Five Things You Must Do in Caseload Management to Start the Year

Don’t let another minute of this new year slip by without taking care of a few critical things in your major gifts caseload management. This is the work that sets the tone for the entire year, and it’s work you can’t afford to rush or ignore.

Start by revisiting the fundamentals. Review your caseload and make thoughtful donor additions and deletions. Look at each donor and assess how they performed last year. Analyze which strategies worked and which ones didn’t. Take an honest look at how effectively you used your time, and don’t skip a hard review of how well you thanked and reported back to every donor.

Those five steps sound simple, but they tell you almost everything you need to know about where you stand and what needs to change.

These first months of the year are absolutely critical for caseload management. Many non-profits operate on a fiscal year, which I understand from an internal management standpoint. But I’ve always been concerned that fiscal-year thinking can pull MGOs and their managers out of alignment with how donors actually think and behave. Donors tend to view their giving through a calendar-year lens. Taxes matter.

The holiday giving season matters. And psychologically, a year ending and a new one beginning is a natural moment to reflect, reset, and plan.

That’s why January and February are such an important window. There are clear lessons to learn from what just happened, and real opportunities to act on as you look ahead. If you haven’t already, there are three things you need to do right now:

First, loosen your grip on fiscal-year thinking. Don’t ignore it entirely, but put yourself in the donor’s shoes and view the relationship through the calendar year they’re living in.

Second, collect your prior-year data as soon as it’s available. Find out when your books close and when you can access accurate information about how your donors performed. Put a reminder on your calendar if you have to, but don’t let this slide.

Third, set expectations with management. Caseload analysis and planning take time, and you’ll need protected space to do this well. Get agreement on that upfront.

I see too many MGOs and managers drift through January as if donors have somehow bought into internal fiscal calendars. They haven’t. What’s disturbing is that some of the most important retooling of caseloads, strategy, and resource allocation should be happening right now.

If you’re already doing this work, that’s great. If you’re not, it’s time to start, and to treat it with urgency. Your success this year depends on getting this right, right now.

A version of this blog was originally posted in 2022