Every development director has built a gift pyramid at some point, usually in a spreadsheet the week before a feasibility study. The tiers themselves are simple enough to fill in, but what the spreadsheet tends to hide is the prospect math sitting behind each tier. Closing three gifts at the $100K level means having nine to twelve qualified prospects at that level, and most mid-size organizations have four or five. That gap is the actual feasibility question, and it's the number that doesn't show up until someone forces it to.
Here a development director is weighing a $2M capital campaign and wants to see the shape of what that requires before committing to a feasibility study. Claude draws the pyramid inline with the prospect math visible at every tier, and clicking any tier names the gap between what the campaign needs and what a typical organization that size actually has.
We're thinking about a $2M capital campaign. Show me what the gift pyramid needs to look like, meaning how many donors at each tier and how many qualified prospects I'd realistically need behind each one. Let me drag the goal and watch the shape change, and flag the tiers where I'm probably thin.
A goal number is enough to get the shape. Claude uses standard campaign math (roughly a third of the goal from the top one or two gifts, tapering down through five or six tiers, with a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 prospect-to-gift ratio at each level) to fill in the rest. Asking Claude to "flag where I'm probably thin" is what gets you the prospect gap called out rather than just the gift counts.
Nothing to upload. Type the numbers directly in your prompt.
If you have a rough sense of how many qualified major gift prospects you actually have (or a wealth screening export), mention the numbers and Claude will compare your real pipeline against what each tier needs. Without that, Claude uses sector benchmarks for an organization your size, which is usually close enough to spot the gap.
Claude draws a five- or six-tier pyramid with each tier showing three numbers: the gift range, the number of gifts the campaign needs at that level, and the number of qualified prospects that realistically takes. A slider above lets you drag the goal and watch every tier rebuild. Click any tier and a short note compares the prospect requirement against a typical pipeline, which is where the feasibility question actually lives.
Click any tier and Claude compares the prospect requirement against a typical pipeline for an organization your size, naming the gap and the two or three ways campaigns usually close it.
Focus on the $100K to $250K tier. How many qualified prospects do I realistically need, how many does a typical org my size have at that level, and what do campaigns usually do when the gap is that big?
The top of the pyramid carries most of the weight, so telling Claude your lead gift is capped changes everything below it.
Redraw this assuming our lead gift tops out at $250K. What does that do to the rest of the pyramid, and where does the pressure move?
A gift pyramid is a snapshot, but the feasibility question is really about time. Claude can stretch each tier across the months it typically takes to cultivate and close.
For each tier, give me a rough cultivation timeline, meaning how long from first real conversation to close, and lay it out so I can see whether an 18-month campaign is realistic given where our pipeline actually is today.
Asking for "qualified prospects I'd realistically need" is what surfaces the 3-to-1 math rather than just the gift counts. A plainer "show me a gift pyramid" tends to produce the tiers without the pipeline reality check, which is the spreadsheet you already know how to build. "Flag where I'm thin" tells Claude to do the comparison for you rather than just stating the requirements.
The prospect ratios Claude uses are sector rules of thumb, and your actual close rate might be better or worse. If you've run a campaign before and know your top-tier conversion is closer to 2-to-1, tell Claude and the prospect counts will tighten accordingly. The pyramid is a stress test, not a verdict on whether to launch.
Hover over the pyramid for options to copy it as an image for a board or campaign committee deck. Save as Artifact if you want to bring it into a feasibility conversation live and drag the goal while stakeholders watch the prospect requirements move. You can also ask Claude to write the feasibility memo version, turning each tier's gap into a paragraph you'd hand to a consultant or board chair.
