Donorfy 101: Grants & Corporate

What we covered

• Adding the Prospect Research panel to the right constituent profiles (e.g. Trust/Foundation and corporate prospects) so research data is captured in a consistent place. 
• Using the Capacity / Propensity / Connection scoring framework (1–5) to prioritise which funders to focus on next, with internal definitions so everyone scores consistently. 
• Recording key prospect details: deadline months, months between applications, research manager/relationship owner, typical gift size and suggested ask. 
• Using Funding Preferences and Funding Locations (configured to match your charity) to make your prospect list filterable and actionable at scale. 

2. Turning research into a structured pipeline (Prospects & Opportunities)

• How prospect research becomes powerful once populated across multiple organisations — enabling filtering and prioritisation of your pipeline.
• Using Opportunities for any multi‑stage ask (grants, corporate sponsorship, major donors, etc).
• Setting up Opportunity Types and Stages carefully (so they reflect how you actually work, and don’t need constant change).
• Understanding key Opportunity fields: stage, forecast %, expected close date, deadline date, outcome, team members and notes/attachments. 

• Using stage settings to create automatic tasks (e.g. “follow up with funder 30 days after Applied”) to reduce reliance on memory and improve consistency.

• Visibility benefits: tasks sit on the Opportunity so cover is easier when colleagues are off. 

4. Managing the pipeline: list view, board view and charts

• Navigating Opportunities using:
  • List view for filtering and reporting
  • Board (Kanban) view for moving opportunities through stages and spotting those stuck too long
  • Charts view for pipeline value and forecast reporting 

5. Corporate partnerships: tracking relationships, tiers and stewardship

• Using Activity Types and Custom Fields to model corporate partnership information on timelines (start/end date, pledged value, tier, next impact report due, etc.).
• Using Activities so you can report and dashboard on partnership tiers, pledged value, and activity history.
• Capturing impact reporting by logging activities and uploading the report document to the timeline for an audit trail.
• Recording gifts in kind as an activity (with a value field) when it shouldn’t appear as cash income. 

6. Managing grant awards: pledges and scheduled income

• Creating Pledges to record promised grant income (including multiple instalments) so you can plan and forecast.
• Marking pledges as paid to create the transaction cleanly (reducing double entry and keeping records consistent). 

7. Reporting & dashboards for Grants & Corporate

• Using Opportunities and Pledges pipelines, plus Lists, to build reporting views such as:
  
  • Open opportunities by stage/campaign/owner
  • Unsuccessful applications (and capturing “why” in notes)
  • Open pledges by fund/campaign
  • Pipeline forecast by month and opportunity type 
• Building dashboards from list visualisations, and refreshing tiles when you need an updated view.

Useful resources

Prospecting, Trusts & Foundations

• Prospect Research (Prospect Info panel)

Opportunities (Pipeline & Configuration)

• Create and manage Opportunities
• Manage your pipeline of Opportunities (List / Board / Charts views)
• Set up Opportunity Types (stages, forecasts, max days, default tasks) 

Pledges

• Standalone Pledges (including paying pledges)
• Reporting on Grant Applications (pipeline, lists and pledge pipeline)

Corporate Partnerships, Activities & Documents

• Add Custom Fields to Activities (for partnership tiers, pledges, dates etc)
• Timeline Document Upload (attach impact reports, agreements, etc)

Reporting & Dashboards

• Dashboards Overview

Lists & Auto‑Tagging (used heavily in reporting patterns)

• Lists - Collection

• Auto-Tagging

Try this next

To put today’s session into practice, we recommend:

• 1. Add Prospect Research to your Trust/Corporate constituent profiles and agree your team scoring definitions.

• 2. Review Opportunity Types and Stages (keep them simple, set forecasts and max days).

• 3. Add one automatic stage task (e.g. follow‑up 30 days after “Applied”).

• 4. Track corporate partnerships using one Activity Type with a small set of standard custom fields (tier, start/end, pledged value, next report due).

• 5. Create a pledge pipeline for successful grants and start marking pledges paid to generate clean transactions.

• 6. Build one dashboard tile (e.g. open pledges by fund, or open opportunities by stage).

Frequently Asked Questions