Safe Horizon Success Story

Jaime Abbott was three years into her position as Director of Individual Giving for Safe Horizon, the nation’s largest victim service agency. She wanted to begin building internal capacity for a more robust major gifts program. Her first step was to get a wealth screening. The results were exciting! There were hundreds of really good prospects waiting to be called. But that was also a problem. How should she tackle such a long list?

That’s when she met Aspire Research Group (Aspire). Together they worked out a monthly arrangement where Jaime could get the support she needed to leverage the wealth screening to achieve her goals.

Through conversation, Jaime set some reasonable goals about the number of calls she could make in a month, what level of information she wanted to make those calls, and how she wanted to receive the information. Aspire worked with Jaime and her technology staff member to coordinate the information and they got started.

Every month Aspire delivered newly verified prospects and Jaime and Jen Filla, Aspire’s president, met briefly on the phone to review. The work was scheduled to accommodate everyone’s schedule, including vacations and holidays.

“After working with them for a few months I knew I could trust Aspire to deliver the information I needed. It was a relief not to have to micromanage the process,” Jaime said.

Over the seven months Jaime worked with Aspire she was able to call and schedule visits with donors, but she was also able to share the donor profiles with her board’s development committee. There were some surprised “I know that donor” revelations as well as deeper board engagement with fundraising all around.

There were other pleasant surprises along the way, too. Aspire recognized some clustering of employers and was able to pass along the opportunity to engage with those companies to Jaime.

“Working with Aspire was easy. Not only did I get the information I needed and in the format I wanted, but it was organized so that I always knew where we were in the process,” says Jaime.

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