Emergencies on a local, regional and international scale often underscore humanity’s altruistic nature, as many people are eager to offer aid through financial means. Recent natural disasters like the California wildfires have demonstrated that organizations dedicated to providing relief efforts often experience a surge in the number and size of gifts during headline crises. In the United States (U.S.), time will tell if nonprofits affected by the current political climate (for example, those that provide international humanitarian aid, advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community or work to maintain our National Parks) will experience upswings in private support.  

At Humane World for Animals (formerly called the Humane Society of the United States) and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF-USA), we respond to animal welfare and humanitarian crises, respectively. And it is true that during these critical times, we often experience an influx of donations. As we receive this outpouring of support, we — as prospect development professionals — are inundated with information about new, re-engaged, and existing donors whose giving can be motivated by emergencies. While these new gifts are exciting, we often ask, “how do we prioritize proactive prospect research during these busier seasons?” 

We’ll describe how Humane World for Animals and MSF-USA prospect within our pools of emergency donors while crises are still occurring. By sharing our experiences, we hope to show other prospect development professionals how they might navigate a surge of emergency-driven prospects at their own organizations. 

Prospecting Emergency-Driven Donations at Humane World for Animals 

Our prospect development (PD) team has built a report in collaboration with our information systems team for ongoing proactive research. This report is especially critical for prioritizing emergency-related gifts, because it elevates unassigned individuals and organizations* who meet one or more of the following criteria and have not already been disqualified as a major gift prospect: 

• Made an outright major gift ($5K) for the first time through any vehicle (e.g., check, online electronic funds transfer (EFT), donor-advised fund (DAF), credit card, stock)  
• Reached the major gift threshold through cumulative giving within the past year   
• Made a single mid-level gift between $500 and $4,999 in the past year

*For our PD team’s purposes, these are family foundations. We do not research corporations or corporate foundations because our business and corporate development relations team manages outreach and stewardship for these donors.  

We further prioritize donors by gift size and date: 

• Gift size: This is a straightforward method of prioritization. While it does not lead to an intentional diversification of our prospect pool, it does help our team determine whether a new donor with the capacity and demonstrated inclination to give should be placed in a portfolio. Philanthropy officers have also shared with our PD team anecdotally that donors who make larger unsolicited gifts tend to be more responsive than unassigned donors with high capacities who give lower amounts.  
• Gift date: We aim to research new major donors within one month of their gift. 

Once we have prioritized donors by gift size and date, we then home in on the donor type and the vehicle used to make the gift: 

• Individuals: We prioritize gifts from individuals directly, rather than those sent via family foundations. Individuals generally expect acknowledgments sooner.  
• Family foundations: Many high-net worth individuals and families use private foundations as the primary vehicle for their philanthropy. If one or more of the foundation’s officers have supported our organization before making an emergency gift or a specific person appears to have influenced the emergency gift, we’ll often mark that individual as the primary donor for the foundation. 
• DAFs: Oftentimes, giving through a DAF indicates a donor is a savvy philanthropist who likely has the capacity and interest to give at a higher level. Even though DAFs have become a more democratized philanthropic vehicle, many DAFs still require a minimum balance for creating or maintaining an account (e.g., Vanguard Charitable has a $25K minimum, but Fidelity Charitable doesn’t have any minimum required). By knowing which charitable sponsor a DAF gift arrives through, we gain insight into a donor’s potential philanthropic means.  

In the end, we provide brief research on all unassigned, non-disqualified donors who make a major gift. The most common outcomes for these donors are: 

1. Assignment to a philanthropy officer’s portfolio based on their location 
2. Disqualification via a code placed on the donor’s record in our CRM 
3. Referral to the planned giving team so they receive direct marketing. This outcome is particularly important for donors who are 80+ years old and have not been engaged by a philanthropy officer previously.  

It is common at Humane World for Animals for large foundations and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) to make a one-off emergency gift without plans for future support. Even still, donors who give primarily or solely to crisis efforts are invaluable since they may give to future emergencies, even if they indicate their gift is a one-off.

Prospecting Emergency-Driven Donations at MSF-USA 

Our prospect research (PR) team builds reports in our customer relationship management (CRM) platform to track new gifts that have been earmarked for the specific crisis. Each officer (PRO) in the PR team works exclusively on a particular team’s portfolio (i.e., We have PROs for principal and major gifts, mid-level, planned giving, foundations and corporations**), so this report also filters gifts by team assignment. We use a sorting logic in our CRM to assign gifts to teams, which relies on our customized donor types (e.g., matching gift program, private foundation, household) and gift size.  

**At MSF-USA, we assign a donor to the foundation's portfolio if the donor organization gives or has the capacity to give $10K or more, is not connected to a corporation, is not comprised of only family members, and is not a community foundation. Both family and community foundations are largely assigned to our principal and major gifts or mid-level portfolios, depending on their gift size (e.g. mid-level donors give between $1K and $24.9K annually, while principal and major gift donors give more than $25K annually) and corporate foundations are assigned to our corporations portfolio. 

When reviewing the report, the PRO focuses their research using the following criteria: 

• Is the donor new, re-engaged, or current? If the donor is new or re-engaged after a year of lapse, we assign a brief research profile to ourselves to help the gift officer begin stewarding the donor. We like to determine their typical gift size, what kind of organizations they fund, and (for lapsed donors) why they stopped giving to us to inform optimal next steps. If the donor already gives to us, we have likely completed some research on them and do not assign a profile to ourselves, unless asked by the gift officer.
• Has the donor earmarked their gift to an emergency we’ve worked on before? We scan the giving history of our re-engaged and current donors for earmarked restrictions to other crises. We do this to determine if the new gift aligns with our existing knowledge about the donor. If they are an active donor, but the gift is distinct from their other giving, the PRO might assign themselves a brief research profile to determine why the donor’s giving habits changed. This step also helps us ascertain if we should begin stewarding and cultivating future gifts from the individual as an emergency-driven donor.  
• How large is their gift? Like Humane World for Animals, we use gift size to prioritize donors that need new research. Generally, institutions with greater assets give larger gifts. We use this assumption to prioritize our work knowing that all new or re-engaged donors, and some existing donors, will receive updated research. 

Once the research is complete, the PRO alerts the gift officer about the results and makes a recommendation on appropriate next steps for the donor. 

As with any prospect development process, the specifics of how a team approaches emergency donors will vary, depending on the priorities, resources and unique characteristics of the organization. While we never want emergency situations to occur, we recognize the importance of planning for them and hope some of the techniques we’ve shared will be useful in the near or longer-term future.