Talking points

When your agents are presented with prospects to contact, they are given a set of talking points. Different talking points are brought in based on criteria specific to the prospect. You write the talking points and define the criteria, then Blackbaud Guided Fundraising automatically pulls in those talking points that match the prospect. To create talking points, open your campaign and navigate to the “Talking Points” section

Intro and wrap up

The first thing you need to set up is your Intro and Wrap Up messages. These will appear for every prospect in this campaign.

Add Talking Points

Next, add your talking points. You can create up to 20 different talking points per campaign. Each talking point has a short title, which provides the Agent with a quick high-level cue, as well as a message, which the agent can access for a more detailed description.

Tip: While you can set up 20 talking points, a maximum of 7 talking points (including the introduction and wrap-up) will appear for each prospect. Therefore, we recommend you spend time determining the appropriate talking points for each criteria. If you designate more than 5 talking points (besides introduction and wrap-up) for "Anybody," they will not all appear.

You can set up different criteria for each talking point. For example, you can have a general talking point, such as "Scholarships" or "Endowment" that display for all constituents. These are general messages that resonate with most supporters. You can also have affinity-specific talking points that resonate well with specific constituents. You can set criteria for these types of talking points so that they only show up for certain types of constituents. For example, if your institution is well-known for its economics research, you can create a talking point specific to economics and have it show only for economics graduates.

Criteria:

• Anybody: The talking point will match to any constituent. If the talking point is one of your top 5 talking points based on the priority order you set, then it will always display for every constituent.

• Athletics: The talking point will match only to constituents with certain athletic activities.

• Designation: The talking point will match only to constituents who have ever given to the specified designations.

• Designation School/Unit: The talking point will match only to constituents who have ever given to the specified schools/units.

• Major: The talking point will match only to constituents with certain majors.

• Participation History: The talking point will match only to constituents with certain activities in their participation history.

• Preferred Class Year: The talking point will match only to constituents of certain preferred class years.

• Primary Relationship Type: The talking point will match only to constituents with certain primary relationship types.

• School of Graduation: The talking point will match only to constituents with certain schools of graduation.

Talking points provide you with the flexibility to adapt your message to different types of constituents within a campaign. Talking Points also allow you to adapt your message for non-solicitation campaigns, such as event campaigns or thank you campaigns.

How Talking Points Display for Agents

By default, agents will first see the title of the talking point and can expand it to view the description. Agents should be familiar with the talking points prior to beginning the campaign, so that a quick scan of the titles will provide them with a talk track for each prospect. This type of dynamic talk track helps encourage natural conversations between agents and prospects.

You can create up to 20 talking points for each campaign but not every talking point will appear on a prospects page in the agent portal. When a prospect is presented to an agent in the Blackbaud Guided Fundraising portal, it will find all matching talking points for the prospect based on the criteria you set and will display the top 5 matching talking points based on those priorities.