Most capital campaigns don't stall because of a lack of donors. They stall when advancement teams work from an incomplete picture of those donors. Wealth changes. People move. Net worth jumps. If your data only refreshes once a year, you're building your campaign on a foundation that's already shifting.
Ryan Carr, Director of Advancement Services at Salisbury School, took a different approach. In a recent Windfall customer roundtable, Ryan shared how he spent nearly two years building a data-driven foundation before Salisbury's $125M campaign launch. Here's his playbook:
- Prioritize net worth over prior giving
- Build your own capacity formula
- Screen continuously at key inflection points
- Use data to shift gift officer mindset
- Build a living campaign pyramid
1. Prioritize Net Worth Over Prior Giving
When Ryan arrived at Salisbury in 2022, the school only screened records with prior giving history. Past giving, it turned out, was a poor predictor of future giving. "We really needed a full review of all of our constituents," he said.
The problem went deeper than incomplete data. Most wealth tools cap prospects at a range, and wealth ranges tell you very little—the gap between a $10M prospect and a $500M one is enormous. Treating them the same leads to misallocating your gift officers' time from day one. What Salisbury needed was a precise net worth number, not a range or an estimate, applied to their full constituent database.
2. Build Your Own Capacity Formula
The traditional benchmark puts philanthropic capacity at 5% of net worth over five years. It's a convenient shortcut—but it wasn't built for your organization. Here are two challenges with this approach:
- It's derived from visible assets (like real estate), often ignoring total liquidity
- It assumes that 5% represents your organization's share—in reality, that capacity is spread across every cause they support
Ryan built a Salisbury-specific model by cross-referencing Windfall's net worth data with lifetime giving and gift frequency. They landed on a 2% capacity rating over five years—a figure grounded in the difference between gift capacity and precise net worth data.
"It's conservative. It's realistic. And it helps us level-set with our board," Ryan said.
Two years in, it's proven accurate enough to anchor a $125M campaign.
3. Screen Continuously, Especially at Key Inflection Points
A one-and-done screening strategy leaves money on the table. A prospect who looked like a $500K donor 18 months ago may be sitting on a liquidity event today. Liquidity events trigger significant capital gains tax exposure and philanthropy is one of the most effective ways to offset it.
Here's how Salisbury screens:
- Quarterly: Full database refresh
- At enrollment: Targeted screening when new families sign contracts, so gift officers walk into first conversations already informed
- Ongoing: Monitoring wealth triggers—like SEC filings or DAF contributions—for signals that indicate a donor may be ready to give
"We had an alum who moved about ten million dollars into a DAF from his publicly traded assets," he recalled. "If we're not monitoring all the time, it's really hard to keep track of."
The same principle applies across nonprofit sectors: hospitals screening new board members, universities screening incoming parent classes, or arts organizations screening new season subscribers. Any time a new relationship begins, screening adds value.
4. Use Data to Shift Gift Officer Mindset
A common instinct is to sort prospects by total giving. It feels logical. But giving history reflects past behavior, not future potential.
Quarterly screening at Salisbury revealed an alumnus whose net worth had jumped from ~$10M to ~$100M between screenings—a data point that changed the cultivation strategy entirely, and would have been missed on an annual refresh cycle. The biggest opportunities often belong to donors who've been under-asked.
Here's how to find and engage with them:
- Sort by net worth, not total giving: Identify who can give, not just who has given.
- Monitor for wealth triggers: Don’t wait for a donor to tell you they are ready; look for liquidity events like SEC filings or DAF activity.
- Apply your custom capacity formula: Move beyond the "incremental ask" by basing proposals on your specific, data-backed capacity model.
5. Build a Living Campaign Pyramid
A campaign pyramid maps the gifts you need at every level to reach your goal. It’s a hypothesis. Like any hypothesis, it should update as real data comes in.
One early finding at Salisbury: the school closes million-dollar gifts far more readily than gifts in the $2.5M to $5M range.
"Let's not pretend we're going to find more three-million-dollar donors. We're going to find more million-dollar donors. So we'll adjust this as it goes," he said.
The pyramid also incorporates likelihood ratings such as:
- High: strong capacity and clear affinity, actively in cultivation
- Medium: capacity is there, relationship needs more development
- Low: capacity exists but giving is unlikely in this campaign cycle
- Disqualified: removed from active pipeline regardless of net worth
A campaign pyramid shouldn’t be static. If yours doesn't match where gifts are actually closing, it's a signal to adjust.
The Bottom Line for Campaigns in Planning
Salisbury is already halfway to its $125M goal. Ryan attributes much of that momentum to two-plus years of data work before the public launch.
"You need to screen everything. And you need to do it more than once a year. Wealth data is what fuels your philanthropy. Without it, you're swimming blindly." —Ryan Carr, Director of Advancement Services, Salisbury School
The schools that close campaigns ahead of schedule aren't always the ones with the most donors. They're the ones that use precise wealth intelligence to know exactly who their donors are, when they're ready to act, and the best strategy for engaging them.
Want to see how other independent schools are doing it? Read our 2026 Playbook: How 3 Schools Find Hidden Major Gifts.
