FORT COLLINS HABITAT FOR HUMANITY
Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity Leverages Artificial Intelligence for Fundraising Success
We’re a small but capable team, so our major gift officers need to prioritize fundraising rather than other high-level responsibilities. Prospect Insights helps us achieve this. This is a tool for our team to make everybody more effective, everybody more efficient, to help more families.”
Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing in the Fort Collins area and worldwide through constructing rehabilitating, and preserving homes. The organization leverages Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Prospect Insights to optimize fundraising efforts, make data-driven decisions to enhance donor engagement, and achieve significant giving goals.
Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity has built nearly 370 homes locally and internationally with 1,660 annual volunteers who share a passion to create “a world where everyone has a decent place to live.” When Development Manager Cortney Moore joined in April 2022, the organization was already using Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT as its database of record. Moore immediately realized the power of their CRM system and wanted to identify ways to better leverage constituent data to make the fundraising team successful.
After attending a Blackbaud webinar showcasing Prospect Insights—an artificial intelligence tool that provides prescriptive recommendations for major gift fundraising directly within Raiser’s Edge NXT—Moore immediately saw the value for her team. “We’re a small but capable team, so our major gift officers need to prioritize fundraising rather than other high-level responsibilities. Prospect Insights helps us achieve this,” said Moore. “This is a tool for our team to make everybody more effective, everybody more efficient, to help more families.”
Prospect Insights uses artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, and public wealth and asset screening to provide prescriptive major gift fundraising recommendations within Raiser’s Edge NXT. Fundraisers can instantly access auto-generated lists of key prospects without manual queries. It suggests assigning new major gift prospects and re-evaluating under-giving or unlikely donors. Each recommendation is backed by giving likelihood predictions, capacity estimates, and public wealth data to aid informed decision-making.
“With Prospect Insights, we have needed information at our fingertips versus having to run multiple queries or pull data,” said Moore. “Our chief development officer can now spend more time cultivating our major donors instead of spending hours in the database trying to identify and prioritize the best major donor prospects.”
“The prescriptive recommendations allow me to strategically set up our approach to fundraising for shortterm and long-term planning. I know we made the right choice in investing in this technology. Not only do we feel empowered by the software and excited about the future, but I also feel like I’m a part of the Blackbaud team.”
Using AI to Understand Donor Potential and Set Goals
The fundraising team utilized Prospect Insights to easily pinpoint the right donors to fund its 30th Anniversary Matching Gift Campaign. “We initially thought it would take four or five donors to get to our goal of $150,000,” said Moore. “However, Prospect Insights showed us that it would only take two donors, giving us the opportunity to engage other major donors who have the capacity to donate between $50,000 and $100,000 for other campaigns we have planned.”
After early success and positive feedback using Prospect Insights, the team turned their attention to another big goal: executing a planned giving campaign with a planned gift match. Moore and her team made the decision to upgrade to Prospect Insights Pro to take advantage of additional features such as a planned gift likelihood prediction, a dedicated queue for emerging prospects, and a long-term potential gift range.
With a goal of 30 commitments, each with a funded match of $5,000, they used Prospect Insights Pro’s recommendations and determined that they could accomplish this with two matching donors as opposed to their initial estimates of three to five. “By reviewing the auto-generated list of recommended planned gift donors within Prospect Insights Pro, fundraisers felt comfortable making successful asks up to three-to-four times higher than they otherwise would have,” said Moore.
The team even leveraged untapped prospects originally identified for their planned giving campaign for the organization’s 30th anniversary match campaign. This included one donor who had already made a recent gift and normally would not have been solicited again, but based on recommendations from Prospect Insights Pro, they made the ask and received a committed gift.
Using the emerging prospects queue in Prospect Insights Pro, the team has also implemented targeted outreach efforts for their emerging and mid-level gift prospects. By sending specialized postcards inviting these individuals to tour their Harmony Cottages neighborhood—the largest development in Habitat for Humanity Fort Collins’ history—the organization is ensuring that these donors see the transformational impact of their support firsthand, cultivating a strong pipeline for future major giving. One of these donors gave a $10,000 gift after a tour—ten times the size of their previous total giving.
“By reviewing the auto-generated list of recommended planned gift donors within Prospect Insights Pro, fundraisers felt comfortable making successful asks up to three-to-four times higher than they otherwise would have.”
Unlocking Future Potential
Moore and team are still building out the planned giving campaign and will use the Planned Giving Likelihood score in Prospect Insights Pro to build a list of donors to engage in a meaningful way. Future engagements might include more tour invites or a special event targeted toward legacy giving and what it means for families.
Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity has plans to launch a Builder’s Club which is a more consistent giving campaign versus capital campaign. They hope to use the emerging and mid-level donors to continue to engage supporters who give consistently and may have a greater capacity if it’s spread over a three-to-five-year time frame of giving commitment. Moore explained there are also plans for foundation and recurring giving in the works.
“The prescriptive recommendations allow me to strategically set up our approach to fundraising for short-term and long-term planning,” said Moore. “I know we made the right choice in investing in this technology. Not only do we feel empowered by the software and excited about the future, but I also feel like I’m a part of the Blackbaud team.”
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