Five Key Takeaways in International Fundraising—A Series: Structural Consistency is Key to Success 

Success Factor #1: Structural Consistency 

As you’ll recall from our introductory blog post, BWF Zuri completed an international fundraising program assessment and benchmarking study with several US-based institutions that maintain a fundraising presence outside of the United States. As we studied the factors that indicated success among these organizations, the first criteria that emerged as critical to successfully raising money abroad is structural consistency.  

What does this mean exactly? From a fundraising perspective, we’ve often said that what gets measured gets managed. If your organization already has a successful system in place to track activities and monitor successful outcomes, complete with dashboards and incentive performance factors, it is critical to continue measuring these same factors when assessing international fundraising efforts. 

Portfolios: Assignment Type and Portfolio Size 

The most common assignment strategy is region-based, in which one or more members of the overall development team are assigned prospects that live in a particular geographic area.  

• If a major gift prospect is verified as living in an international location, then they would be assigned to the gift officer assigned to the donor’s geographic location.  
• If a prospect is assigned when they are domestic-based and later moves to an international location, then it is more common for the original gift officer to maintain the assignment and for a member of the international fundraising team to be added to the prospecting team.  
• Prospects who are domestically based and have a business affiliation with an international company may be assigned to an international fundraising team member in order to align their cultivation efforts with the company’s cultivation plan. 

 As with domestic fundraising, there is a great deal of variety when it comes to portfolio size. The average portfolio size for all international fundraisers surveyed was 100 prospects, with the lowest reported portfolio at 40-50 prospects and the highest one at 200-240 prospects. 

When it comes to blended portfolios, our survey revealed two interesting statistics: 

• Outside of the international fundraising team, gift officers within units with a large international presence might have 15-30% of their portfolio contain international constituents. 
• While a full-time international fundraiser might have 100-120 prospects in their primary portfolio, they also could have as many as 50 secondary assignments of prospects who live internationally and are managed elsewhere. 

The feedback these organizations provided on their international portfolios is that they’d like to focus on qualification activities to both get portfolios to a manageable level and to move to strategy discussions regarding cultivation and solicitation to aid in long-term planning. 

Fundraising Activities: Visits, Solicitations, Dollars Raised 

Organizations with a large amount of international constituents report that the metrics for fundraisers who manage these constituents are the same as the metrics for all other fundraisers. Many report that basic cultivation activities (outreach, conversations, solicitations, and gift stewardship) are the same regardless of where a donor is located. 

There is some nuance as it relates to gift crediting, as international constituents often require a team-based approach where cultivation activities are spread out among different divisions, some outside of the fundraising area. It is quite common that the dean of a school has the best relationship with an organization’s best-known alumnus/a who works at an international business, for example. If the dean of that school solicits and closes a gift, some organizations will carve out team-based solicitation goals that include the gift officer who supports that dean as well as a member of the senior advancement team who may have the prospect in their portfolio. 

When an organization has a team dedicated to international fundraising, another common practice is to establish a team-based dollars raised goal. That allows the solicitor to be an external member of the international fundraising team, but if the international fundraising team is involved in cultivation efforts, the dollars raised by that constituent are included in their progress to goal reports. Team-based goals usually have a dollar threshold so that only major gift activity is being captured and included. 

Practical Example: Outreach Protocols 

The most common challenge organizations have when it comes to managing international prospects are the outreach and prospect assignment protocols. One organization with a five-person team dedicated to international prospects established the following criteria/decisions regarding international prospect assignment and outreach: 

• International prospects with the capacity to make a gift of $5M+ would be assigned primarily to a member of the principal gifts team. These were not regional assignments—these fundraisers will travel to any location where a prospect with principal gift capacity is based. 
• Additional members of the prospect team include the dean or director of the program the prospect is affiliated with and a regional team member in the geographic territory where the prospect lives. 
• International prospects with the capacity to make a gift in the range of $100K to $4.9M are primarily assigned to a regional team member in the geographic territory where the prospect lives.  
• If cultivation discussions identify interest in a specific giving area, a fundraiser working on the program team dedicated to that area is added to the prospect team and may also travel to the area for a significant (usually $1M+) gift solicitation. 
• International prospects with the capacity to make a gift in the range of $100K to $4.9M who live outside of existing geographic assignment areas are evaluated and assigned on a case-by-case basis. 
• Some of these prospects are assigned to fundraisers without an international donor portfolio if it is determined that cultivation activities can occur virtually or domestically when the prospect is on a domestic visit. 
• Solicitation and dollars raised goals for international prospects were most successful when shared credit was applied to all members of the prospect team and when the international fundraising team worked towards an annual teamwide dollars raised goal. 
• It is also significant to note that this organization has frequently made the decision not to assign an international prospect to a portfolio if it is determined that their geographic market is not a priority area or if it is too difficult from a regulatory perspective to solicit and receive funds within that country. 

Conclusion 

It is important to have guidelines and processes in place for the management and tracking of international cultivation activities. Most institutions find that they can maintain their existing protocols and metrics guidelines across their international constituency but may have to make slight adjustments to account for longer cultivation cycles or regulatory considerations. Collaboration across the organization is key, as most international prospects require outreach from many different representatives of the organization. 

If you would benefit from a deeper dive into any of these topics, contact us. Stay tuned for the next topic in the series—how to properly budget for an international fundraising program. This is an ongoing series; sign up below to receive the full results and the rest of this series in your inbox!