Prioritize these key capabilities in principal gifts fundraising

• Principal gifts require sophisticated strategy, long-term cultivation, and deep coordination beyond standard major gift approaches.
• To attract and maintain principal gifts, institutions should understand and segment the prospect pool, use growth scenarios to set goals, and minimize pipeline friction through structured reporting, stewardship, and proactive engagement.
• Implementing these capabilities enhances donor alignment, boosts gift officer performance, and strengthens campaign readiness for transformational giving success.

For institutions preparing for a campaign or seeking transformational support, an effective principal gifts program is critical for success. This is especially true as fundraising goals continue to rise.

Principal gifts are often characterized by their magnitude and mission impact, rather than a specific dollar threshold. They are typically the largest commitments an institution receives and often result from extensive cultivation and personalized strategy. Unlike standard major gift approaches, principal gifts require longer timelines, deeper engagement, and more institutional coordination.

To succeed, fundraising leaders must develop internal capabilities, define clear performance metrics, and adopt systems that support long-term cultivation strategies. This article explores three foundational areas to help your team attract and secure transformational support.

Organizations need access to key data, reporting capabilities, and dedicated staffing to understand the structure of their prospect pool over time. Prospect pools can experience healthy growth in their gift capacity each year, particularly for organizations that consistently add new constituents to their database, such as alumni, donors, members, and other individuals. 

Fundraising leaders must invest in critical functions to assess and comprehend their prospect pools. 

• Wealth screening: Analyze available asset types and values to identify individuals with high giving potential based on wealth ratings and other indicators. Wealth screening can be done internally or outsourced to specialized firms. 
• Gift capacity estimations: Evaluate prospects' giving capacity by combining the results of wealth screening with additional factors such as philanthropic interests, past giving history, and level of engagement. This helps prioritize prospects by better understanding their potential for major and principal gifts. 
• Prospect research: Gain insights into prospects’ giving potential using historical giving and affinity indicators. This information shows a prospect’s likelihood to give and informs cultivation strategies. 
• Prospect pool analysis: Enable prospect tracking and illustrate the growth of the prospect pool over time using reliable prospect data, reporting tools, and dedicated staff who can monitor progress, identify trends, and generate insights for decision making. Regular analysis and reporting help fundraising teams stay informed about the progress and performance of their prospect pool. 

Organizations should continually add new individuals to the prospect pool and retire unqualified prospects. Doing so ensures a dynamic, responsive pipeline that evolves with the institution’s needs and donor interests. The strongest programs use a tiered structure to prioritize cultivation efforts and avoid bottlenecks.

In practice, the best-performing fundraising shops are increasingly using advanced analytics and predictive modeling to prioritize prospects for principal gifts cultivation. If your organization doesn’t have in-house analytics capabilities, consider collaborating with a third-party data partner to augment capacity.

Growth scenarios provide a framework for aligning fundraising goals with actual capacity. This planning method helps:

• Identify trends in historical fundraising data
• Project different revenue outcomes based on changes in staffing or donor behavior
• Highlight gaps in resources or strategy that could inhibit growth

To start, develop baseline and stretch projections using prior-year results, current donor engagement levels, and known campaign priorities. Map these against your institution’s strategic plan to ensure alignment.

By visualizing what’s achievable — and what’s aspirational — leaders can allocate resources accordingly. This also strengthens internal alignment, as everyone understands the rationale behind fundraising targets.

Growth scenarios also serve as a diagnostic tool. For example, suppose projections show a shortfall in high-level prospects for a particular funding priority. In that case, you may need to realign portfolios, launch new discovery initiatives, or invest in donor pipeline development.

Even the most qualified prospects won’t convert without a clear, timely engagement strategy. Prospect development professionals and gift officers must diligently curate and categorize prospect data, including prospect strategy descriptions, contact reports, complete and accurate proposal data, and progress on next steps and future actions.

Maintaining data fields for planned proposals (such as the projected solicitation date, solicitation amount, and expected closure date) along with data fields for existing proposals (solicitation date, award amount, and award date) can provide valuable insights into your portfolios and reveal steps for reducing friction within the prospect pipeline. 

• Develop comprehensive prospect reports: Create a suite of reports that provide visibility into the pool of principal gift prospects, including their status, activity or inactivity, and active proposals. These reports should identify any bottlenecks and the need to adjust strategies proactively. 
• Regularly review prospect activity: Review and discuss prospects that have shown no activity within a specific period with the gift officer; address inattention or ineffective strategies, then work with gift officers and their supervisors to determine next steps. This could involve updating the prospect strategy or reassigning the prospect to another team member. With a process in place, leadership clearly understands where progress is stalled, and intervention is needed. 
• Define proposals for the upcoming fiscal year: Looking ahead is essential for estimating the current and future pipeline and setting realistic goals for the organization. Anticipating proposals to be pursued, leadership can align their expectations, allocate resources accordingly, and determine which gift officers are on track to meet their proposal goals for the year (and those who may need additional support). This ensures that efforts are focused on prospects with the highest potential and allows the organization to plan for proposals to be delivered in the following fiscal year.
• Prioritize stewardship of your existing donors: Your most promising principal gift prospects are often those who have already demonstrated generosity and commitment through significant contributions to your organization. Stewardship is essential to reinforce their connection and trust. By ensuring that previous gifts are acknowledged meaningfully and their impact is communicated clearly, institutions can cultivate deeper relationships, paving the way for future transformational giving. Regularly engage these donors in conversations about institutional priorities and opportunities that align with their philanthropic values to keep them inspired and invested in your mission.

Principal gifts are the product of focused strategy, patient cultivation, and effective infrastructure. By investing in core capabilities like prospect analysis, scenario planning, pipeline tracking, and forward-looking proposal management, institutions can unlock the full potential of their most generous donors.

Whether you’re preparing for a major campaign or seeking to elevate your everyday principal gifts work, Huron’s advancement and fundraising experts can help you every step along the way.