4.5/5
Average on G2.
Major-Gift Capacity
How does a small teammake more major-gift asks?
By taking the research and the prep off the officer’s desk. In Ignite the Prospect Research agent assembles who a prospect is starting from the live record, the Major Gift agent prepares the meeting brief and the next move with evidence separated from inference, and Opportunity Management tracks every ask by stage. Officers get the week back for donors.
Major-gift capacity, in short
- Major-gift capacity is an hours problem. Research, meeting prep, and pipeline upkeep consume the time that was meant for visits.
- The Prospect Research agent resolves the right constituent and pulls giving history, engagement, household, and relationship context into a qualification brief you can check.
- The Major Gift agent prepares the visit: where the relationship stands, a recommendation with the evidence separated from the inference, and what would change the call.
- Prospect scoring runs in a deterministic engine across four dimensions: capacity, affinity, propensity, and linkage. The agents add judgment on top; they do not author or edit those scores.
- Individuals gave 64% of the $617.2 billion in U.S. charitable giving in 2025. What most nonprofits lack is the time to cultivate those people.
The visit is the job. Prep keeps getting in the way.
A major gifts officer with a portfolio of 120 and a calendar of four visits a week is not short on prospects. They are short on the hours between the prospects and the visits.
Fridays go to prep
Every visit starts with an hour across the CRM, the last call notes, the event list, and a search engine, assembling by hand what the record already knows.
Portfolios nobody can see
Who is assigned to whom, which asks are open, and what is stalled lives in the officer’s head and a quarterly spreadsheet. The director finds out at the pipeline meeting.
The ask that waited
A donor who doubled her gift last year and came to two events is ready for a conversation. Nobody has had time to notice, so the ask happens next fiscal year, if at all.
The evidence
64%
of the $617.2 billion given to U.S. charities in 2025 came from individuals, the largest source of giving by far.
Source: Giving USA 2026, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
What it means for your team
Most giving comes from individuals, and individuals respond to officers who arrive prepared. For a lean team the limit on major-gift revenue is how many well-prepared conversations the officers can have in a week. Moving research and prep onto the platform is how that number goes up without another hire.
Follow one prospect from the record to the ask.
Inside Ignite, this is the Qualify, Cultivate, Ask workflow.
An officer should be able to go from a name to a prepared visit to a recorded ask without leaving the record or building a prep doc.
Qualify from the record
The Prospect Research agent resolves the right constituent, then pulls giving history, engagement, household, and relationship context into a qualification brief. Scoring runs in the deterministic engine across capacity, affinity, propensity, and linkage, and the agent shows its sources.
- Does the work
- Prospect Research agent
- Your team
- decides whether the prospect moves into major-gift qualification
Open the opportunity
The ask becomes an opportunity with a stage, a goal, and an assigned fundraiser, visible on the pipeline board with everyone else’s. The director sees what is open and at what stage without waiting for the meeting.
- Does the work
- Ignite Fundraising
- Your team
- owns the stage and the ask amount
Prepare the visit
The Major Gift agent delivers the meeting brief and the next move: prior giving, recent engagement, household and campaign context, and a recommendation with the evidence separated from the inference and what would change the call.
- Does the work
- Major Gift agent
- Your team
- reads the brief and decides the ask
Record the reviewed next step
After the visit the officer records the next step as an activity on the constituent record, so the follow-up has an owner and a date and the next brief starts from what actually happened.
- Does the work
- Ignite CRM
- Your team
- records the next step and owns the relationship
Attribute the gift to the ask
When the gift arrives, gift entry links it to the opportunity, so the received amount shows against the ask and the pipeline reflects what has actually come in. The fundraiser owns the stage and reviews the close.
- Does the work
- Ignite Fundraising
- Your team
- owns the stage and reviews the close
The Ignite modules underneath.
Every module works on the same constituent record, so this outcome is a workflow across the platform rather than an add-on.
Ignite Fundraising
Opportunity Management: stages, goals, the pipeline board, and gift-to-opportunity attribution.
Explore Ignite FundraisingIgnite CRM
The constituent record the agents read and the officer writes to: giving, engagement, household, relationships, and activities.
Explore Ignite CRMIgnite Intelligence
Where the agents live, with the approval gates your team configures and the audit trail of agent actions.
Explore Ignite IntelligenceProspect Research agent
Resolves the right constituent and assembles the qualification brief, starting from the live record, sources shown.
Meet the agentMajor Gift agent
Prepares the meeting brief and the next move, with the evidence separated from the inference.
Meet the agentProven foundation
Built from the ground up on a modern, AI-first architecture.
Ignite is a new platform, built by the team nonprofits have trusted with their constituent and financial data for over 15 years.
20M+
Constituent profiles managed across the StratusLIVE platform family.
$1B+
In annual giving processed across the StratusLIVE platform family.
33%
Increase in average gift amount
18% — increase in total fundraising contributions.
Read the National FFA Foundation storyOn the StratusLIVE platform family“One source of the truth about our contacts, donors, and partners that is easily kept up to date.”
Robert W.
Director of Fundraising Operations & Digital Solutions
Verified review · G2
“A powerful tool that empowers our team members to not only enter new data but also see a historical perspective of our donors and corporate partners.”
Maria M.
Director of Investor Management
Verified review · G2
Major-Gift Capacity
Bring this exact question to a 30-minute working session.
See one live workflow in 30 minutes, with real data and no slide deck.
Questions about major-gift capacity for small teams
The questions buyers ask about this outcome, answered without a slide deck.
Related outcomes
Where does the prospect research actually come from?
It starts with your live record. The Prospect Research agent resolves the right constituent, then reads giving history, engagement, household and relationship context, and the research already recorded on the constituent. Scoring runs in a deterministic engine across capacity, affinity, propensity, and linkage. The agent shows the sources behind each finding, and when you approve it, the research is saved to the record labeled AI-assisted.
Will the Major Gift agent contact our donors?
No. The Major Gift agent prepares the officer: the meeting brief, the next move, and a recommendation with evidence separated from inference. The officer owns the relationship, decides the ask, and has the conversation. Agents research and draft; writes follow the approval gates your team configures, and agent actions land in the audit trail.
What does a prospect score actually measure?
Four dimensions, each scored by a deterministic engine rather than a model: capacity, affinity, propensity, and linkage. Read them as four separate signals about a person rather than one verdict. The agents use the dimensions as evidence in a recommendation, and the officer can see which dimension is driving the call.
Does the agent create tasks for our officers?
It recommends the next step and can update an existing activity, and the officer records the reviewed next step on the record. That keeps every follow-up owned by a person, with a date, rather than generated into a queue nobody asked for. The one opportunity field the agent maintains itself is the AI probability, shown beside the stage default with its reasoning.
How does this help a one-person major gifts shop?
The hours come back. Research and meeting prep arrive from the record instead of being assembled by hand, the pipeline board shows what is open without a spreadsheet, and the agent names the single next move for each prospect. Both agents are included in every subscription, with no per-seat fees.
How do we know a gift came from a specific ask?
Gift entry links the gift to the opportunity, so the received amount shows against the ask and the pipeline reflects what actually came in. The fundraiser owns the opportunity’s stage and reviews any close, so the pipeline stays a record of real asks and real gifts rather than a spreadsheet reconstructed after the fact.
Bring one prospect scenario to a working session.
We prepare a visit live on real data in 30 minutes, with no slide deck.