What You’ll Learn
- How to research a prospective donor’s contact info, biography, and giving history
- How to create call sheets for your candidate
- How to prioritize a list of fundraising calls
Why This is Important
Investing time in donor research can make all the difference in hitting the fundraising goals you need to, which will lead to you having the resources you require to conduct voter outreach and bring home the win on your campaign. Your candidate’s limited time is one of the most precious resources you have, and it is critical to your campaign’s success that being prepared for call time allows you to be as efficient as possible with your candidate’s time.
Key Resources
- Example Call Sheet
- Annotated Call Sheet
- NDTC Call Sheet Template
- Spreadsheet of State-Specific Sites for Researching Donors’ Giving Histories
- Call Sheet Rubric
Related Trainings
- Finding New Donors — Identify the potential donors that you need to research before your candidate can dial them up in call time
- Staffing Call Time — Preparing for call time is just the beginning; learn how to support your candidate while they’re making fundraising calls, too
Dallas Thompson
Trainer
Dallas is the Chief of Staff at STG, where she leads the operations and human resources team, ensuring that the firm is able to deliver excellence to their clients and continue to make change in the world. She has more than a decade of management and fundraising experience in both the political and nonprofit fields.
In 2016, Dallas was Hillary Clinton's Operations Director in North Carolina, where she oversaw operations of a 400-strong team working to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. She also served as the Finance Director for the New Hampshire Democratic Party, National Director of Fundraising Development for Leadership for Educational Equity, and Development Director for the New Organizing Institute, and did fundraising for a number of Democratic campaigns in North Carolina prior to that.
She is also the founding partner of Bright Compass, a consulting firm that works to improve the safety and compliance of progressive workplaces, providing anti-sexual harassment training, HR consulting, and strategic operations management. A native of North Carolina, she now lives in Washington, D.C. with her two cats, Mindy Katling and Ruth Bader Kittensburg.