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Moving Beyond Top Campaign Donors to Plan for the Future

The Segerstrom Center for the Arts “believes in the power of performing arts to transform lives and that the shared experience and exploration of the arts will help unite Orange County, creating a more culturally connected and vital community.” Advancing this mission requires continuous programming which, in turn, requires financial support. The Center approached GG+A for help as they were approaching the end of their capital campaign. They understood that they needed to prioritize prospects for the future, beyond those households who had already generously supported the campaign.  “We have a lot of donors and arts patrons but needed to identify those major gift, upgrade, and new prospects that would help us reach our fundraising goal and build our pipeline,” explained Katy McKay, Senior Manager of Development Research and Prospect Management.

GG+A’s DonorScape® gift capacity, annual giving, and major gift analysis provided Segerstrom with two great outcomes, and a third they didn’t foresee. First, GG+A’s analysis identified the best prospects for an annual giving upgrade, including specific ask amounts, which Segerstrom is just beginning to implement in upgrade requests. Second, the analysis surfaced altogether new potential major gift prospects for the future beyond the known donor pool of the previous campaign.

It was the constituent-level data behind each of those records, however, that yielded a third and unexpected outcome. Segerstrom received a full web-based research profile for each record, complete with asset-level data, evidence of giving to other organizations, and employment and nonprofit board activity. McKay has found that making the prospect level data transparent and available for the development team has helped them build confidence when approaching new prospects for upgrades and starting initial conversations about a major gift.

GG+A is grateful for the opportunity to help Segerstrom support the arts as a vital force for connecting the Orange County community. We look forward to learning more about how they are using the results of the analysis to achieve their fundraising goal.

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