Categorizing Donors Worksheet

99% of candidates can’t fund their campaigns by themselves, so convincing people to donate to your campaign is a key part of your campaign’s success. But there is an art to this convincing, and it all comes down to research.

As we explain in “Raising Money Through Your Candidate’s Network,” a candidate’s first source for campaign donations should be their personal network — their friends, family, coworkers, former classmates, and so on. Through a process called rolodexing, the candidate and their Fundraising staff (if applicable) will build and organize a list of potential campaign donors from the candidate’s personal network, compiling these contacts into a cohesive spreadsheet or database for the campaign to analyze further.

Once these contacts are rolodexed, the campaign must then categorize them based on their capacity and likelihood to donate:

​​Example Scale: Giving Capacity

• 1 — $2,000 or more

• 2 — $500 - $1,999

• 3 — $150 - $499

• 4 — $50 - $149

• 5 — Less than $50

Example Scale: Likelihood to Donate

• 1 — Will definitely contribute no matter what

• 2 — Very likely will contribute, but not certain

• 3 — Uncertain if they will contribute

• 4 — Doubtful they will contribute

• 5 — Will definitely not contribute

But you won’t stop there — as the campaign progresses, the candidate is going to meet more and more people through a variety of avenues, from networking events to fundraising galas, and those people will need to be categorized, too! NDTC’s Categorizing Donors Worksheet contains an activity that will help you practice these key research and categorization skills.

How to use this resource: Using five identified prospective donors for sample candidate Nicole Strong’s campaign, you will conduct research to determine the giving capacity of these prospects. (Remember that you can research a donor’s prior giving history at FEC.gov.)

If donor research is completely new to you, you don’t need to jump in just yet — take “Finding New Donors” first.