Which 1,000 Donors Should You Engage Next? A Data-Driven Approach

Healthcare fundraising often begins with a moment: a recovery that defied the odds, the loss of someone deeply loved, a physician whose care changed everything. But it also grows from witnessing your organization's broader impact—your emergency department serving as a community safety net, your research advancing treatment, your programs reaching underserved populations. These experiences create bonds between donors and healthcare institutions that run deeper than transactional giving. They're rooted in gratitude, trust, and a profound understanding of what quality healthcare means to a community.

These donors (grateful patients, longtime employees, community members who've witnessed your impact) deserve more than generic marketing emails. They deserve to feel seen, heard, and genuinely connected to your mission.

You know this already. The challenge is finding the capacity to act on it. But fundraising capacity is the core issue.

In a recent survey of more than 100 nonprofit organizations (including hospital foundations, academic medical centers, and health systems), the average percentage of donors under active gift officer management is just 2.53%.

The median sits at 1.65%.

Whether your foundation manages 5,000 donor records or half a million, the ratio remains remarkably consistent. Not because healthcare fundraisers aren't committed or strategic, but because, even in an ideal scenario with unlimited resources, there simply aren’t enough frontline fundraisers to manage all of our donors.

That’s where the world has changed with Autonomous AI Fundraising.

Data in Action: Autonomous Fundraising with Parkland Health Foundation

Last year, Parkland Health Foundation was the first healthcare organization in the world to employ a Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO), an autonomous fundraiser powered by AI to manage a portfolio of 1,000 donors including employees, lapsed donors, and giving society members. The VEO’s focus on re-engagement and relationship building at scale has generated $62,581 within the first year from lapsed donors alone, representing new and unanticipated revenue that counts toward retention metrics at fiscal year-end.

The approach was distinctly personal: sharing Parkland news and events, recognizing staff awards, and offering select donors a printed and framed picture celebrating Parkland's journey since 1894. These touchpoints honored the emotional connection donors have to the organization's legacy and mission.

This demonstrates how data-driven donor selection addresses what we might call the "middle space" in healthcare philanthropy: donors with authentic connections who deserve more than mass marketing, but who haven't been reached due to capacity constraints.

Autonomous Fundraising Spreading Across Healthcare Philanthropy

Other healthcare foundations are approaching Autonomous Fundraising in ways that suit their specific needs.

Some organizations reallocate donor assignments across existing gift officers to ensure the highest-potential 1,000 receive personal attention. Others create specialized mid-level or grateful patient-specific positions to focus exclusively on these segments. Some foundations develop structured outreach campaigns delivered through their annual giving or donor relations teams.

AI-powered VEOs are addressing these challenges by personally managing portfolios of 1,000 donors with 8-12 touchpoints annually, enabling foundations to execute their strategic donor selection without requiring additional human staffing. This approach allows gift officers to focus on major and principal gift relationships while ensuring the next tier of donors receives consistent, personalized engagement.

So, how can you grow fundraising capacity and put this into action for your own organization?

Start Strategically: Identify 1,000 Donors

Here's a thought exercise: If you could personally engage 1,000 more donors tomorrow, who would they be?

Not randomly. Not alphabetically. But strategically, based on data, potential, and alignment with your goals.

Which 1,000 donors represent your greatest opportunity for revenue growth, retention improvement, or pipeline acceleration? Which supporters have the strongest combination of capacity, connection, and readiness, but currently fall outside your team's bandwidth?

Donors with the capacity and interest to move from annual giving to major gifts don't progress because no one has the bandwidth to build that relationship. Someone ready for a deeper philanthropic conversation never gets asked because they're not yet in a portfolio.

Donors who deeply care about your mission drift away, not because their commitment has wavered, but because they don't feel connected to your organization in a personal way. Without ongoing personal touchpoints, even loyal donors can gradually disengage, not from lack of interest, but from lack of connection.

If you could reach 1,000 more donors, which would deliver the greatest impact?

A Framework for Strategic Donor Selection

The answer to "which 1,000 donors should we prioritize?" requires a strategic, data-driven approach. Whether you're building a new portfolio for an incoming gift officer, reallocating donors across your existing team, or exploring new engagement models, this framework helps you make decisions that align with your organization's goals.

Here's how healthcare foundations are using data to identify their next 1,000 donor relationships.

Step 1: Identify Your Goals and Opportunity

Before selecting which donors to engage, define what you need most right now. What would success look like?

Common healthcare advancement priorities include:

• Revenue growth: Your foundation's unrestricted goal has increased, or you're entering a capital campaign for facility expansion or program development

• Retention: You're losing too many first-time grateful patient donors or employee donors after their initial gift

• Pipeline acceleration: You have donors with major gift capacity who need cultivation before being assigned to your principal gift team

• Employee engagement: You want to deepen internal giving and strengthen organizational culture

• Grateful patient stewardship: Patients and families who experienced exceptional care need ongoing relationship-building

Identifying measurable strategic goals should be your starting point before moving on to donor segmentation.

Step 2: Determine Your Key Donor Segments

Once you've identified your goals, consider which donor segments will help you achieve them. Use your data to identify pools of donors with the right characteristics.

For healthcare organizations, high-potential segments often include:

For Revenue Goals:

• Recent donors giving $500-$5,000 annually (just below)

• Giving society members with demonstrated upgrade potential

• Grateful patients whose initial gift suggests capacity for more

• Rated current donors giving below the major gift threshold

For Retention & Participation:

• Employee donors (both clinical and non-clinical staff)

• First-time grateful patient donors

• Donors lapsed 1-2 years with significant giving history

• LYBNT (Last Year But Not This year) donors with capacity ratings

For Pipeline Development:

• Rated prospects who've made a gift in the last two years above $1,000

• Grateful patients with wealth indicators

• Long-tenured physicians and staff with no giving history

• Community members with high propensity scores

• Planned giving prospects showing increased engagement

  
  

Step 3: Check Your Segment Numbers and Prioritize

Identify how many donors fall into each potential segment, then prioritize based on quality and strategic fit.

Focus on donors who align with your goals while also considering additional engagement indicators:

• Connection to specific service lines or programs

• Volunteer involvement (guild members, board committee participants)

• Event attendance

• Grateful patient identification codes in your CRM

• Physician relationships or clinical staff connections

Step 4: Select Your 1,000 Donors

Choose the 1,000 donors most likely to drive results aligned with your goals. The selection criteria remains consistent: Who has the strongest combination of capacity, connection, and readiness?

This is where data meets strategy. Your 1,000 donors should represent your highest-probability opportunities for the outcomes you've defined.

What the Data Tells Us About Donor Selection

Strategic portfolio building also requires understanding which donor characteristics correlate with higher engagement and giving outcomes. Data from Virtual Engagement Officer portfolios shows which donors perform best when receiving consistent, personalized outreach:

Recent donors deliver results. 88% of top-dollar donors engaged by a Virtual Engagement Officer had lapsed no more than one year. Only 9% had lapsed more than three years. This reinforces the importance of the critical three-year retention window, with special attention to year-one lapses.

Age matters for engagement. Donors aged 50-72 (Gen X and Baby Boomers) consistently show the highest engagement rates, largest giving amounts, and highest frequency of giving when receiving personal outreach.

Contact quality drives response. Donors with current phone numbers show significantly higher two-way engagement rates, particularly through SMS communication channels.

Geographic connection correlates with giving. Donors who live in the same state as your healthcare organization tend to be higher givers, likely due to stronger community connection and personal experience with your services.

These insights can help refine your 1,000-donor list beyond basic segmentation, ensuring you're selecting donors with the highest probability of engagement and increased giving.

Validating Your Selection

Once you've identified your target 1,000 donors, validate your selections before moving forward. Use this exercise to confirm alignment:

1. Define the metric(s) you're measuring (retention, revenue, participation, upgrades, etc.)

2. Evaluate the portfolio's last 3 fiscal years of giving according to those metrics

3. Determine if the portfolio can reasonably achieve its goal given its history

4. Adjust as needed to ensure strategic fit

   
   

If your goal is revenue-focused but the portfolio consists of long-lapsed donors with minimal recent giving, there's likely a mismatch. Reshuffling now prevents disappointment later.

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Ready to Engage 1,000 More Donors with Personal, 1:1 Engagement?

The question isn't whether to expand engagement. It's which donors to prioritize and how to reach them effectively given your capacity and goals.

Understanding your donor data—who's lapsed recently, who's showing upgrade potential, who has capacity but lacks assignment—is the foundation for building a portfolio that drives revenue, strengthens retention, and accelerates your pipeline.

For healthcare foundations facing traditional portfolio constraints, Autonomous Fundraising through Virtual Engagement Officers has fundamentally changed what’s possible in the last year.