I was asked a question recently which brought back memories of having asked the same question myself some years back.

The question was “what does the “Request prospect manager” button do in Blackbaud CRM™? I click it, enter details and save, but where does the information go? The button doesn’t appear to do anything.”

It was a question I had asked when I first started using Blackbaud CRM™; the answer I received at the time was “don’t worry about that button, we’re not going to use it.” Sometime later, with a little more CRM knowledge under my belt, and a curiosity strong enough to kill the proverbial cat, I worked out what the button did, and its connection to the Prospect Requests tab (another feature I was told not to concern myself about).

So, what does the button do, and why don’t I see the results anywhere? I should perhaps start by clarifying the second part of that question – I actually should see the results somewhere, I just may not know where to look!

The button (located on an assigned prospect’s Prospect Team tab) is there to allow a fundraiser (we’ll call him Prospect Manager A) to ask the currently assigned Prospect Manager (we’ll call her Prospect Manager B) if said Prospect can be reassigned to them. Once the request has been submitted it will appear on Prospect Manager B’s Prospect Requests tab under the Requests pending approval section. It also appears on Prospect Manager A’s Prospect Requests tab under the Requests made by section, but unless you know what the process is doing it’s perhaps not an area you would think to look.

Assuming Prospect Manager B is happy to relinquish said prospect, she will click the Approve selected button, and the prospect is reassigned. The prospect will then appear in Prospect Manager A’s portfolio and the prospect manager history is updated on the prospect’s record.

It’s a useful feature for reassigning a one-off prospect. It gives flexibility for fundraising staff to move prospects between portfolios without the need for centralized control. It’s designed to work on a one-off prospect, it’s not a bulk update action.

But perhaps it’s not for everyone. Some fundraising teams may decide that the task of prospect assignment belongs with the prospect research team rather than the individual fundraiser. If this is your setup and you don’t think you’ll ever use this feature, you may want to think about hiding the button along with the prospect requests tab. When I had asked about the functionality all those years back, the intent had been to hide the feature thus avoiding the curiosity of those who came after me.

Buttons and tabs can be hidden by someone with a system administrator role. If that is you, navigate to a prospect’s prospect team tab and click the page design button in the top right corner of the screen. In the Prospect Manager section click the Properties button and scroll down the page section window until you find Actions. Click the ellipsis, select Request prospect manager, and click Edit. The field you are looking for is the “Visible” field.

By default it will be set to =Page.Fields!HASPROSPECTMANAGER. This means that the field is visible if the prospect currently has a prospect manager; you will want to set it to False (meaning not visible). Click OK, OK again, and Save. The button has gone!

Similarly, with the Prospect Requests tab, navigate to a Fundraisers page or constituent record, and while in page design mode, click the Edit tabs button at the top of the page. Scroll through the list of tabs until you find the Fundraiser Prospect Requests tab and click Edit. Change the “Visible” field from True to False. Click OK, and then Save.

Note: If the idea of hiding buttons and tabs seems a little daunting, don’t worry, you can go back in to the options in exactly the same way, and set them back to what they were previously – it is worth taking note of expressions however in case you have difficulty recreating them.