In part one and part two of this article series, I investigated the curious origins of a common industry benchmark for major gift officer portfolio size, and explored alternative strategies to determine portfolio size targets for your unique organization. In this third and final article of the series, I have included examples of major gift portfolio size targets from over a dozen real organizations in a range of fields, team sizes and annual fundraising goals. This is intended to help illustrate practical application of portfolio size targets, outside of industry best practice guidelines, to better understand the on-the-ground realities of how major gift teams are actually organized.

Thank you to the many industry professionals who reported their portfolio size targets to make this article possible. For concision, clarity and variety, I have included a selection of the responses I received.

Higher Education

Organization details: Higher education, $300 million annual fundraising goal.

Number of principal major gift (PMG) officers: 111 major gift officers, including principal gifts team

Target PMG portfolio size: Goal to reduce from 100 to 75 by end of FY25 

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Principal gifts review principal donor team assignments, others are not audited (free for all!)

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Smaller.

Organization details: Public university with separate foundation, current annual goal is $16 million.

Number of PMG officers: 10

Target PMG portfolio size: 100-150 

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Standard major gifts are paid over five years, so a donor is generally solicited every five years or so (after paying off previous pledge).

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Some fundraisers are for a particular college and others are generalists; people can generally get any assignment they want if no one else has been in contact with that person in the past 12 months. There are rarely any conflicts.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? We just updated them to make them larger (to the 100-150 range). From my experience as the prospect manager, I would personally like them to be smaller. Before the update my goal was to have everyone below 100, preferably around 75.

Organization details: Private university, $400 million annual fundraising goal.

Number of PMG officers: 22

Target PMG portfolio size: 50-75

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Varies from one  to three years after an outright gift or the pledge is paid off.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Prospects with a plan for solicitation are in portfolio counts as PM or QM, discovery prospects are earmarked for fundraisers via task.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Fundraisers build their own portfolios. They can request additions to portfolios after meeting. Requests are approved by their managers. 

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? No.

Organization details: Private higher education

Number of PMG officers: 2

Target PMG portfolio size: 75

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Every 18 months.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Qualified are included, but identified are not.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Research and development teams.

Organization details: Liberal arts college; $25-$35 million annual fundraising target

Number of PMG officers: 6

Target PMG portfolio size: Major gift officer portfolios are 100-125, while mid-level gift officer portfolios are 300-400.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Research consultations/new identified prospects; approval from program director.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? They have been larger in the past (~150). Ideally I would like to make them smaller (under 100) but need a lot of buy-in!

Organization details: Higher education, $30 million annual fundraising goal

Number of PMG officers: 12

Target PMG portfolio size: Our target size to be implemented in next fiscal year is 50, but actual size is currently) 100.

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Varies wildly and depends on the gift officer.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Internal and external capacity and inclination scores; referrals; unit affiliation (e.g., an alum from the College of Education). Only prospect management members can assign, re-assign and/or un-assign prospects in our database.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Yes, in Q1 of FY25, prospect management will lead an initiative to "right-size" portfolio sizes. The portfolios will be smaller than currently constituted.

Organization details: Medium sized (20,000 students) public university, annual fundraising target of $20-$30 million

Number of PMG officers: 14

Target PMG portfolio size:

• Director, philanthropy: 20 (min 10, max 30)
• Deputy director, philanthropy: 40 (30-50)
• Senior philanthropy manager: 50 (40-60)
• Philanthropy manager: 50 (40-60)
• Senior philanthropy officer: 75 (50-100)

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? At a guess — every two years?

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Mixture of fundraiser request and research assignments as part of defined project.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? No.

Healthcare

Organization details: Healthcare network with 13 hospitals, $20-25 million annual goal.

Number of PMG officers:

Target PMG portfolio size:

• Senior vice president: 20
• Director of development: 75-125
• Major gift officer: 100-125

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Annually, if not on pledge.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Prospect research and service line.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? No.

Organization details: Healthcare nonprofit, annual target of $50 million.

Number of PMG officers: Two principal gift officers, six major gift officers.

Target PMG portfolio size:

• Principal portfolios: 50
• Major gift portfolios: 100

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Once every 5-10 years on average for principal level gifts, every 4-5 years for major gifts.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined?: We use prospect pools to group donors by rating and giving history. We then prioritize based on the size of last gift and lifetime giving.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)?: We recently decreased portfolio sizes.

Organization details: Cause-based healthcare non-profit.

Number of PMG officers: Eleven principal fundraisers (capacity of $5 million+); about 40 major gift fundraisers (capacity $100,000 up to $4.9 million).

Target PMG portfolio size:

• Major gift portfolios: 60-80 qualified donors, 100 prospects in qualification
• Principal gift portfolios: 30-40 qualified donors, 50 prospects in qualification

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Capacity and region.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? We are currently going through portfolio optimization as our portfolios used to have almost 400 people in some of them, so getting them down to 160-180 has been a monumental change.

Organization details: Large healthcare network

Number of PMG officers: 100+

Target PMG portfolio size: For full time major gift officers, 100-125.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Generally, by the fundraiser; the prospect development team is too small to assign prospects for the entire system. 

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? I don't know if my organization is, but [as a prospect development professional] I think the major gift portfolios should be significantly smaller — 50-75 that are being qualified, cultivated, solicited and stewarded, with a larger pool of suspects that can be added as prospects move up and out through the portfolio. 

Organization details: Healthcare, health education and advocacy organization; $300 million annual fundraising goal.

Number of PMG officers: 12

Target PMG portfolio size: 125

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? No.

If not, how many additional PMG prospects are assigned to gift officers? 50 to 100 in a discovery portfolio solicited by annual fundraising team.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Assigned by region and capacity; frontline leadership can make special determinations.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Ideally we would like to reduce portfolio sizes so that discovery prospects would be included in total portfolio counts. Additional staff would be required to do so.

Organization details: Hospital foundation

Number of PMG officers: Five major gift officers.

Target PMG portfolio size: This is informal and does not vary by seniority. The vice president has the same requirements as the other major gift officers. Informally, portfolios should have between 90-120 prospects, which works out to about 70-85 households per gift officer.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes, because portfolio metrics are reported on, so it's more motivating to have discovery prospects included in portfolios.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Geography and staff seniority.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Not at this time.

Other Organizations

Organization details: Regional caused-based organization; $2.5 million annual fundraising goal; three staff on the development team, development operations specialist, director of philanthropy and chief advancement officer. 

Number of PMG officers: 1.5

Target PMG portfolio size: 75

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? By who will manage the relationship.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Smaller, if we can hire more staff.

Organization details: Large humanitarian organization

Number of PMG officers: 28

Target PMG portfolio size:

• Major gift officer: 150
• Senior major gift officer: 120
• Deputy director: 100
• Director: 80
• Senior director: 70
• Managing director: 50
• Senior managing director: 20
• Vice president: 15

On average, how frequently are PMG donors solicited at your organization? Once a year.

Do you include PMG prospects (Discovery prospects, potential PMG donors in qualification, etc.) in your portfolio count? Yes.

At your organization, how are donor assignments determined? Geographical region, capacity rating and inclination.

Is your organization interested in updating its target portfolio size(s)? Yes, potential in the future to make them smaller.

Organization details: Sports cause non-profit.

Number of PMG officers: 11.5 (One has other functions and only acts as a PMG part time.)

Target PMG portfolio size:

• President: 50
• Vice president: 80-90
• Major gift officer: 100-120
• Manager level: 150