The Window of Opportunity: How to Right-Size Your Digital Fundraising Team

How to Evaluate the Right Number of VEOs for Your Institution

Autonomous Fundraising scales to fit your organization, and understanding the size of your opportunity is where every strategy starts. The number of Virtual Engagement Officers that our partners start with isn't a default; it's a reflection of how many donors are unmanaged, how many distinct challenges exist across their pipelines, and where the revenue opportunities are greatest. Some organizations start with one VEO, and many start with several.

The right starting point is an honest look at the size of the challenge you face. How many donors gave between $500 and $10,000 in the last three years and have no assigned gift officer? How many are rated and give consistently at the mid-level but are still unmanaged? Are giving society donors being personally cultivated, or are they receiving the same mass communications as everyone else? Does every division, school, or unit in your organization have someone actively building pipeline, or is that work not happening because of bandwidth? Are there distinct populations that require different approaches?

If your unmanaged, qualified donor pool sits between 1,000-3,000 donors, that's a single VEO portfolio. If it's closer to 3,000 to 5,000, it could be two or more. If the number climbs to 10,000, 20,000, or beyond (which is not uncommon at larger organizations), that's when you build a team of specialized VEOs, each owning a distinct segment, pipeline, or unit with its own content strategy and goals. That could look like one VEO re-engaging lapsed donors, another supporting a unit-specific pipeline, one focused on Giving Day donors, and another cultivating mid-level donors toward major gift conversations.

With a well-structured Autonomous Fundraising team, your advancement operation becomes more complete: more donors receive consistent, personalized attention, and your gift officers can go deeper with the relationships that need them most.

Every segment should be evaluated against the specific challenge it represents and the revenue opportunity within it. That is how our partners with the strongest ROI are seeing such high returns, by assessing the highest potential unmanaged donors in every possible pipeline, across all affiliations and areas of giving.

The window of opportunity at your institution is already there. Now it's time to capture it.

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