Stewardship Plans

Stewardship Plans

Stewardship plans in TED outline the steps involved in effectively managing a donor’s contributions. Employing these plans streamlines the monitoring of donor funds and facilitates meaningful interaction with donors for stewardship-related endeavors. Moreover, they play a crucial role in upholding the donor’s original intentions as outlined in the fund agreement, while also ensuring consistent communication regarding the impact and allocation of their contributions. Fostering an enduring relationship between donors and the institution over their lifetime is paramount, and stewardship plans serve as a cornerstone in achieving this objective.

Stewardship plans in TED should be used to record recurring and ongoing steps on a constituent’s record, including regular communications as well as internal tasks. Completed and future steps appear on the Documentation & Interaction tab and help communicate the donor’s relationship with the university to the larger Advancement community.

Strategies

Guidelines: 

Common criteria for adding stewardship plans to constituent records include, but are not limited to:

  • Donors with endowed funds
  • Donors with current use funds with balances
  • Planned gift donors (see UIF’s Gift Planning Stewardship and reach out to the appropriate gift planner if needed)
  • Principal gift donors (contact OVCIA Principal Gifts for more information)
  • Top donors (ex. $25k+ cumulative giving to a unit)
  • Donors with active pledges

To determine which donors need to be stewarded, utilize the following reports: Top Donors Report, Endowment Statement Report, Active Pledge Report, Planned Gift Report (from GPTS), and Stewardship Recipient Report (from UIF Support).  

Stewardship plan types include:

  • Compound: for donors with multiple types of funds
  • Deferred Gift: for donors with deferred gifts booked
  • Fund: for donors who have established an endowment or current use fund
  • Principal Gift: for donors who have given $5M+
  • Ultimate: for donors who have indicated they will not be making further major gifts

Best Practices:

  • Develop a stewardship plan strategy for your unit that includes the type of stewardship plans to use, what steps will be included on those stewardship plans, and who will be responsible for completing the steps.
  • Utilize the SDR plan templates in TED.
  • Add individual donors to stewardship plan steps as plan participants when you want the step to appear on the interactions tab of their individual records.
  • Record notes for plan steps on the documentation tab.

Potential steps to include on stewardship plans:

  • Send Impact Communication: communicate with the donor annually about their impact.
  • Fund Financial Review: review the donor’s funds to ensure they are in good standing.
  • Stewardship Plan Strategy Review: review plans annually with advancement team and adjust strategy when needed.
  • Add recipient information to fund: add recipients of scholarships, etc. to the fund in TED.
  • Planned gift stewardship visit: prompt gift officer to contact or visit the donor to see if they need to update their estate language.
  • Pledge Review: review the donor’s pledge to ensure it is in good standing.
Sample stewardship plan in TED

Things not included on stewardship plans: mass communications (these live on the communications tab on the donor’s record), cultivation/solicitation steps (these live in the Prospect Plan area), gift acknowledgement (this lives under Unit Acknowledgements on the gift itself), birthday/holiday cards.

Resources

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