Building Donor Fundraising Plans with dBot – thedatabank Support Center

dBot can create personalized, 12-month fundraising plans for every donor. It generates a comprehensive moves-management roadmap, complete with dated touchpoints and specific asks tailored directly to each donor's giving history. Instead of manually mapping out cultivation for each major donor, you can simply start with your list, let dBot draft the initial strategy, and then easily refine the plans as needed.

What’s Included in a dBot Fundraising Plan

For each donor, dBot generates a comprehensive plan featuring:

Strategy Summary: A concise overview of the 12-month approach.
Annual Goal: A recommended fundraising target calibrated to the donor’s unique giving level.
12-Month Activity Schedule: A structured timeline of dated touchpoints, including:
- Solicitation: An ask approximately every 8 weeks (totaling six per year), with each request scaled to increase in value.
- Cultivation: A mix of ongoing engagement; such as phone calls, emails, meetings, or letters to nurture the relationship between asks.

How dBot Builds Your Plan

dBot bases each strategy on key insights from the donor’s record, including their name, company, largest and most recent gifts, lifetime giving total, and overall donation history.

How to Generate Fundraising Plans

Build Your Donor List: Run a dBot query to create the list of donors you’d like to plan for (e.g., “Major donors who gave $1,000+ last year”).
Select Action: From your query results, click Create Fundraising Plans.

Review Existing Plans: If any donors on your list already have an active plan, dBot will notify you and ask how you would like to proceed (see Managing Existing Plans below).

Generation: dBot will begin creating the plans. Large lists are processed in batches, you don’t need to wait for the entire list to finish; donors are saved individually as their plans are completed. You may go into a donors contact record and click on the Fundraising Plan tab to view more details.

Confirmation: Once finished, dBot will provide a summary of the total number of plans and activities created.

A note on batch limits: You can generate up to 1,000 plans at a time. If your query returns a larger list, simply narrow your criteria and run the process in smaller groups.

Managing Existing Plans

If a donor already has an active fundraising plan, dBot will prompt you to choose one of the following options to avoid duplicates:

Option	What It Does
Skip	Leaves the existing active plan untouched for that donor.
Replace	Retires the current active plan and replaces it with a fresh one.
Add New	Keeps the existing plan and creates an additional, concurrent plan for that donor.

Viewing and Managing a Donor's Fundraising Plan

To view or manage an existing plan, navigate to a donor’s record and select the Fundraising Plan tab.

This tab will be highlighted if an active plan is already in place.

Within this tab, you will see:

Plan Overview: A header containing the plan’s strategy summary, annual goal, and date range.
Activity Schedule: A full, step-by-step engagement calendar detailing all upcoming touchpoints.

Customizing the Plan

You can adjust the plan at any time to reflect the natural progression of your relationship. Feel free to add, edit, or reschedule individual activities to keep your cultivation strategy current and effective.

Creating a Plan Manually

Prefer to build a plan from scratch? You aren't required to use dBot’s automation. If a donor doesn’t have an active plan, select Add Fundraising Plan to create one yourself. You can define the date range, annual goal, and strategy summary, then manually add each engagement activity. This gives you full control when you want to build a strategy on your own terms.

Refining and Validating Plans

Treat dBot’s plans as a strong starting point rather than a final product. We recommend reviewing every generated ask and touchpoint to ensure they align with your unique relationship with the donor.

When reviewing, keep these best practices in mind:

Personalize the Strategy: Adjust the tone, dates, and activity types to better fit your specific donor engagement style.
Evaluate Proposed Ask Amounts: dBot suggests ask amounts based on past giving history, but it may not be aware of a donor's current capacity or personal intentions. Always verify the goal and individual ask amounts before acting on them to ensure they are appropriate for the donor.

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