What are the Fundraising Pipelines?
CiviPlus has an extensive range of tools to power sales opportunity tracking. There are a number of articles here that explain how to set up and manage your own pipelines.
However, CiviPlus includes three pre-configured pipelines designed to help you track and manage different types of fundraising opportunities from first contact through to completion. Each pipeline acts as a workflow - you create a new prospect, move it through a series of stages, and track its progress along the way.
These pre-built pipelines are:
💎 Major Donor - for managing relationships with individual high-value donors
🤝 Trusts & Foundation Grant - for tracking grant applications to trusts and foundations
🏛️ Legacy - for managing legacy (bequest) pledges and their progression
You'll find all three under the Fundraising menu in CiviPlus.
Note: If you do not see these pipelines in your system contact Compuco and we can explain what you need to do.
Creating a New Opportunity
To start tracking a new fundraising opportunity:
Go to Fundraising in the main menu and select the relevant pipeline (Major Donor, Trusts & Foundation Grant, or Legacy).
Click to add a new case. This creates what CiviPlus calls an "opportunity" - it's the record you'll use to track everything about this prospect.
You'll be asked to link the opportunity to a contact. This is the donor, trust, or legacy pledger you're working with. If they don't already exist in CiviPlus, you'll need to create their contact record first.
Complete the Activity Medium, which is the method of communication or channel of interaction for the origin of this opportunity.
The Description is a simple comment about the opportunity
Give the opportunity a meaningful Subject
Now select the Prospect Type - typically there is only one option here depending on the Pipeline Opportunity type you chose to create (Major Donor, Grant or Legacy).
The Prospect Status and Start Date will default to the start status for this opportunity type and today's date, but you can change these if the opportunity is already underway.
You can add any relevant Attachments to this opportunity now, or at any subsequent time.
Fill in the key Financial Information fields:
Prospect Amount - the target amount you're hoping to raise from this opportunity.
Probability - your best estimate of how likely you are to receive the full amount (shown as a percentage).
Expectation - this is calculated automatically. It multiplies the Prospect Amount by the Probability to give you a weighted value, helping you understand the realistic value of your pipeline.
Fund - if your organisation uses fund accounting, select which fund should receive any resulting donation.
Complete the qualification fields specific to your pipeline (see below), then save.
Pipeline-specific qualification fields
Major Donor: You'll record the Donor Type (e.g. Principal Donor or Corporate Philanthropist), how you found them (Lead Source), and rate their Inclination, Capacity, and Connection on a 1–5 star scale. These star ratings help you prioritise which donors to focus your energy on.
Trusts & Foundation Grant: You'll record the Grant Type (e.g. Capital Grant, Programme Development Grant, etc.), the Lead Source, and rate Inclination, Capacity, and Connection using the same star system.
Legacy: You'll record the Legacy Type (Pecuniary, Specific, or Residuary), the Lead Source, star ratings, and any Conditions attached to the bequest.
Pipeline-specific Key Dates.
Each pipeline has a set of key dates that you can fill in now - typically these are completed as the Opportunity progresses:
Major Donor
Expected Close Date
Actual Close Date
Lost Reason
Trusts and Foundations Grant
Deadline
Decision Date
Lost Reason
Legacy
Expected Agreement Date
Actual Agreement Date
Notice of Probate Date
Here is an example new Major Donor Opportunity
Managing a Prospect Through the Pipeline
Each pipeline has its own set of stages. As your opportunity progresses, you update its status to reflect where it currently sits. Here's what each pipeline's stages look like:
Major Donor stages:
Identification → Qualification → Cultivation → Solicitation → Negotiation → Close → Stewardship
Trusts & Foundation Grant stages:
Identification → Eligibility Check → Application Drafting → Internal Approval → Submission → Awaiting Decision → Awarded/Declined → Contracting → Monitoring & Reporting → Stewardship
Legacy stages:
Cultivation → Solicitation → Committed Pledge → Stewardship → Estate Settlement → Close
All three pipelines also have a Lost status for opportunities that don't proceed. When marking a prospect as Lost, you can select a reason this is valuable data for understanding why opportunities fall through.
To move a prospect to the next stage, open the case and change the status. It's that simple. The pipeline view will update to reflect the change.
An example of how to change a Major Donor opportunity Status is shown below:
Tracking Pipeline Progress with Reports
Each pipeline has a dedicated report that gives you an overview of all active opportunities:
Major Donor Pipeline Report
Grant Pipeline Report
Legacy Pipeline Report
These reports let you see at a glance how many prospects sit at each stage, their expected values, and where your team should be focusing effort. You can filter each report by a number of different fields. The Expectation field is particularly useful here because it weighs each opportunity by its probability, the totals give you a realistic picture of your pipeline's potential value rather than just an optimistic sum of prospect amounts.
Each pipeline also has a Smart Group (e.g. "Major Donor Prospect List") that automatically includes all contacts with an active opportunity in that pipeline. These groups are handy for mailings, reporting, or quickly pulling up a list of everyone you're currently working with.
There are also tags which you can apply to contacts so you can easily search for and segment them across CiviPlus (e.g. "Major Donor", "Grant Provider", "Legacy")
Quick Tips
One opportunity per prospect per pipeline — if a donor has both a major gift and a legacy in play, those are two separate cases in two separate pipelines.
Keep statuses up to date — the reports and smart groups rely on accurate status data to be useful.
Use the star ratings honestly — they're there to help you prioritise, not to make every prospect look promising.
Record a Lost Reason — it helps your team learn and improve over time.
You can tailor the pipelines to suit your particular requirements - see the separate helpdesk article on how to do this.