Principal gifts make a transformational impact on our institutions, but also our campaigns, which rely on fewer, but substantially larger gifts to bolster our success. It can take decades of strategic cultivation (and good fortune) to secure these gifts. Yet, there are challenges to ensure we are both maximizing the potential of today's principal donors, while also identifying the next generation.

Following its successful $2bn campaign, NC State launched a principal discovery pilot to address this challenge. We will share more about this partnership between the principal gifts, central major gifts and prospect research offices and how we have developed a robust framework to identify and qualify new prospects with the capability of making transformational gifts. We will discuss our initial results, successes, lessons learned and how we are using our frontline and prospect research expertise to grow NC State’s pipeline of future, principal gift donors.