While the definition of a “major” gift varies according to institution size, mission, and community, the quest to identify and rank the best prospects is as old as Advancement itself. We have all faced the challenge of building a top donor model when only a tiny fraction of donors make gifts at or above their threshold for a substantial gift. In this session, we’ll talk about how we overcame the challenges of small sample sizes, incomplete and sparse data, and administrative data that imperfectly captures business practice to develop an approach to major gift prospect prioritization. We’ll describe how our methods have evolved over the years to the solutions that underlie our current reporting tools. Arriving at actionable insights is only half the battle. Our largest challenge has been marketing the math to fundraising professionals that go by gut. We will close out with a demonstration of a Tableau tool that brings this research to life. We hope this presentation serves as Part 1 of our story, and intend on pitching deployment and lessons learned at CASE DRIVE 2026.