospect movement and connecting research operations to fundraising strategy. 

In every context, practitioners have an opportunity to move the conversation beyond activity and toward impact. 

The study provides evidence that investment matters, operational maturity matters and research throughput is associated with fundraising performance. It also reveals important limits in what organizations can currently measure and explain. 

Those limits are not an indictment of our profession. They represent an agenda for its continued development. 

We should keep asking how many prospects we identify, how efficiently we produce research and whether our organizations have sufficient resources. 

But we should also ask whether research changes fundraiser behavior, whether better intelligence produces healthier pipelines and whether we can demonstrate the value of the decisions our work supports. 

The future of prospect development will not be defined solely by how much information we uncover. It will be defined by how effectively we help our organizations turn that information into action. 

And that is an opportunity for every prospect development professional, regardless of the size of their shop. 

 

About the research: The 2026 Prospect Development Benchmark Study was conducted by Kindsight in partnership with Apra International. The research surveyed 500 organizations across North America, including 455 U.S. and 45 Canadian organizations, between March and May 2026. The study introduced the Prospect Development Maturity Index and examined staffing, investment, operational practices, pipeline outcomes and research-influenced revenue. A deeper analysis of 131 large organizations examined additional patterns among institutions with substantial prospect development operations. The findings identify associations and benchmarks, not causal relationships or universal operating prescriptions.