How to Reveal Major Donors Already in Your Nonprofit CRM

Hidden major donors: Why your best prospects may already exist in your nonprofit CRM

You don’t have to start from scratch to find major donors. It’s likely you already know them! Your nonprofit CRM stores years of donor history—giving frequency, average gift size, event participation, volunteer hours, and more. These data points offer clues about a donor’s capacity and affinity for your cause. Major donor research begins by examining the supporters who already trust you.

Here’s why looking inward to find major donors works:

• Existing donors have already demonstrated interest – They’ve made gifts, attended events, or engaged with your mission in other ways.
• Warm leads convert better – It’s easier to deepen a relationship than start a new one.
• You’re not starting from zero – With historical data, you have the context needed to personalize your outreach.

Common signs that a major donor may already be in your nonprofit CRM:

• Long-time supporters with steadily increasing giving
• Mid-level donors with infrequent, but large one-time gifts
• Event attendees who bid high on auction items
• Volunteers or board members who have philanthropic capacity

Pro tip: Filter your donor data by cumulative giving over time, not just single gift size. A donor who gives $2,000 annually for 10 years may be a stronger major donor prospect than someone who gave $5,000 once.

Want to learn how to pull top donor reports, segment prospects, or run wealth screenings in your nonprofit CRM? DonorPerfect’s personalized CRM training options help you make the most of your data and fundraising tools.

Hidden philanthropists may not stand out at first glance, but their giving patterns, loyalty, or wealth indicators are already in your system—waiting to be discovered.

How to use donor data, reports, and wealth screening

To find hidden major donors in your nonprofit CRM, you need more than intuition—you need data. A strategic, data-informed approach is your strongest asset in uncovering high-potential donors already in your system.

Step 1: Start with donor reports

Most donor management systems include built-in reports that help surface potential prospects.

For leadership teams: Custom reports also support executive planning and board reporting. They help you track trends, align strategy with fundraising priorities, and identify the donors who will drive long-term impact.

In DonorPerfect, for example, you can apply filters and run custom reports to pinpoint donors who meet your major gift profile. 

Be sure your donor management system includes key donor fields like:

• Giving history
• Mailing address
• Employer information
• Event attendance details
• Notes from past conversations

These data points will power your segmentation and improve the accuracy of any wealth screening tools you use. Learn how to make the most of donor data fields. 

Key reports to run in order to find major donors:

• Top donors by lifetime giving – Identify those who have given the most overall
• Donors with large single gifts – Flag supporters who’ve made large one-time contributions
• Recent donor upgrades – Track those who’ve increased giving year-over-year
• Lapsed major donors – Reengage donors who’ve historically given at high levels

Use custom reports in DonorPerfect to identify high-value contributors. Apply filters to highlight those who’ve given above a specific threshold or have a history of multi-year giving.

Step 2: Conduct wealth screening to identify prospects

Donor data tells you who’s most committed. Wealth screening helps you identify who’s most capable. These tools compare your donor data with public financial records to estimate giving capacity. 

Look for:

• Real estate ownership
• Business affiliations
• Political giving
• Stock holdings
• Philanthropic board service

This type of prospect and major donor research takes your major donor strategy from guesswork to informed decision-making, helping you strengthen your major gift program and deepen donor engagement.

DonorPerfect integrates with leading wealth screening partners like DonorSearch, allowing you to screen donors directly within your nonprofit CRM. With scores and profiles returned instantly, you can prioritize outreach based on giving likelihood.

Want to see wealth screening in action? Watch how DonorSearch integrates with DonorPerfect to surface your top major donor prospects using real-time data.

Step 3: Analyze major donor engagement and affinity

A donor’s capacity to give is only part of the picture. Their connection to your organization—their level of interest, involvement, and loyalty—is just as important.

As you review your reports and wealth screening results, look for engagement signals that show a donor is emotionally invested in your mission. 

These might include:

• Volunteering regularly or taking on leadership roles
• Consistently opening or clicking through your emails
• Participating in peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns
• Attending events or site visits
• Personal interactions shared by staff, board members, or volunteers

These indicators will help you prioritize donors who have the potential to give and are likely to respond to deeper engagement and personalized outreach.

Qualify prospects for major gift fundraising outreach

Identifying potential major donors is just the beginning. The next step is to determine which prospects are most aligned with your major gift fundraising priorities and ready for personal outreach.

A strong qualification process helps you answer key questions about donors:

• Do they have both the capacity and the interest to give?
• Have they demonstrated consistent engagement—or a recent spike in involvement?
• Is there a mutual connection (staff, board member, volunteer) who can help facilitate a warm introduction?

Not every high-capacity donor is a strong candidate right away. Some may need further cultivation. Others might be disengaged or focused on different causes. That’s why it’s helpful to set clear benchmarks—based on giving history, engagement, and alignment with your mission—to decide who’s ready for outreach now and who might be a better fit to contact later.

Build your major donor prospect profile

For each qualified prospect, build out a simple, centralized profile (donor record) in your nonprofit CRM. This profile should include:

• Contact information and preferred communication method
• Giving history (recency, frequency, and cumulative value)
• Wealth indicators from screening
• Engagement and relationship history
• Known connections to staff, board members, or other donors
• Notes or anecdotes from past interactions, or even links to online news articles 
• Staff assignment (primary point of contact for the prospect)

These profiles help you tailor your outreach and guide decisions about who should take the lead on next steps. 

Ensure your donor contact information is up to date before beginning outreach. DonorPerfect’s Address Updater keeps mailing addresses current so that you can connect with major donors reliably.

Segment your major donor list

Your prospect data will reveal clear differences in giving capacity and engagement. Use that information to segment your outreach strategy:

• Tier 1 – High capacity, high engagement (potentially ready for a major gift ask)
• Tier 2 – High capacity, moderate engagement (needs cultivation)
• Tier 3 – Moderate capacity, high engagement (great candidates for mid-level or planned gifts)

Segmenting ensures your team uses time wisely and tailors messaging to each donor’s readiness and relationship stage.

It also supports smarter planning and delegation. With clear tiers in place, you can assign each prospect to the person best suited to engage them in your major gift fundraising efforts—whether that’s the executive director, a major gift officer, or a board ambassador.

Pro tip: For top-tier donors, understanding lifestyle patterns (like travel or business obligations) helps you approach them respectfully and strategically.

From a leadership perspective, donor tiers also support long-term fundraising planning. They help your executive team and board forecast revenue potential, allocate cultivation resources accordingly, and track progress toward major gift fundraising goals with clarity and confidence.

Streamline your major donor prospecting process 

Once you’ve identified strong major gift prospects in your nonprofit CRM, the key is creating a repeatable system for prioritizing and tracking them. Use this process to ensure your prospect list stays fresh and actionable.

A consistent process is essential to building a sustainable major gift fundraising program that supports long-term goals.

Build this system into your team’s weekly or monthly workflows:

• Schedule regular donor screenings (quarterly or semi-annually)
• Update profiles as new gifts or engagement data comes in
• Tag or flag major donor prospects in your nonprofit CRM
• Use moves management tools to track where each donor stands in the engagement process 

Use DonorPerfect’s Donor Journeys to track every step in the donor relationship—from identification to cultivation to solicitation. Set task reminders, log interactions, and assign next steps to your team.

Make prospecting part of your organization’s culture—not just a campaign-season task. This helps you continuously surface new prospects and move existing ones closer to a gift.

Pro tip: As prospects evolve, their needs may shift. Create a simple handoff process so donors can be passed to the right team member—whether that means escalating to executive outreach, transitioning to stewardship, or returning to cultivation for now.

Sample checklist: How to find major donors in your nonprofit CRM

• Pull donor reports by lifetime giving
• Use wealth screening tools like DonorSearch to qualify major donors
• Segment major donor prospects based on giving capacity and engagement
• Build out nonprofit CRM profiles with relationship notes
• Track major donor cultivation with a prospect pipeline system

Your next major gift may not come from a stranger—it may come from someone already in your nonprofit CRM. With smart major donor research, reporting tools, and wealth screening, you can uncover these hidden philanthropists and invite them to play a bigger role in your mission.

Start uncovering your hidden philanthropists by turning your data into insight. You can leverage your donor management system to connect with prospective major donors who are ready to make a meaningful difference.

Discover even more about major gift fundraising in our free e-book.

If you’re ready to take your major gift strategy to the next level, don’t miss our free guide, How to Discover and Engage Major Donors. This practical resource builds on the strategies outlined here, offering step-by-step tips, customizable donor profiles, and templates to help you screen, segment, and build lasting relationships with high-value donors.