Grand Canyon Conservancy leverages power of
AI to identify top major gift prospects

Cassie Chilcutt’s love for U.S. National Parks developed on family vacations
when she was younger and eventually led her to join the fundraising team
for Grand Canyon Conservancy, the official philanthropic and collaborative
partner of Grand Canyon National Park. “The canyon still takes my breath
away,” she said, half a year after taking on her new role.

Her organization’s mission is to inspire generations of park champions to
cherish and support the natural and cultural wonder of Grand Canyon.
“As a prospect research manager, I help our gift officers identify major gift
opportunities for the canyon,” Chilcutt explained. “Identifying prospects
who can support our mission and partner with us to support this natural
beauty is very motivating.”

As GCC is ramping up for a major fundraising campaign, the nonprofit
added Chilcutt’s position and several others while adopting Blackbaud
Raiser’s Edge NXT, the leading software for fundraising and relationship
management. Chilcutt was already well versed in Raiser’s Edge NXT thanks
to her previous work in higher education fundraising, and as she started at
GCC, she was one of the first Blackbaud users to tap into a game-changing
new tool now offered within Raiser’s Edge NXT: Prospect Insights.

Elevating Fundraising with Prescriptive Actions

GCC’s fundraising team uses Raiser’s Edge NXT daily to track constituent
actions, gifts, opportunities, and other data. “Raiser’s Edge NXT is the center
of our team’s work,” Chilcutt explained.

They also use the software’s embedded intelligence to make predictions, set
goals, establish their roadmap, and share the big picture with others. “We’re
able to take the data we’ve tracked and show it to leadership, to explain to
people who are not fundraisers what philanthropy looks like and what we
are doing.”

With 30 years of expertise “built in,” Raiser’s Edge NXT now offers Prospect
Insights, which harnesses powerful data combined with advanced artificial
intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Prospect Insights makes
essential giving capacity and likelihood indicators available through a
simple in-app interface and provides prescriptive recommendations to
streamline major gift fundraising for small to mid-size organizations.

Rather than simply adding data to constituent records, Prospect Insights
provides ongoing prescriptive guidance for fundraisers to optimize their
major gift portfolios, which Chilcutt leveraged soon after she joined GCC.
“When I started, we completely wiped out everyone’s portfolios,” she said.
Many of the previous portfolios were oversized and filled with prospects
that did not have a high likelihood to give—two gift officers had taken on
around 120 constituents each. With Prospect Insights, Chilcutt can access
an automatically generated list of assigned prospects with low major gift
potential, review relevant giving and capacity indicators, and remove lowlikelihood prospects from portfolios all within one modern interface.
In a short amount of time, she created a set of new portfolios designed
for impact that she assigned to gift officers and select GCC leaders. The
number of prospects assigned to the two gift officers who manage most
of the major gifts had been reduced by more than a third compared to
their previous portfolios.

Energized by Promising Portfolios

“Prospect Insights has helped me identify the correct constituents to place
into gift officer portfolios,” Chilcutt said. “We can also use the snapshot
wealth and giving data within Prospect Insights to make more educated asks
of our constituents.”

In one case, Prospect Insights illuminated the giving capacity of a supporter
who is a billionaire, showing GCC leadership and gift officers that they should
be requesting much more from the donor.

With artificial intelligence continuously assessing active constituents and
portfolios within Raiser’s Edge NXT to update its recommendations, Chilcutt
feels well-positioned to manage healthy churn across all portfolios going
forward. Prospect Insights automatically tracks the overall health of each
gift officer’s portfolio and prescribes actions for qualifying, assigning and
soliciting high likelihood major gift prospects. Chilcutt said she expects the
guided experience will improve efficiency and boost ROI for the
fundraising team.

“Costs are important for all nonprofits, and using data in a strategic way
helps us save time and money that can go back to support our mission.” Plus,
she admitted, “Prospect Insights has just been really fun to use.”
With Blackbaud, GCC has an innovative technology partner they can count
on as they aim higher for the sake of Grand Canyon National Park and the
park’s champions. And with Prospect Insights, Chilcutt knows they have
powerful intelligence that will continue to transform what’s possible. “I’m
excited to see how Prospect Insights grows to meet even more of our needs.”