Opportunities are a great way to manage fundraising from higher-value funders such as Trusts, Foundations, Corporates, Major Donors and Legators.

To create a new Opportunity

Click on the orange Add button at the top of the screen. Under Fundraising select Opportunities and then select the type of opportunity that you wish to create. See here for more about Opportunity Types.

You can also create Opportunities from the Opportunities view.

You will see the Opportunity form:

In the Prospect section:

• Select the Constituent from whom you are attempting to support your organisation.
• Optionally select the Opportunity Contact - that means the person that you are talking to about this opportunity. This could be a major donor's PA, or the fund administrator in a charitable trust.
• You can view and edit the prospect research info in an expandable panel (see this article for more info about prospect research).

In the Details section:

• Give your opportunity a description. It must be unique. It is used in Opportunity Lists and reports.
• Select the Opportunity Fundraiser. This will default from the fundraiser identified in the prospect information. You can report opportunities by fundraiser.
• If more team members are in the fundraising team for this opportunity you can include them in the Opportunity Team field (note: this field is only available once the opportunity has been saved for the first time).
• Ask amount - enter the total monetary value of this opportunity. This a required field for financial opportunity types, and can't be entered for non-financial.
• Current stage - this will default to the first stage, as defined in the opportunity type settings.
• Forecast (%) - this will default to the forecast percentage defined in the opportunity type settings. It can be overridden here if required. It is used to calculate the forecast amount (as opposed to the full amount) in the pipeline charts and reports.
• Outcome - this will default according to the stage selected. It remains unset when blank, and then can be set by the stage to either positive, negative or neutral. It can be overridden here.
• Campaign - the campaign under which you might want to track this and other other opportunities. Examples include "Grant Applications 2021/22"; "The New Library Capital Appeal" etc.
• Campaign items - select the items that this opportunity will fund. These first need to be set up in Campaigns.
• Fund - the fund in which this grant / donation will reside. Does not apply to non-financial opportunity types.
• Date added - defaults to today's date.
• Deadline date - optional.
• Expected close date - required field. Used in pipeline charts, lists and reports.
• Notes - full HTML notes relating to this opportunity. A plain-text version notes is also maintained by Donorfy for use in Lists and downloads, if required.
• Attachments - you can store documents in an Opportunity. You can only add attachments once an opportunity has been saved for the first time.

Other tabs on the Opportunity form

Once and opportunity has been saved, you get 3 more tabs:

• Tasks tab - contains tasks related to the opportunity. These may have been auto-created as a result of moving the opportunity to stage, or can be added manually here. Note: adding tasks here will associate those tasks with this opportunity. Tasks added in other ways (for example in an Activity that's not related to this opportunity) will not be shown here. All tasks - whatever their origin - will appear in the user's normal task list.
• Pledges and Transactions - see this article.
• Timeline - this contains timeline Activities related to this opportunity. These activities are also visible on the constituent's main timeline. You can manually add Activities from here, as well as sending a letter/email.

How to delete an Opportunity

To delete an opportunity you first need to find it, and open it. Then, click on the orange Manage button, and select Delete Opportunity.

Deleting an opportunity also deletes its pledges, tasks and activities. Any transactions that were linked to pledges in the opportunity will remain, but no longer linked to a pledge.

Opportunities is a Professional-only feature. Essential subscribers, please contact us to find out more about upgrading.