Working the worklist

The worklist is where a week’s fundraising gets decided. It gives you an ordered short list. Your job is to work down it, not to plan.

The weekly rhythm

Monday, ten minutes. Read the list. Pick two or three you will do this week. Skip the rest.

During the week. Do them. Record each one when it happens.

Friday, five minutes. Anything you committed to gets a follow-up date.

Two conversations a week is a hundred a year. For a shop where fundraising is one of four jobs, that is a real programme.

Reading an item

Each row names the person, the stage they are at, their lifetime giving, why they surfaced now, and when they last gave and were last in contact. The suggested move sits behind a control, so the reason reaches you first.

A single worklist row, labelled Re-engage. It shows the donor Roland Mercer, an individual with twenty-three thousand dollars of lifetime giving, the reason they surfaced, which is that they have not given in a year, the dates of their last gift and last contact, a link to open their dossier, and a control to ask Relae to suggest a move. — The reason is the part to read. The move stays hidden until you ask for it, so the observation never arrives pre-judged.

The reason matters more than the ranking. Relae is telling you what it noticed. You know things it does not, so if the reason does not hold up, skip it. That is the correct use of the list, and skipping teaches it.

Recording what happened

When a conversation happens, record it from the item. This closes the loop: the record updates, the item leaves the list, and the next suggestion accounts for it.

An item you did but did not record keeps resurfacing, which is annoying and also correct. Relae only knows what it is told.

Keeping the ratings honest

The worklist is built on affinity, access and capacity, and it degrades as those ratings go stale.

Relae surfaces prospects whose ratings need a look: never set, not reviewed in a long time, or drifted from what the giving data now shows. Someone who has moved from occasional to monthly is warmer than their rating says.

Twenty minutes a month clearing that queue keeps the recommendations worth reading. Set what you know, leave the rest unset.

When the list is not useful

Two common causes, both fixable:

Ratings are mostly unset. With no access or capacity ratings, Relae is working from giving history alone. Rate your top thirty and the list changes character.

Gifts are not reconciled. Unmatched gifts mean incomplete histories, which means wrong affinity. Clear the review queue.

Your portfolio

Your portfolio is the set of people you are actively working, as distinct from everyone in your records.

Set the cap to a number you can keep up with. It is the caseload soft cap in workspace settings, and Relae flags a list that passes it. Nothing is blocked; you are told.

Large development shops, where carrying a book is a full-time job, work to somewhere between 75 and 150 people. Read that as context for choosing, not a target. A two-person organization where fundraising is one job among several is right to set it far lower, and a shorter list you work properly is the point rather than a compromise.

When a list does pass the cap, the useful response is usually to move someone out rather than to raise it. A prospect nobody has contacted in two years is not in anyone’s portfolio in any meaningful sense.

The default and the guidance behind it will be tuned as we see how beta organizations use it, so treat the shipped number as a starting point rather than a finding.

The worklist, for the thinking behind it.
Capturing notes