Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation
George Miller, Chief Development Officer for Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation (PIKE) wasn’t always developing campaign goals, managing a portfolio of prospects or cultivating relationships. Back in the day he was an active member of PIKE Fraternity at Delta State University. Now, George works for the Foundation in building its major and planned giving efforts.
Originally established at the University of Virginia in 1868, Pi Kappa Alpha now has a total of 215 chapters and 10 colonies (universities in the process of applying for chapter status) and 250,000 individual members. With active growth and advancement on the horizon, the foundation recently rolled out their largest capital campaign called, “Advancing the Legacy of Pi Kappa Alpha.” With a goal of $20 million, the campaign is intended to fund the future development of their leadership program known as, PIKE University.
Prior to launching their campaign, the PIKE Foundation development staff needed a strategic plan to fully optimize their limited prospect research resources and ensure the best return on their investment.
Under George Miller’s direction, they partnered with WealthEngine and conducted a screening to further research and segment their alumni.
Screening Sets the Road Map
“When the Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation partnered with WealthEngine, we didn’t have a goal in mind but knew we needed to develop portfolios and create relationships in order to establish the footing of our capital campaign,” says Miller. Their 2009 screening highlighted areas of the country to further develop based on alumni population and wealth while it also identified prospecting areas they should heavily target for future development. Included in the WealthEngine screening of 160,000 contacts from their database, were their alumni members, Inner Circle Members and other key influential individuals to their organization. After conducting the screening, Miller and other staff first began populating portfolios based on the findings. They identified individuals to target for major gifts and received some early donations to jumpstart the silent phase of their campaign before taking it public.
“We took a detailed look at the screening data delivered and used the gift capacity rating and our own giving data to prioritize. Due to the size and limitations of our staff we simply don’t have time to visit all of our prospects, so we’ve determined pockets of wealth throughout the country and spent time validating those results first,” explains Miller.
Implementing Results Helps Target Individuals
After screening, results were integrated into their Patriot Systems Donor Management System (DMS) and fields such as gift capacity rating and Propensity to Give (P2G™) were added for easy accessibility. Miller mentions their use of the P2G score for prospecting efforts, “We use the Propensity to Give rating to determine our “PIKE Fund” (annual fund) and develop our donor acquisition to identify new planned and annual gift donors.” Though Pi Kappa Alpha is in the early stages of their campaign, their annual fund is on pace to grow by 20% this year which Miller attributes to the segmentation of these ratings.
Immediate Campaign Results
PIKE used their screening results to target certain non-donors for solicitation. “Our screening and service with WealthEngine has been a great addition to our development office as it’s actually increased our productivity in cultivating gifts both in the office and out on the road. In 2010, we saw a substantial increase in first time donors because of this targeted segmentation.” Miller’s staff estimates that roughly 75% of each development officer’s portfolio contains prospects whose giving capacity they were unaware of prior to screening. One particular case involved an alumnus member of Pi Kappa Alpha who recently made his first gift ever to our Foundation. He’s 68 years old and made a mid six figure gift to establish a scholarship because he believes so strongly in the mission of the organization. “We would never have found this man without our partnership with WealthEngine. And we have dozens of stories just like this one,” adds Miller.
PIKE’s priority has been targeting their top tier prospects first to secure major gifts for their campaign. According to Miller, “we have already secured $6 million in pledges toward our $20 million campaign goal, which indicates a third of initial donations were found via screening. A total of $1.75 million has come from new donors. Since then we have increased our ask amounts and targeted certain individuals more heavily based on their screening results.” Now actively working towards their campaign goal, Pi Kappa Alpha has already seen improvements in the organization of their development staff and major gift initiatives. According to Miller, “WealthEngine has driven the direction of our campaign and reorganized our entire development office. Everything feeds off our screening results and it’s these preliminary results that show we are on the right path.”
For more information, please email marketing@wealthengine.com.
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