Jeff Schreifels:
Welcome to the show and thanks for joining me. If you've ever opened a donor record and thought, “There has to be a better way to track this,” this is the podcast for you today. Most donor databases are built for direct response fundraising: appeals, events, transactions. But major gifts is a relationship business. And when your systems aren't designed to support relationship building, your gift officers end up working harder than they should.

And your donors end up feeling like no one's really paying attention.

Today we get really practical about what your donor records and dashboards should actually look like to support a healthy major gift program. We walk through the fields that matter most, from status and tier codes to donor profile notes, interest tracking, and giving vehicle data like DAFs, IRA gifts, and stock transfers.

We also dig into what a truly useful gift officer dashboard looks like. One that tells you who needs attention today, who you've lost touch with, and what asks are coming up without having to run a single report.

If your database is creating friction instead of clarity, this conversation will give you a clear picture of what to ask for and why it matters for your donors, your team, and your bottom line.

To help me make sense of all of this, I've asked Diana Frazier, Veritus Group Senior Client Experience Leader, to join me today. As many of you know, Diana has over 40 years of experience and she's an expert on today's topic.

So let's get ready for some real talk.

Hey, Diana.

Diana Frazier:
Hey there, Jeff. Good to be back.

Jeff Schreifels:
Good to be with you. Okay, this is going to get real detailed. When we were talking about this before the show, you said this is going to get real detailed. I said, “Well, this is what you love doing.” So let's get into all this detail.

Let's talk first about the status field in the database and knowing where every donor stands in your portfolio.

So my first question is: what is the problem with most CRM views on a donor’s record?

Diana Frazier:
Really it comes down to something as simple as a clear demarcation of where the donor is at. They don't know what to do with the donor because they don't clearly see the place in the pipeline.

And it's really a simple mutually exclusive status field that Veritus talks about.

So it could be:

• Pool: you haven't yet qualified them
• Qualified: you have two-way engagement
• Qualified don't count: maybe the donor has multiple accounts and you don't want to double count revenue
• Stewardship only

This is stronger in planned giving, but it can be in major gifts too, where the donor has done most of their lifetime giving and they've indicated something in their will. You don't lose track of them.

Qualified means you're actively moving toward solicitation. Steward means you're still engaging with the donor, but you're not expecting current gifts.

That's pretty important to understand those differences.

Jeff Schreifels:
How's that really different than the moves management categories?

Diana Frazier:
That's a great question because they're similar, but there's also a lot of confusion.

When you're looking at full moves management, you might have identification, qualification, discovery. Those often get confused.

At Veritus we bring that down to qualification. Because first you identify donors who fit your giving profile. Then you qualify them, which is a combination of qualification, discovery, and moves management.

But once the donor is engaged, a lot of systems require you to constantly flip their stage:

• Cultivation
• Solicitation
• Stewardship

That keeps changing.

If you have a separate status code that tells you whether they're qualified or not, that's different from a stage. Status is the donor’s state of being. Stages are just where you are working with them.

The truth is those stages rarely get used well and eventually become meaningless.

Another issue is artificial timeframes. Some CRMs automatically assign timelines like:

“You have 30 days to cultivate.”
“Now 30 days for solicitation.”

Red and green dots start popping up, but they may have nothing to do with the donor’s actual cycle. So the algorithm doesn't really help.

Jeff Schreifels:
Right. So what do you do when you want to remove a donor from the caseload? Is there a way to code that?

Diana Frazier:
Yes. We call that a disqualification code. It can simply be a status of disqualified, often abbreviated as DQ.

But you want clarity about why. Examples could be:

• DQ: Non-responsive
• DQ: One-time gift
• DQ: Ill or elderly
• DQ: Deceased
• DQ: Donor request (they don't want personal contact)

We sometimes think of that as failure, but it's actually clarity. It frees up a fundraiser’s time to focus on donors who want engagement.

Related to that is the “move to” code:

• Move to mid-level
• Move to major gifts
• Move to planned giving
• Move to mass marketing

Tracking that matters because you can see whether donors actually land somewhere when they're moved.

Jeff Schreifels:
That's a good one. So if someone moves from mid-level to major gifts and it's coded correctly, could you run reports to see how those donors perform?

Diana Frazier:
Yes, because you have a discrete code and a date attached to it.

Even if you can't see the date easily, it's there. And these fields need to be exportable.

When you refresh caseloads or build new ones, exporting those codes prevents donors from constantly being recycled into new portfolios when they've already been evaluated.

It makes portfolio management much easier.

Jeff Schreifels:
Okay. I want to move now into tiering.

We're big believers in tiering at Veritus because it helps gift officers focus their time correctly.

How can coding in the CRM help a fundraiser focus their work and get better results?

Diana Frazier:
We talk about ABC tiers, sometimes with a D. The labels don't matter. You could use numbers.

But generally:

• Tier A: highest potential economic outcome
• Tier B: next level
• Tier C: next level down
• Tier D: special cases

A typical breakdown might be:

• Tier A: 10–15% of donors
• Tier B: 20–25%
• Tier C: 60–65%

This mirrors revenue flow and helps plan your time.

You spend the most time on Tier A donors. They represent a small portion of the caseload but a large portion of the potential revenue.

When the tiers are coded in your database, you can quickly filter and focus your work strategically.

Jeff Schreifels:
Tiering is so important.

Now I want to talk about capturing the full story of a donor.

If the CRM is used well, you should be able to understand a donor’s story just by looking at their record.

How do you capture that story in a snapshot view?

Diana Frazier:
Most systems have a place for a summary note or description field.

Sometimes it's called:

• Donor summary
• Profile note
• Description field

This is where you tell the donor’s story in narrative form.

It's different from action notes. Action notes capture details like phone calls or meetings.

The donor summary captures the bigger picture:

• Who they are
• Their philanthropic interests
• Their relationship with the organization
• Your strategy with them

It should be a living document.

When I worked in Raiser’s Edge, I would often write an action note that said something like:

“Spoke with Jeff about building campaign. See donor profile.”

Because the real context lived in the donor summary.

One important discipline is writing notes that still make sense years later. Don't write “last fall.” Write “Fall 2025.”

Someone reading the file three years later should still understand the story.

This is a huge gift to whoever inherits the relationship later.

Jeff Schreifels:
Absolutely. What about interest fields? How do those help?

Diana Frazier:
Interest fields are incredibly helpful.

If your CRM has a dropdown list where you can select multiple interests, and those interests map to your actual programs, you can quickly identify donors who care about specific issues.

For example, if your organization works on several environmental issues but a donor specifically cares about water purification, you can filter for that group instantly.

It also improves communication.

If you send a big annual report, you can include a note that says:

“Jeff, here’s the full report, but I thought you'd especially enjoy pages 6, 7, and 25.”

That turns a generic report into a personalized communication.

Jeff Schreifels:
We hear a lot about donor surveys being completed and then disappearing into some abyss.

How do you address that?

Diana Frazier:
Ideally there should be a simple indicator in the donor record like:

• Survey sent
• Survey returned

And then you store the survey itself somewhere accessible.

Whether it's a digital attachment or even a physical binder, the key thing is knowing the survey exists.

Donor surveys where they tell you what they care about are incredibly valuable data. But only if you actually use them.

Jeff Schreifels:
Now let's talk about giving vehicle fields.

DAFs now represent about 23% of individual giving. Why does it matter to track that outside of the gift type?

Diana Frazier:
Strategy.

If the only place you can see a DAF gift is buried six levels down in gift records, you're not going to think strategically about that donor.

The best setup is having visible indicators right on the donor record like:

• DAF donor
• Stock donor
• IRA donor

Ideally with the sponsoring organization listed too, such as Fidelity, Schwab, or Vanguard.

Then you can easily export that data and do things like:

• Send reminders about stock gifts in October
• Share DAF-specific messaging
• Provide IRA distribution reminders

It helps with timing, strategy, and segmentation.

Jeff Schreifels:
Finally, let's talk about the dashboard.

When an MGO logs in every morning, what should they see?

Diana Frazier:
There are two dashboards: one for managers and one for fundraisers.

The fundraiser dashboard is the daily briefing.

It should answer:

• Who needs my attention?
• Who have I neglected?
• What asks are coming up?

Helpful widgets include:

Revenue comparison
Fiscal year vs last fiscal year.

Donor status breakdown
How many are qualified, in pool, or stewardship.

Tier distribution
How many donors in A, B, C, D tiers.

Some clients even do something like “No Tier Tuesday” to review donors missing a tier.

Last contact widget
Shows donors by time since last contact:

• 0–30 days
• 31–60
• 61–90
• 120+

That helps prevent donors from slipping through the cracks.

Highest level of contact widget
Shows the depth of interaction:

• Email sent
• Email exchange
• Phone conversation
• Text exchange
• Face-to-face visit

This helps you intentionally deepen relationships.

Goals or opportunities widget
Shows asks coming due in 30, 60, or 90 days so nothing sneaks up on you.

Jeff Schreifels:
This is really good stuff. I feel like someone listening to this might need the transcript or have to listen to it a few times.

Overall, your database should work for the fundraiser, not against them.

If the CRM makes it hard to track relationships, gift officers start creating workarounds. And when that happens, data gets lost.

A well-structured donor record is also an act of care for the donor and for the people who come after you.

When a donor calls and your team already knows their story, their interests, and their giving history, the donor feels known.

And that builds donor loyalty.

So here’s a challenge for our listeners:

Pull up one donor record this week and ask yourself:

“If I handed this off to a new MGO tomorrow, would they have everything they need to continue the relationship without missing a beat?”

If the answer is yes, you're doing something right.

We'll include a link in the show notes to our free Donor Engagement Plan. You can find it at the Veritus Group website under the resources tab.

Diana, thanks for sharing your expertise today. If people implemented everything you talked about, their jobs would be a lot easier.

Diana Frazier:
And a whole lot more rewarding.