Introduction to Opportunities and Opportunity Stages

Opportunities link Customers to specific Campaigns, enabling you to keep track of your prospects and their journeys towards making Donations.

An Opportunity means that you believe an Individual or an Organization has the potential to give towards a particular fundraising initiative.

In this article, we introduce you to Opportunities. We also introduce you to the Opportunity Stages and how to use and customize them as you manage your Opportunities.

Before reading this article, make sure you take a look at:

• Introduction to the Opportunities Interface
• Introduction to Campaigns and Campaign Structures
• Setting Up and Editing Campaigns

What are Opportunities?

In Spektrix, you open an Opportunity once you’ve identified a Customer (an Individual or Organization) as being a prospect. You also decide which overall Campaign, Sub-campaign or Sub-sub-campaign they should sit within.

You can use Opportunities to track and manage large prospects and Donors/funders. For example:

• To record Customers you've identified as prospective Donors within a particular Campaign
• To ensure that large Donations are recorded as being part of a wider Campaign and that Donors’ details are entered into Spektrix
• To help you manage your moves and push prospects along the pipeline
• To keep track of how much you’ve asked for and how likely each prospective Donor is to give
• To report on your progress towards Campaign targets, including forecasting

When to use Opportunities

Opportunities should be created for those Customers you’ve identified as having the potential to give larger or repeat Donations and with whom you want to build one-to-one relationships.

For one-off Donors who give small amounts (such as those who donate at the box office or online), you shouldn’t need to create an Opportunity. You can manage their Donations using alternative methods in Spektrix. For more information, take a look at the articles in the Managing Donations section of the Support Centre.

How to use Opportunities

Opportunities are actively managed in the Opportunities Interface.

All Opportunities are:

• Linked to a Customer (Individual or Organization): With separate Opportunities for each Customer, you can foster relationships on a one-to-one basis.
• Linked to a Campaign: This is the fundraising initiative you would like the Donation to be associated with.

  REMINDER: Campaigns indicate how the Donation is generated. Funds determine what the Donation is used for. A Fund is selected for a Donation at the time of processing. At the time of creating Opportunities, you’ll only need to select a Campaign. You can include in the Description or Pop Up Notes what Fund the Donation will be made towards.

• Owned by a User in your organization: This is the person who is responsible for moving the Opportunity forward. They may be in charge of every interaction leading up to solicitation.
• Tracked using Opportunity Stages: Opportunity Stages indicate how close you are towards receiving the Donation and where you can predict its likelihood of success. An Opportunity’s Stage may determine the types of Activities you will need to complete in order to move the Opportunity along the pipeline.
• Have a status of open or closed: The status indicates if the Opportunity is currently being worked on. A Closed Opportunity can either indicate a successful Donation or that the Opportunity will no longer move forward.

You can also include further details such as:

• Expected Close Date: This is usually the date that you expect you’ll have received the Donation and thanked the Donor by. You can filter your Opportunities by this field, to make sure you’re working on the Opportunities which are most urgent.
• Target and Asked Amounts: The minimum amount you’re aiming for and the amount of the ask.
• Likelihood of Success: Default rates are assigned for each Opportunity Stage along the pipeline. You can override this percentage for any individual Opportunity. This will affect your forecast reporting.

As you move the Opportunity across the pipeline, you can link the Opportunity to further track different interactions and transactions from the Customer. You can link Opportunities to:

• Activities: Track all interactions working towards the Opportunity including phone calls, meetings, solicitation letters, grant applications, acknowledgement letters, grant reports, activations, etc.
• Pledges and Legacies: Track any promised income towards the Opportunity.
• Orders: Track any received and confirmed income towards the Opportunity, including Donations, paid Pledges and/or Legacies, Memberships and other subscriptions, Ticket Sales and Reservations and Merchandise Sales.

You can also Report and segment on Opportunities. Through reporting you’re able to track any income promised and received towards Targeted and Asked amounts.

Opportunity Stages

Once Opportunities are identified and assigned, you can track movement towards a Donation using Opportunity Stages. These are structured stages that all your Opportunities move through.

Opportunity Stages indicate how close you are towards receiving the Donation, predict its likelihood of success and may determine the types of Activities to complete in order to move the Opportunity along the pipeline.

There are five standard stages in the system, based on a classic moves management approach to fundraising. These are:

• Research
• Involve
• Cultivate
• Confirm
• Thank

Keep in mind that all of your Opportunities will use these stages, so they should work for all members of your team and all types of Campaign you might run.

Opportunity Stages are customizable and you can rearrange, rename or add new stages. Any changes you make are universal and will apply across all Opportunities in all Campaigns. To set up or edit Opportunity Stages, skip to Setting Up and Editing Opportunity Stages.

Each Opportunity Stage can also have a default Likelihood of Success which is used to weigh the value of the open Opportunities within that stage and can be used to forecast income using the Campaign Summary and Campaign Detail Reports. These rates are displayed as percentages. For example, if the Cultivate stage has a rate of 75%, it is expected that out of all Opportunities that enter the Cultivate stage, three quarters of those Opportunities will lead to a successful Donation.

Next, we’ll take a look at the default stages and explore what may take place in each stage across different fundraising initiatives.

REMINDER: The way you manage prospects across the Donor Pipeline may differ from what is suggested. You can use the tools available in Spektrix to suit your organization and your needs.

Research

The Research stage is where you may begin most Opportunities and includes researching prospects, adding them to your Spektrix database and recording research notes. In this stage, you may want to consider:

• Adding Customer Records for your prospects, including details in the Pop Up Notes found only in the Opportunities Interface
• Creating and managing Relationships and Primary Contacts for your prospects, especially for corporations, foundations and government agencies
• Using Customer Lists and Tags to identify prospects and creating bulk Opportunities
• Linking a Campaign to the Opportunity
• Assigning the Opportunity to a member of your organization to manage

TIP: Not all Opportunities may start at the Research stage. If a prospect and your organization have an already established relationship, you may want to open their Opportunities at the Involve or Cultivate stage.

Involve

The Involve stage is where you may begin to create a cultivation plan and set up calls, meetings, or other touch points to build relationships with and engage Prospects further. At this stage, you may want to consider:

• Creating Activities to manage tasks from setting up calls and meetings to taking notes and follow-ups.
• Creating Activities in bulk to complete multiple versions of the same task with a group of people. For example, sending a large mailing or setting up a meeting with several people.
• Using tabs to track, sort and prioritize Activities.
• Using the BCC email feature to record emails.
• Using Activities to note smaller meetings such as coffee meets or drinks.
• Running the Activities Report (detailed) or the Activities Timeline with User Breakdown Report to keep track of assignments.

TIP: You can link Activities to Opportunities or use them for other to-do tracking including internal meetings or general relationship management.

Cultivate

The Cultivate stage is where you may make your ask. At this stage, you may want to consider:

• Updating Opportunities with an Asked Amount
• Uploading supporting documents in an Activity, such as a copy of a grant application or sponsorship terms and agreements
• Continue recording relevant Activities

Confirm

The Confirm stage is where you may begin confirming and/or processing Donations. At this stage, you may want to consider:

• Processing Donations
• Setting up Pledges or Legacies and installments
• Tagging Donors or setting up Customer Groups to flag Donors to your Box Office and Front of House staff
• Continue recording relevant Activities

Thank

The Thank stage is the default final stage where you may begin sending acknowledgements and thanks to your Donors. At this stage, you may want to consider:

• Creating a Customer List Schedule for sending thank you emails
• Running Standard Reports on Donors and Donations
• Run Custom Reports for grant reports
• Continue recording relevant Activities

Closing Opportunities

All Opportunities have a status which indicates whether an Opportunity is currently moving along the pipeline or not.

You can close an Opportunity in any stage. Reporting on the status of an Opportunity can help in assessing both successful and unsuccessful Opportunities.

Setting Up and Editing Opportunity Stages

The way you manage prospects across the Donor Pipeline may differ from what is pre-built in the system. You can edit the names or create additional Opportunity Stages to match your organisation's processes.

TIP: Setting up and editing Opportunity Stages takes place in the Settings tab of the Opportunities Interface. User Accounts will need the Opportunities User and Opportunities Administrator roles. If you don’t have these user roles, contact a Settings Administrator in your organization to edit your User Account and add these roles.

To set up and/or edit the Opportunity Stages, navigate to the Opportunities Interface > Settings (Cog icon) > Stages.

Editing an Opportunity Stage

To edit an Opportunity Stage, follow these steps:

• Click on the Opportunity Stage you’d like to edit.
• You’ll see the details including the stage name and likelihood of success rate.
• Click on the details or the pencil in the lower right corner to open the edit screen:

• You can rename the stage or add a default likelihood of success (as a percentage).
• Click Save to save the new details of the Opportunity Stage or clickCancel to discard any changes made.

To permanently delete the stage, click Delete. If there are any Opportunities currently in that stage, you’ll be asked which stage they should be moved to:

Select an Opportunity Stage from the dropdown and click Choose This Stage to automatically move any Opportunity into that stage. Click Cancel to retain the Opportunity Stage.

You can reorder the stages by clicking the up or down arrows to the right of the name:

Any changes will immediately take effect on any existing Opportunities across the entire system. The pipeline visual on the Opportunities Dashboard will change. Any Reports run after changes are made will reflect the new Opportunity Stage details.

Creating a new Opportunity Stage

You can also create new Opportunity Stages by clicking the New Campaign Stage button:

The edit screen will pop up where you can give the Opportunity Stage a required name and an optional default likelihood of success (percentage).

Click Save to save the new Opportunity Stage. Or click Cancel to discard your changes.

Rearrange the new Opportunity Stage to its correct order.

On-Demand Training Video - Opportunities Management

In this section/these sections of our Spektrix Training: On-Demand video on Fundraising and Opportunities, we cover Opportunities Management.

This chapter is a guided walkthrough of:

• Setting up an Opportunity
• Opportunity Stages
• Managing Opportunities

VIDEO TIP: With our Spektrix Training: On Demand videos- you can stop, restart or move to specific chapters. Click the CC option to turn on captions. Click in the Settings menu cog icon to control speed, captions and quality.

Further Reading

You now have the information you need to understand Opportunities and Opportunity Stages. Continue learning with Creating Opportunities. You can also read more articles in the Donor Pipeline and Stewardship section of the Support Centre.