Systematize your prospect research with a repeatable 5-step workflow that scales across your entire funding strategy.
Individual grant research projects are manageable. But sustainable fundraising requires researching hundreds of prospects over time—discovering initial leads, screening for fit, analyzing deeper, scoring objectively, and prioritizing action. Without a systematic workflow, research becomes chaotic, duplicative, and inefficient.
A documented workflow ensures consistency, makes delegation possible, and provides institutional memory. When you hire a development assistant or grant writer, they can follow your established process rather than reinventing research methodology. When a funder changes priorities or new grant opportunities emerge, you plug them into an existing system.
This lesson provides a battle-tested 5-step workflow you can adapt to your organization's specific context.
This is the broadest step. You're generating possible prospects from multiple sources. AI-powered databases, sector directories, peer organization 990s, personal networks, and RFP databases all contribute to a discovery list. The goal is volume—identify many possible funders, not verify each one deeply.
AI tools excel here: AI matching platforms can quickly generate 50-100 possible matches. You run a search with your organization's profile and receive ranked recommendations. Simultaneously, you manually review peer organizations' 990s to identify funders supporting similar work. You check sector-specific directories (education funders, health funders, etc.). You review open RFPs. The result is an unrefined list of possible prospects.
Documentation: Create a simple spreadsheet: Prospect Name | Source | AI Match Score (if applicable) | Initial Notes. The spreadsheet is your research repository.
Not every prospect is worth deep research. Screening quickly eliminates obvious mismatches before investing time. A foundation that serves exclusively outside your region, a funder with no relevant focus area match, a corporate giving program that only funds employee-directed giving—these screen out quickly.
Screening criteria include:
Speed principle: Screening should take 5-10 minutes per prospect. Review their guidelines, browse their recent grants, check basic fit. If it's clearly wrong, mark "Screen Out." If it could work, move forward.
Documentation: Add columns to your spreadsheet: Geographic Fit | Thematic Fit | Grant Size Fit | Screen Result (In/Out). Prospects that screen in move to analysis; screen-outs remain documented but stop consuming your time.
This is the deep research step where you gather comprehensive funder intelligence. For screened-in prospects, you now invest time analyzing their actual priorities, capacity, history, and relationship-building opportunity. This is where 990 analysis, competitive intelligence, and relationship mapping happen.
Analysis components include:
AI acceleration: Use AI to extract 990 data (grants list, financial data), summarize portfolio themes, compare multiple foundations' portfolios, and identify relationship opportunities. AI handles data synthesis, you apply judgment to interpretation.
Documentation: Create a one-page prospect profile for each analyzed funder, including financial summary, portfolio thematic breakdown, key observations, relationship assessment, and initial alignment score.
After analysis, you now have enough intelligence to score each prospect objectively. Rather than relying on gut feeling or AI match scores alone, use a structured scoring matrix combining multiple factors. Objective scoring prevents bias, makes comparison easier, and provides documentation for why certain prospects are prioritized.
Scoring framework: Assign points across factors most important to your organization. A typical scoring matrix might weight:
Maximum possible score: 100 points. Prospects scoring 75+ are top tier, 50-74 are secondary tier, below 50 are exploratory. Scoring provides transparency and consistency.
Documentation: Add a "Score" column to your spreadsheet with the numerical result and brief justification (if colleagues question your scoring).
After scoring all analyzed prospects, rank them by score. Your top-tier prospects (highest scores) become your immediate cultivation and proposal targets. Secondary prospects are pursued opportunistically. Exploratory prospects are researched further only if circumstances change.
Prioritization also considers timing: Some funders have open grant cycles (accept proposals year-round). Others have specific deadlines. Your 12-month funding calendar should reflect when to pursue different prospects. A foundation with a June deadline gets prioritized differently from one accepting proposals anytime.
Capacity constraints matter: If you're a small nonprofit with one part-time grant writer, you might target 15-20 prospects annually. A larger organization might manage 50+. Prioritize the highest-scoring prospects within your realistic capacity.
Documentation: Create a 12-month funding calendar showing which prospects to approach when, based on deadline and priority score. This calendar drives your grant strategy execution.
The 5-step workflow (Discover → Screen → Analyze → Score → Prioritize) systematizes prospect research, enables delegation, ensures consistency, and produces a documented funding strategy grounded in analysis rather than intuition.
A customized scoring matrix reflects your organization's specific priorities. Here's how to build one:
What matters most in choosing where to invest proposal effort? For some organizations, relationship/access matters most (high-scoring for connected prospects). For others, funding amount matters most (high-scoring for funders with capacity for large grants). For mission-driven organizations, mission fit dominates. List 5-7 factors important to your fundraising strategy.
Assign a maximum point value to each factor. If mission fit is paramount, make it worth 30 points. If relationship is less important, make it worth 10 points. Total points should equal 100 for easy interpretation.
For each factor, define what earns different point levels. Example for Mission Fit (0-25 points):
Use your scoring matrix on 10-15 prospects you know well. Do the scores feel right? Do high-scoring prospects feel like better targets than low-scoring ones? Does the weighting reflect your real priorities? Refine until the matrix produces results matching your judgment.
Your research accumulates over time. Systematic documentation prevents duplicate work, creates institutional knowledge, and enables team-based fundraising. At minimum, maintain:
These documents should be accessible to anyone involved in fundraising (board members, development committee, grant writers). Transparency about which prospects are being targeted and why builds team alignment.
Select 20 prospects currently on your list (from discovery step). Document them in a spreadsheet using the workflow template: Prospect Name | Source | Geographic Fit | Thematic Fit | Grant Size Fit | Screen Result. Then, for the 10 that screen in, conduct basic analysis (review their 990 if available, check their grant list). Score each of the 10 using a simple matrix you design (5-6 factors, 100 points total). Rank them by score. Your top 3 are priority targets for the next 90 days.
If you're building a development team, the workflow enables clear delegation. One person might own Discover and Screen (lower-skill tasks), while a more senior grant writer owns Analyze. An executive director might participate in Prioritize decisions. A board member might support Relationship tracking.
Documented workflow and shared database mean each team member knows their role, can see what's been researched, and avoids duplicate effort. A development director new to your organization can follow the workflow and continue systematic prospecting without starting from scratch.
After six months of using your workflow, evaluate results. Which high-scoring prospects actually funded you? Which low-scoring prospects surprised you? Does your scoring matrix accurately predict success? Are you spending time on unproductive screening? Refine the workflow based on actual outcomes.
Successful fundraising organizations have sophisticated systems, not because they're lucky, but because they've invested in process discipline. The 5-step workflow is the foundation of that discipline.
Systematizing prospect research with a documented workflow enables consistency, efficiency, delegation, and continuous improvement. Combined with AI acceleration at discovery and analysis stages, the workflow allows small organizations to conduct sophisticated prospect research at scale.
In the next lesson, you'll learn how to use AI to map funder relationships and networks—identifying board connections, collaborative opportunities, and relationship pathways that can accelerate prospect development.
Explore Relationship Mapping