How should I score and prioritize prospective LPs?

The seven dimensions

Score each prospect on each dimension, high, medium, or low, using what you can actually establish rather than what you assume.

• Mandate fit. Whether this investor invests in funds of your strategy, stage, geography, and size. The single highest-weight dimension, because a mismatch here cannot be overcome by anything else.
• Cheque size against your fund. Whether their typical commitment is a workable share of your fund. An investor whose minimum would make them forty percent of your fund is a concentration problem for both sides rather than an opportunity.
• Emerging-manager appetite. Whether they invest in first or second funds at all, which is a question of fact that many investors answer publicly and most will answer directly if asked.
• Reachability. Whether you have a credible route: a warm introduction, a prior relationship, a programme with an open application, or a forum they attend.
• Timing. Whether their allocation cycle is open, which for institutional investors is a real calendar and for family offices frequently is not.
• Process load. What committing will cost you in diligence work, which for a two-person firm is a genuine constraint rather than an afterthought.
• Strategic value beyond the cheque. Whether their participation makes the next investor easier, through their name, their diligence, or their network.

Turning scores into a sequence

Four bands, and what each one means for the week ahead.

• High fit and high reachability. Work these first and personally. They are the shortest path to a first close and there are usually fewer of them than a manager expects.
• High fit and low reachability. Worth investing in a route rather than an email. This is where a warm introduction is genuinely worth the effort of finding, and where forums exist for exactly this purpose.
• Low fit and high reachability. The seductive band, because contacting them feels productive. Most misspent fundraising time lives here. Contact them for information rather than for a commitment, which Blueprint's page on the questions a GP should ask a prospective LP covers.
• Low fit and low reachability. Not a prospect. Removing them from the list is the point of scoring, and a list that never shrinks is not being used.

Evidence, judgment, and assumption

Record which of the three each score rests on, because a pipeline built on assumption looks identical to one built on evidence until it fails.

• Evidence. Published mandates, stated programme criteria, a prior conversation, a public commitment to a comparable fund. Verifiable and datable.
• Judgment. Your read on whether the fit is real, which is legitimate and should be labelled.
• Assumption. That an investor will be interested, that a route exists, that timing works. All three are common and none should be scored as evidence.
• The practical test: for every prospect scored high, write down the source of the score. If the source is that somebody said they were a good target, that is an assumption wearing a fact's clothing.
• Practitioner commentary published in June 2026 makes the point about how differently the categories behave: development finance institutions bring a consistent focus on development additionality and reporting requirements beyond standard limited partner terms, while asset managers and sovereign wealth investors carry the highest bar for access, with large ticket sizes, long processes, and a material track record requirement. Scoring an investor without knowing which category logic applies produces a number that means nothing.

Where the answer changes

Five variables that reweight the dimensions rather than change them.

• Fund size. A smaller fund is constrained hardest by cheque size, because most institutional minimums are too large for it.
• Geography. Reaching investors in another country can engage that country's offering rules before any conversation, which turns reachability into a compliance question. Blueprint's page on running a cross-border raise covers the sequencing.
• Strategy. A specialist strategy has a shorter list and a higher hit rate; a generalist one has the opposite and needs harder prioritisation.
• Vehicle. Some investors cannot commit to certain structures at all, which is a fit question with a factual answer.
• Where you are in the raise. Before a first close, weight strategic value higher; after it, weight process load higher, because you now have investors to report to as well as to find.

What this framework does not do

It cannot tell you who will commit. No scoring system can, and a high score means only that the conversation is worth your time.

It also contains no mandate, ticket size, allocation, or process for any named investor, because those are not published and inventing them would produce a confident list of fabrications. Every dimension above is something you research or ask.

Nothing here scores your fund. The score ranks prospects so that a small team can sequence its own week, and Blueprint does not grade managers.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, securities, or investment advice.