How to Qualify a Major Gift Prospect Before You Waste Months

A development officer’s starting guide to major gift prospect qualification

Not every name on your prospect list belongs in your major gift portfolio. Knowing how to tell the difference—quickly, respectfully, and without burning a relationship—is one of the most valuable skills a development officer can develop.

This is called prospect qualification. It’s the phase of the major gift cycle that many organizations either skip or collapse into the cultivation phase, spending months building a relationship with someone who was never a realistic major gift prospect.

Your fundraising time is finite. Prospect qualification is one way you protect it.

Sri Surabhi Cow Sanctuary © Tonya Hennessey

What Wealth Screening Can and Can’t Tell You

Wealth screening is a starting point, not a conclusion. Platforms like DonorSearch and iWave aggregate public data to produce prospect wealth-capacity estimates, which are genuinely useful for prioritizing a large prospect list.

According to DonorSearch’s research, donors with a history of charitable giving to other like-minded organizatio…