Professional advisor recruitment opportunities allow you to build and track relationships with advisors who may refer donors to your organization. Stages, tasks, and notes provide structure and reportability throughout the evolution of the relationship.
Building professional advisor relationships is organic by nature. Unlike opportunity types with a defined set of repeatable tasks, the timing and sequence of outreach with a professional advisor will vary depending on the individual and the situation. Conversations ebb and flow, and the path from initial identification to active advocacy may look different for every advisor.
For additional opportunity type examples, see Example Opportunities with Stages and Tasks. For foundational setup guidance, see Opportunities Overview.
Who: Donor development and planned giving staff who manage professional advisor relationships and build referral networks on behalf of their organization.
When to Use Professional Advisor Recruitment Opportunities
Use a professional advisor recruitment opportunity type to:
- Build a partnership or advisor program with professional advisors to grow your organization's referral network.
- Track engagement with attorneys, financial planners, or other professional advisors from initial identification through active advocacy.
- Track a pipeline of prospective professional advisors, documenting outreach, conversations, and touchpoints over time.
- Coordinate recurring outreach and check-ins with advisors over a longer span of time without losing track of the relationship history.
- Document referral activity and link advisors to the clients they refer to your organization.
Suggested Stages and Tasks
Suggested Professional Advisor Recruitment Stages
Stages for a professional advisor recruitment opportunity type can reflect the steps in your organization's relationship development process with advisors. The stages below are a suggested starting point.
- Identify - The advisor has been identified as a potential partner and may or may not yet have a profile in CommunitySuite or any direct relationship with the organization.
- Awareness - Initial outreach has been made and active two-way engagement has begun.
- Interest - Advisor has engaged and expressed interest in the relationship.
- Engagement - Active relationship building is in progress.
- Advocate - Advisor is actively referring clients or supporting your organization's work.
Suggested Professional Advisor Recruitment Task and Note Types
Task and note types for a professional advisor recruitment opportunity type can reflect the activities and touchpoints in your recruitment workflow. The task and note types below are a suggested starting point.
- Call - Reach out to introduce the organization or follow up on a conversation.
- Visit - Meet to discuss the organization's work, giving options, and how professional advisors can support their clients' philanthropic goals.
- Email - Send information about the organization, planned giving options, or resources relevant to the advisor's clients.
- Information Learned - Things discovered about the advisor's professional life, clients, interests, and how they work.
- Biographical Information - Personal background details about the advisor as an individual.
- Update Profile - Capture profile-level updates including linking related profiles, tagging areas of expertise, and recording referral activity.
Configuration Tips
Define Engagement Criteria
Before creating opportunities for prospective advisors, consider defining what engagement signals indicate a prospect is ready for more active outreach. This could include a certain number of event registrations or attendance, consistent email opens and click-throughs, or direct outreach initiated by the advisor. Having clear criteria helps donor development staff make consistent, informed decisions about when to move a prospect from the pipeline list into an active opportunity, rather than relying solely on instinct.
Leverage Campaigns Engagement
Campaigns includes marketing campaign types for tracking email lists, newsletters, and mailings, and event campaign types for managing event registrations and attendance. Both are visible directly on the advisor's profile and reportable. These data give donor development staff a clear record of which campaigns a prospect has been included on and which events they have registered for and attended.
Knowing how many events a prospect has registered for versus actually attended, combined with their email campaign history, gives donor development staff a fuller picture of who is most actively engaged with the foundation.
A regular, recurring email series for professional advisors is a passive but effective way to keep the foundation top of mind with prospects. Email open and click-through rates are tracked separately in the email management software used to build and send the campaign, and can complement what is visible in CommunitySuite. This combined view can help prioritize which prospects are ready for more active outreach and who may be ready for a new opportunity to be created.
Track and Segment Your Prospect Pipeline
Profile Types
Tagging advisor profiles with a prospective professional advisor profile type creates a running list of prospects that can be reviewed and updated continuously. This list serves as the foundation of a professional advisor opportunity pipeline, making it easy to identify who is being cultivated and who is ready for an opportunity to be created. Reporting on this profile type gives donor development staff a clear view of the full prospect landscape at any point in time.
Engagement Strategies
Organizations may also use engagement strategies on the advisor's profile record to support segmentation and reporting. Engagement strategies allow donor development staff to group advisors into a defined segment, such as a professional advisor tier or cultivation group, making it easy to prioritize outreach across the full advisor network without repeatedly building custom lists.
Service Areas
Service areas can be used to capture the geographic region an advisor works in, which is useful for organizations that manage advisor relationships across multiple regions or communities.
Build a Complete Picture with Profile Links
In addition to connecting the individual advisor's profile to the opportunity, link their firm's organization profile as well. This provides a complete picture of the professional relationship and supports reporting on advisor engagement at both the individual and firm level.
As the advisor begins referring clients, link each client's profile to the advisor's profile using the Client and Professional Advisor profile links. Over time, this builds a clear picture of how many clients the advisor has referred and supports long-term tracking of the advisor's impact on your organization.
Build Tasks on Demand
Because professional advisor relationships develop organically, this opportunity type is well suited to building tasks as needed rather than copying from a template. Donor development staff can add tasks when they initially create the opportunity record to plan outreach steps for that stage. As the relationship evolves, staff can document conversations or track follow-up items ad hoc rather than working from a predetermined list that may not fit every situation.
Your organization's workflow may be more structured, however, and a defined opportunity template for professional advisor recruitment may be the right fit. A template opportunity is an existing opportunity record preconfigured and copied each time a new professional advisor opportunity is created. It can include a default staff assignment and any tasks that apply consistently across advisor relationships.
Use Recurring Tasks
The Recurring Interval field on a task allows donor development staff to set a monthly or quarterly check-in reminder without having to manually create a new task each time. This is particularly useful for professional advisor relationships that are active over a longer span of time and require consistent but flexible touchpoints.
Example Professional Advisor Recruitment Scenario
The example scenario below is outlined as a way to demonstrate how stages, tasks, and opportunity management all work together. It is not recommended as a definitive professional advisor recruitment workflow and may differ from your organization's activities.
Stage 1: Identify Stage
Identify: Identify the Prospect
The goal of the identification stage is to identify prospective professional advisors that might be good candidates for approaching with information to learn more about the organization.
Leslie East, a financial planner, discovers via social media that a planned giving seminar is being hosted by a local community foundation and registers to attend.
Rebekah Betchler, the donor development staff with the community foundation, conducts planned outreach with seminar attendees.
Leslie works with a broad client base that includes individuals and families in the community who are considering long-term charitable giving strategies.
Rebekah identifies Leslie as a strong prospect for her professional advisor advocacy effort.
Identify: Create and Tag the Profile
Leslie's profile was created in CommunitySuite when she registered for the seminar through the foundation's event campaign. Rebekah checks and sees that Leslie's firm does not already have a profile record in CommunitySuite, so she creates one.
Identify: Link the Advisor to Their Firm
Rebekah links both profiles together with a profile relationship.
Rebekah can now see the relationship linking Leslie's individual profile with her own financial planning firm's organization profile.
Identify: Tag the Profile
Rebekah tags Leslie's profile with a prospective professional advisor profile type for internal tracking purposes. She will use this for reporting and pipeline management.
Rebekah maintains an ongoing list of prospects by regularly reviewing and updating profiles tagged with the prospective professional advisor profile type she created. This running list helps Rebekah track who is being cultivated and identify when a prospect is ready for a new opportunity.
This example illustrates one way to use profile types as part of an ongoing prospect management workflow, showing how a simple tagging practice can support a broader relationship development strategy over time.
Identify: Research the Advisor and Firm
Before reaching out, Rebekah does some background research on Leslie and her firm. She reviews Leslie's LinkedIn profile, the firm's website, and any mutual connections to get a sense of Leslie's client base, areas of expertise, and community involvement.
Rebekah logs Biographical Information and Information Learned notes directly on Leslie's profile and on the firm's profile record to capture what she learns. This gives her useful context going into the first outreach and ensures the information is on record for future reference.
Identify: Add to Mailing Lists
When Leslie RSVP'd for the event, she also opted in to the newsletter during checkout, so she can also be added to future mailing lists and event invitation campaigns that are managed in CommunitySuite.
Rebekah also adds Leslie to the marketing campaign she manages just for professional advisors. This email series provides frequent emails with charitable giving tidbits and resources. This is different than the main foundation newsletter email that goes out monthly.
A regular, recurring email series is how Rebekah keeps the foundation top of mind with her network of professional advisors and keeps prospects engaged. Advisors become better informed about the charitable giving vehicles available through the foundation, allowing them to better serve their clients, and come to see the foundation as a wealth of knowledge and a valuable resource.
Identify: Evaluate Engagement
After some time on Rebekah's prospective professional advisor profile type list, Leslie has opened and clicked through articles from the professional advisor marketing email campaign, showing great engagement with the content. She has also registered for a few future professional advisor events.
Rebekah tracks Leslie's event registrations via Campaigns and monitors email engagement through the email management software she uses to create and send the marketing emails. This engagement activity is what signals to Rebekah that Leslie is ready for a more intentional outreach effort and an opportunity to be created.
Identify: Create the Opportunity Record
Rebekah creates a professional advisor recruitment opportunity on Leslie's profile. She assigns the opportunity to herself because she is the staff member responsible for managing professional advisor relationships.
Once created, the opportunity is automatically set to the first stage, Identify.
Identify: Create Opportunity Tasks
With the opportunity record in place, Rebekah adds tasks to map out the outreach steps she knows she will need to complete for this stage. Having tasks defined ahead of time allows her to plan for them in her workday and ensures nothing is missed as the relationship progresses.
Rebekah adds an Email task to track the follow-up outreach and an Update Profile task for any additional profile updates she will need to do.
Identify: Add the Firm as a Connected Profile
Rebekah then adds the firm profile as a Connected Profile on the opportunity record.
Identify: Confirm the Connection
Rebekah is now also able to see the connection on the opportunity and via East Financial Planning's profile on the Engagement tab.
Stage 2: Awareness Stage
The goal of the awareness stage is to make initial outreach to the prospect and begin building active two-way engagement.
Awareness: Advance the Opportunity Stage
With the groundwork in place, Rebekah advances the opportunity from the Identify stage to Awareness, reflecting that outreach is now underway.
Awareness: Initial Outreach
Having done her research during the Identify stage, Rebekah follows up after the seminar with an email thanking Leslie for attending and sharing additional resources about the organization's planned giving options. She completes the Email task to document that the outreach was made. This meaningful touchpoint marks the beginning of active two-way engagement.
Awareness: Document the Response
As responses come in, Rebekah logs any replies as notes on the opportunity record. Rebekah may be managing outreach with several prospective advisors at the same time, so keeping notes current ensures she has context readily available when she returns to each relationship.
Awareness: Complete and Document the Tasks
Rebekah returns to the tasks she created during the Identify stage and marks the Update Profile tasks complete, adding notes summarizing the work completed. This is a helpful tracking tool for Rebekah to stay on top of small but important administrative tasks related to the recruitment process and overall health of the CRM information she relies on in her work.
Stage 3: Interest Stage
Goals of the interest stage are to help Leslie understand the foundation's mission, the giving vehicles available to her clients, and establish Rebekah as a trusted contact who is only a phone call or email away.
Interest: The First Conversation
Leslie responds positively and expresses interest in learning more about how the community foundation can support her clients' philanthropic goals.
Rebekah schedules a lunch meeting with Leslie to discuss giving vehicles, fund types, and how she works with professional advisors.
Interest: Create Opportunity Tasks
Rebekah adds a Visit task to track the upcoming meeting with Leslie, along with follow-up tasks to capture next steps after the conversation.
Interest: Track Activity and Follow-Up
Rebekah completes the Visit task after the lunch meeting and enters a note documenting what was discussed, including how Leslie works with clients, the types of clients she serves, and where their work aligns in supporting people in their personal philanthropy.
Rebekah logs Information Learned or Biographical Information notes to capture additional details about Leslie's client base, areas of interest, and Leslie's growing familiarity with the community foundation's work.
Interest: Activity and Notes Roll Up
After each subsequent meeting or conversation, Rebekah adds notes to document Leslie's areas of interest and any details learned about her during the conversations. Because opportunity activity and notes automatically display on Leslie's profile record, Rebekah has a complete picture of recent activity and conversation history whether she is viewing the opportunity or Leslie's profile directly.
The Engagement tab displays the opportunity record along with the current stage and the due date of the next open task, making it easy to see where the relationship stands at a glance.
Because Rebekah logged notes both by completing opportunity tasks and by adding notes directly to the opportunity record, the Notes tab on Leslie's profile shows each note with the type, date, author, and the opportunity it is associated with.
Stage 4: Engagement Stage
The goal of the engagement stage is to build a deeper relationship with the professional advisor leading to referrals. This stage could take a longer span of time as it can be a mix of planned outreach or events and organic interaction.
Organizations with an established advisor program may have defined benchmarks to indicate engagement levels, such as a certain number of attended events over a set period of time, that inform how stewardship is customized for each advisor.
Engagement: Create Opportunity Tasks
Rebekah adds Call, Visit, and Email tasks ahead of planned touchpoints to keep outreach on track throughout this stage.
For recurring check-ins, Rebekah uses the Recurring Interval field on opportunity tasks to set monthly or quarterly reminders to reach out to Leslie. This ensures consistent touchpoints are built into her workflow without having to manually create a new task each time.
Engagement: Ongoing Events and Contact
Leslie attends additional events hosted by the foundation or professional association events held in the region that Rebekah also attends or presents at.
Rebekah maintains regular contact, sharing relevant resources, and introducing her to other staff or board members. Each planned touchpoint is completed and logged using the appropriate opportunity task type, Call, Visit, or Email, so the full history of the relationship is documented on the opportunity record.
Leslie also remains active on the foundation's professional advisor marketing email series, continuing to receive regular communications that keep her informed and the foundation top of mind.
As new interactions arise organically, Rebekah logs notes on the opportunity record with the appropriate note type to capture what was discussed or learned.
Engagement: A Referral Opportunity Emerges
As the relationship deepens, referral opportunities begin to arise. Leslie and Rebekah discuss specific client situations, including clients who may have an interest in program areas the foundation supports like the local food bank, backpack programs, or early childhood education.
One of those conversations leads to a tangible referral. A client of Leslie's is interested in opening a new fund at the foundation and requests that Leslie be included in the conversations about it. As they work together to get the new fund plans created, the working relationship between Leslie and the foundation, specifically with Rebekah, is solidified.
Leslie has now seen what the process looks like firsthand and sees the delight of her client in making her charitable wishes a reality and supporting local causes she cares about.
Leslie is excited to refer more clients to the community foundation because she knows they are a deeply connected community partner with extensive knowledge of local needs, resources, and giving opportunities that can help her clients make meaningful, informed decisions about their philanthropy. She trusts that the foundation will be a good steward of her clients' legacies, turning their charitable intentions into lasting impact for generations.
Stage 5: Advocate Stage
The goal of the advocate stage is to receive regular referrals from the professional advisor and remain top of mind when any charitable giving strategy discussions arise with clients. The professional advisor is confident that the organization is an excellent partner in philanthropy and trusts that their clients will be well served and happy.
Advocate: Document Referral Activity
Rebekah updates the opportunity stage to Advocate to reflect Leslie's active referral status and documents referral activity by adding Leslie via the Professional Advisors field to relevant opportunity records of her referred clients, and as new referrals come in, Rebekah links Leslie and her firm's profile to each client using Client and Professional Advisor profile links.
This way Rebekah will see at a glance when making a new opportunity, if that person is connected to Leslie, she includes adding Leslie as a Professional Advisor to the opportunity as a standard part of the process of new opportunity record creation.
Rebekah can now also see on Leslie's profile all the clients she is connected with. As more referrals come in this list will grow.
Rebekah includes a note on Leslie's opportunity record that connects all the dots.
Advocate: Track the Relationship
Rebekah can also use reporting to see all opportunities that have Leslie connected as a Professional Advisor for long term tracking. Over time, this activity builds a clear picture of Leslie's engagement and loyalty as a referring advisor.
For organizations with an established advisor program, tracking referral volume and activity alongside engagement strategy data can help identify which advisors are most active, recognize top referrers, and ensure the pipeline of advisor relationships remains strong even as advisors change firms or roles over time.
Advocate: Close the Opportunity
Rebekah now considers the relationship fully established and the opportunity goals met, she marks the opportunity complete and successful. The opportunity record remains on Leslie's profile, preserving the full history of the relationship for future reference and reporting.