In 2023, Emory made a concerted effort to create and document a process for accurately rating, assigning and engaging incoming parents. In truth, we were behind many of our peers in this area, but once the program was created, we have been determined to improve the process each year, and our results are showing our success. We meet as a group in November to plan an outline of our time frame and goals and have daily communication throughout the Early Decision timeline. But in just three years since we have really focused on this project, the amount of money raised from parents jumped 50% from 2023 to 2024 and 66% from 2023 to 2025.

As a private university, Emory has a large constituency who are admitted in Early Decision. Those decisions are released in early December, and we find this group usually produces the highest rated incoming parents from a capacity standpoint. The IT team in Advancement works with the Admissions office to create a report which pulls needed data points from the student’s application (contact information, high school, parent information, etc.). That data is used to create their records in the CRM, and the research team quickly submits the spreadsheet for outside wealth capacity ratings.

We found focusing on those with a preliminary rating of $500K+ have the best ROI for our team. The prospect research team will then go through those parents rated $500K+ to confirm or change that rating and give our justifications. We don’t spend too much time with the justifications – a few sentences of why we rate them at that level we feel is sufficient (real estate findings, basic philanthropic giving at other organizations, any foundation information found, etc.). That cohort is then assigned by the prospect management team based on location, ratings and portfolio need. We all know outside wealth screens are not 100% accurate or reliable. To ensure we don’t miss anyone, we then cross-check the students, focusing on their high school, parents’ zip code and parent employment (if given) to look for any indicators that signal wealth. We find each year we identify up to 50-60 more incoming parents who were originally missed through outside wealth screens based on those three data points.

We repeat this process with Early Decision 2 students (a much smaller group that is released a few months later), and again for the Regular Decision group that is released in May. However, this last group is large, and we typically wait until we receive confirmation that the deposit has been paid to begin reviewing the parents in the Regular Decision group.

It’s a team effort, with representatives from several different areas all working together on a quick turnaround time. We have found engaging our parents early in their student’s time at Emory produces the best results, so our process must be well developed and efficient because the time between acceptance to engagement is a short one.

Kerri Brison
Senior Director, Prospect Research | Emory University - Office of Advancement & Alumni Engagement

Kerri Brison is a fundraising and advancement professional with more than 25 years of experience in prospect research, prospect management, corporate relations, volunteer engagement, and development strategy. She currently serves as Senior Director of Prospect Research at Emory University, where she leads research efforts that support philanthropic fundraising and donor engagement initiatives.