How Royal Flying Doctors Service Victoria built a continuous major gift ranking and grew revenue 15%

Royal Flying Doctors Service Victoria delivers aeromedical care across one of the largest service areas in the country. That work runs on donor support, and on the philanthropy team knowing which supporters are ready for a deeper relationship.

For years, RFDS Victoria identified major donor prospects through triennial wealth scans run with partner agencies. The scans qualified a pool of prospects, but they only happened once every three years. Between scans, the team had to rely on judgment to decide who in the database deserved stewardship time next.

A lean philanthropy team can't afford to guess at that decision. Capacity inside a donor file shifts constantly. Waiting three years for the next refresh meant missed conversations, missed gifts and stewardship effort spread across the wrong people.

The decision the team needed to make every week

The core question was simple and recurring: inside the existing donor file, who deserves attention right now?

Answering it well meant knowing two things at once:

• Which prospects already on the list still hold major gift capacity

• Which donors elsewhere in the file should be promoted into the pipeline

A scan every three years could not keep up with that question. RFDS Victoria needed a continuous read on the file.

A weekly prediction layer inside the CRM

In 2021, RFDS Victoria partnered with Dataro to bring continuous prediction into their major giving program. Dataro's Major Donor propensity model now runs inside Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT and refreshes every week.

The model scores every active cash donor on their likelihood of giving more than $10,000 in cumulative gifts over the next 12 months if stewarded well. Each donor record carries a Dataro percentage and rank, updated weekly, alongside the giving history the team already works from.

The first test was a direct comparison. RFDS Victoria ran their existing major donor pipeline against Dataro's ranked list. The model confirmed the capacity of donors already on the list and surfaced additional prospects hiding inside the existing file.

Turning ranks into a stewardship workflow

Predictions only matter when they reach the people doing the work. The data team built a simple internal tier system on top of Dataro's ranks so the philanthropy team could act on the data without rethinking it each week:

• A: Dataro major donor rank 1–100

• B: Dataro major donor rank 101–300

• C: Dataro major donor rank 301–600

• D: Dataro major donor rank 601+

A and B prospects sit at the top of the research and stewardship queue. C and D prospects remain visible and stay inside the program.

From there, the philanthropy manager assigns each prospect to one of three stewardship modes — Build, Monitor or Maintain — reviewed annually. When a donor's giving pattern shifts, the category shifts with it.

Results

• Major gift revenue grew by more than 15% year on year

• The capacity of prospects found in earlier wealth scans was reconfirmed against live data

• New major donor prospects were identified inside the existing donor file

• The philanthropy team now prioritizes research and stewardship from a weekly, evidence-backed list

Why this works for a small team

For a lean philanthropy team, the win is leverage. Weekly prediction replaces a once-every-three-years snapshot. Ranked prioritization replaces opinion-led list building. The team spends less time deciding who to focus on and more time building relationships with the donors most likely to give.

Prediction is the baseline. The judgment, the calls and the relationships still belong to the fundraisers.