Category Archives: Discussion

#ResearchPride, Advocacy, and Me

4Researchers, Discussion, , , , , , ,

researchpriderainbowAre you proud of the work that you do? Do you get excited about solving information challenges at work? If so, why not take the opportunity this month to share your #ResearchPride?

Because I am proud of the work I do to support not-for-profit organizations, I advocate for the profession in many ways. But I wasn’t always an advocate. It happened over time. My hope is that by sharing my advocacy story with you, you might realize that you, too, have been an advocate for prospect research – probably without really thinking about it. And just maybe you will be inspired to share some #ResearchPride this month with all of us!

I am a Professional

Prospect research has given me a profession where I can utilize the variety of skills I have acquired and apply them to making the world a better place. I have been able to hone my talents with the help of fundraisers and prospect research professionals around the world. It has been extremely rewarding and a tremendous amount of fun!

Being a professional is about more than excelling at work, though. It’s also about being prepared for work and keeping up with trends. I consider myself a fundraiser who specializes in prospect research. Because of this it’s important for me to understand what is happening in philanthropy around the globe and the many ways that impacts my work in research. I also endeavor to keep up with information technology and the changing attitudes to privacy.

My work is more than a j-o-b, it’s a profession. When I am excellent at my work I am advocating for the profession. Staying interested and informed also makes it easy to engage with others about what I do.

I share and engage with the public about my work

When I first began speaking in front of fundraising groups nearly ten years ago, I made a habit of mentioning the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement or APRA (pronounced “APP-rah”). I would ask the room if anyone knew about it. Rarely was a hand raised. When I moved to Tampa Bay, Florida from the mature fundraising environment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I was challenged – not only did people not know about APRA, but most fundraisers didn’t know what prospect research was either. Yikes!

Those were the pretty early years of electronic screenings. I often think of those first vendors such as P!N, Blackbaud, and WealthEngine as early advocates for the prospect research profession. Their marketing efforts were very successful. Suddenly fundraisers had heard about prospect research – and they thought it was a software product!

While that was annoying, at least it opened the doors to better conversation. I love what I do and enjoy telling people all about it – anyone in fact! People greet my explanations with curiosity and frequently more questions. Sometimes they share stories with me about their interactions with a charity of choice. By sharing my profession with others, I’m also encouraging people to have positive relationships with not-for-profit organizations. Advocacy is awesome!

I collaborate with and support the growth of my colleagues

While I was growing Aspire Research Group, I volunteered with APRA Florida, including serving a term as president. I would also volunteer at APRA conferences and it was a great way to meet new people. All of that felt pretty comfortable – almost easy. But then two big choices came my way that threw me out of my comfort zone and changed the way I viewed my role as an advocate for the profession.

First, two people at my local Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Suncoast chapter encouraged me to answer a call for authors to write about prospect research for the Wiley/AFP Fund Development Series. This was an amazing opportunity to share my profession with the more than 30,000 members of AFP. It was also quite terrifying. Sure I was an excellent researcher, but I had very little experience with really large organizations or higher education.

That’s when I decided I would collaborate with someone. Although I barely knew her, I called up Helen Brown. She was the biggest name I knew in our profession and she had the complementary experience. She said “yes”! We had some of the best discussions as we aligned our experiences under a shared philosophy about our work. As we each wrote our chapters there was continued discussion. It was an exhausting and exhilarating experience. And eventually there was a book, Prospect Research for Fundraisers: The Essential Handbook.

The second event was as the result of success. Aspire Research Group was growing and I reached out to other independent and freelance researchers. It didn’t always go well. Sometimes I knew things they didn’t, sometimes they knew more than I did, and often they did not have access to the paid tools needed to do their best work. Should I invest in those relationships? Should I share knowledge and tools with -gasp- my competitors?

What would you do?

Recently I saw something like this on social media:

  • CEO: We need to get training for our employees
  • CFO: But what if they get the training and then leave for our competitors?
  • CEO: What if they don’t get the training and they stay?

That captures my final decision. I did share knowledge and tools with colleagues that I developed a close working relationship with and I have never regretted it. A small group of us are now exploring ways in which we could more formally work together and retain our autonomy.

I want our profession to be full of highly-trained, well-resourced individuals! Prospect research professionals are some of the most intelligent, creative, and collaborative people I have ever had the privilege of working with.

A big THANK YOU to Helen Brown for launching #ResearchPride month two years ago and for inviting bloggers to share the love!

Now it’s your turn… consider engaging with the #ResearchPride hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or any other social media platform where you participate. Comment on this blog post or visit the other blog posts listed below and share your thoughts there.

But most importantly, find your voice and speak. Practice your explanation of your work. Test it out on everyone who looks remotely interested. Share your #ResearchPride!

Other #ResearchPride Articles

Are You Hiring a Prospect Researcher?

4Fundraisers, Discussion, , , , , ,

WorkSMI am thrilled to share a guest post from Gil Israeli, Director of Prospect Research and Senior Writer for the American Technion Society.

Let’s say you’re a front-line fundraiser and your organization is providing a prospect researcher to support your work. If you’re new to this professional collaboration, what should you look for when you’re interviewing candidates?

Optimism

Every fundraiser knows that an ongoing normal part of their business involves rejection – rejection by prospective donors. Initially, most researchers are unaware of the challenges faced by fundraisers (be they professionals or volunteers). In an earlier position, one grant-seeking professor soberly told me that his (better-than-average) rate of success was one funded proposal for every five that he submitted to government agencies.

It takes an incredible level of optimism to be a fundraiser and this also applies to the researcher who is one degree removed from direct contact with the prospect. Sometimes an inexperienced researcher has limited contact with the fundraisers. This type of isolation can make it challenging to keep abreast of the broader issues which affect the organization. A good dose of optimism may be the most important trait in a good researcher. It starts the researcher on a solid path to acquiring essential skills and supports him or her in the next career activity: branching out into their organization to know its people and learn its processes.

Curiosity

There are three types of knowledge that are critical to a researcher’s success: knowledge of research methods and data; knowledge of one’s organization and its projects; and knowledge of the overall fundraising process and the actual industry. The best researchers go well beyond the first realm.

Not only do they know how to “drill down” deep to find a level of data that provides a detailed research-based story of the prospect, they need to make connections for the fundraiser that will apply the data to his cultivation efforts. This requires that the researcher understand how the fundraiser strategizes and even interacts with prospects. It also requires organizational knowledge, e.g., in a university operation (and most others), a capital project requires a cash gift to break ground. This information would figure into your analysis of a prospect’s liquidity for a capital gift. A researcher needs to have genuine curiosity that extends beyond the mere data.

Understanding all aspects of the organization’s work enables the researcher to prepare actionable research for the fundraiser. Having a second set of eyes – “fundraiser eyes” – enables the researcher to envision how a prospect’s data may ideally fit into the mission of the organization.

Good interpersonal skills also come into play which aid the researcher as he or she gets to know one’s colleagues and the rich world of fundraising practices, policies and prospect interactions.

Perseverance

Perseverance, the high-octane extension of curiosity and another critical characteristic, is going the extra distance in your work in the most calculated way. It is fueled by curiosity and the knowledge it brings. And perseverance is exhibited best in the type of research reports that researchers produce.

Today, generally, you’ll find two types of prospect reports. One, via the profile template, is organized in sections, which is particularly useful for exporting data from your database. However, it may lack certain types of information which can only be expressed in anecdotal reports of actionable information. This type of information comes out especially in the narrative report and can appear in a database’s open text field. You can also generate a final product that combines these two types of reports. So, what are the benefits of this?

I recently reported on a Boston-based technology magnate. My own position supports a major university with interests in science, technology, medicine, engineering and education programs. As the president of the university was to meet with this individual, I prepared a hybrid report which combined the template (with an estimated capacity rating, assets, boards, etc.) and additional, necessary, narrative sections. These required “insider knowledge,” which I had developed through 13 years of experience with the organization.

In the narrative parts, I was able to draw inferences and connect relevant information such as the prospect’s boards and past gifts to the immediate interests and current project needs of the university. For example, the prospect was critically involved in developing a national database to record comprehensive data about students in U.S. public school systems. Accordingly, I was able to discuss and recommend technology infrastructure projects that would enhance the university’s services to all students and also library projects that would serve the entire university community. The report helped the president strategize at a much higher level before even meeting the prospect. This type of “added-value” research requires real perseverance as it requires that the researcher maintain the most up-to-date knowledge of your organization’s work and the provision that you productively integrate it into your research reports.

Gaining Insight to Know When You’re Off-Target

Over time, perseverance will also bring the researcher experience to better evaluate the “cash value” of his or her own work. It’s also important to be able to recognize when research doesn’t meet the test of practicality. On one occasion, I identified a family that owned a lucrative multigenerational business with several dozen restaurants on the east coast. After my excitement peaked, I noted that their corporate headquarters and residences were located in a locale that made fundraiser visits exorbitantly expensive when compared with our usual visits to prospects. Even more so, allocating funds for these visits would have diverted the monies from other good uses, e.g., special events where several major gift prospects could be gathered and engaged. In this case, my knowledge of the fundraising operation (a business perspective) also helped me determine that this proactive research was simply not practical and actionable. I had gained this knowledge over years as I became involved in additional meetings and had the opportunity to converse more with my fundraiser colleagues.  And it made me better at my job.

Creativity

Prospect research reports can become homogeneous and suffer the problem of omission when we allow ourselves to be limited by our tools. For example, researchers need a reasonable level of comfort with numbers and formula to effectively calculate capacity ranges and ratings. Most of these measures of prospect capacity are then augmented with advanced knowledge that we have gained by analyzing other types of assets such as the value of private companies, pensions, collections, etc. Again, curiosity comes into play and in multiple ways.

Because each prospect is unique, each prospect research report may also need to be unique and require its own creative approach. Creativity turns out to be the critical characteristic for the researcher who can adapt to different prospect types. Learn the rules and then break them at the right time in a practical way for insightful returns.

Conclusion

We all know the litany: computer-writing-communication-analytical skills are essential to high performance in nearly all of today’s urban-based information-processing desk jobs.

I’ve focused on strong optimism, expansive curiosity, unflagging perseverance and practical creativity because they are often not given the explicit attention that they should receive when hiring a prospect researcher. A really good prospect researcher has these characteristics with the skill sets we expect and a social aptitude for connecting with fundraising colleagues. Without these characteristics, he or she remains tied to the first literal level of discovered data and is unable to further contextualize it for strategic use for his or her fundraiser colleagues.

The best news is that when the sparks of these four qualities exist, they can be nurtured with one’s colleagues for mutual professional development and fruitful collaboration.  Finally, these qualities are akin to sustainable energy: they can keep the prospect researcher growing throughout his or her career.

About the Author

Gil_Israeli_photoGil Israeli serves as the Director of Prospect Research and Senior Writer for the American Technion Society, which supports the Technion, Israel’s premier university advancing science, technology and medicine. He holds degrees from Johns Hopkins, Columbia University and the University of Virginia. He edits fundraisingcompass.com , a blog which presents pieces by seasoned fundraising professionals.

Common Prospect Research Myths

4Fundraisers, 4Researchers, Discussion, , , , , , , , , ,
magicLampSM
For best results, rub vigorously!

I sent a request out to prospect researchers on the APRA PRSPCT-L list-serv asking them to share common prospect research myths. Following is a summary of my favorite responses!

Myth: Everyone over age 60 is a planned gift prospect.

Fact: While age is a factor, affinity is also an important predictor of planned giving and statistical data modeling is even better at predicting who is a likely planned giver.

Myth: Lots of real estate holdings makes someone a major/planned gift prospect.

Fact: We have a lot of real estate investors, large and small, in the Pacific NW.  People buy a few apartment or commercial buildings as a retirement investment and they accrue in value, so development officers think the prospects can give big.  I have to educate them that, unless they are giving us the building, capacity is based on income from the building and that I calculate capacity differently for personal real estate and income-generating real estate.

Myth: We need to know the prospect’s net worth.

Fact: Net worth is all of someone’s assets minus all of their liabilities. We can’t know all of either, because that includes a lot of private information.

Myth: Prospect researchers can find anything about anyone, including: how much is in their bank accounts; personal tax records; credit history; social security numbers; or wills.

Fact: Much information is private, like the examples above, and is not available to us legally or ethically.

Myth: Google. You can find everything on Google. Researching is really just Googling a prospect. “I don’t need you—I use Google.” “If you just look harder, you can find out everything about him.”

Fact: Internet search engines can only find about 20% of what is available on the internet. Just ask Mike Bergman who coined the phrase.

Myth: You can just get a report from the “database” with everything, right?

Fact: While software companies that pull information together for us have gotten very sophisticated, there is no “one” database.

Myth: A prospect can be fully researched in less than half an hour, especially with one of those fancy research services we subscribe to—just push a button and a complete profile comes out, right?. Or better yet, do a “quick 10 minute profile” on a prospect. (Sorry, but is this ever possible — ten minutes?)

Fact: Searched, verified, and synthesized information barely starts with an hour. Anything less risks being haphazard, which might help in a pinch, but is far from ideal.

Myth: Very little data about a prospect is needed in order for the researcher to produce a comprehensive profile (such as: name spelled correctly, address, occupation, how someone is related to our organization).

Fact: Names are far more common than most people suspect and a good match requires as much starting information as possible.

Myth: When asked for “a little more information about so-and-so,” true prospect researchers intuitively know exactly how much more information is enough.

Fact: Good communication is a two-way street between the requestor and the researcher. Some process or structure usually helps too.

…And the last MYTH? Well, it isn’t one really. It’s a FACT: In ancient times, before the discoveries of electricity, personal computers, and the internet, prospect researchers lived in lamps and responded to vigorous rubbing.

Other Post You Might Like:

Can you really trust prospect research? 10 things you should know

Do Your Own Research? You Bet!

To Certify or Not To Certify – That is the Question

4Researchers, Discussion, , , ,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEvery now again the question surfaces, like a blur in the photograph that may or may not be the Loch Ness Monster – should the prospect research field have its own certification? Many professions have certifications to demonstrate proficiency and professionalism in the field. Why not us?

Who is Doing It?

It is often helpful to look at other similar or related fields to discover how they have solved the same problem. For this article I considered the following certifications:

There are many certificate programs offered at nonprofit centers and universities around the country in these professions, but there is something special about having the premier association for your industry offer certification. It implies that a broad swathe of practitioners labored in love to create a comprehensive evaluation of what makes someone in the field good, if not great.

And many times it has the added benefit of being supported by lower costs and financial support in the form of scholarships.

What Do They Have That We Don’t?

Fundraising and library sciences are well-established fields so it’s not so surprising that they would have certifications. And since most in the library sciences receive a Master’s degree in library sciences, it’s not surprising that their certifications represent specialized areas of the field.

But if a relatively new profession like competitive intelligence has a certification, what might be holding prospect research back?

Maybe they have something that we don’t – a name for their professions … Fund Raising .. Competitive Intelligence .. Library Science

A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

Prospect research is widely recognized within the field of fundraising. Do we need a better, more appropriate, more all-encompassing name?

As many of you know, I am launching a new company, Prospect Research Institute, and am doing phone surveys (so far 44 calls and 19 states plus Canada and Australia) as well as an online survey.

I was taken by surprise to discover that most of the people I have spoken to felt “prospect research” was limited to searching for information on identified prospects and did NOT include data analytics or prospect management.

But then during the ensuing conversation many lapsed unconsciously into using “prospect research” to reference the entire field.

APRA has come out clearly on the subject naming the field “prospect development”.  If we had a recognized name, would certification would follow?

Consider the association examples given. AFP’s CFRE is essentially a test you can take after meeting certain criteria, such as years in the field and dollars raised and requires continuing education credits. SCIP and SLA require completion of a series of courses as well as testing.

Even starting without a readily identified name, if there is a measure of the tasks required to perform our jobs, then training and tests can be developed and shaped into certifications. Perhaps then the names of those certifications could reshape the language of the professionals performing those jobs.

I don’t about you, but I am eagerly anticipating the release of APRA’s newest endeavor – The Body of Knowledge – which will outline what it takes to be good at what we do. And by that I mean prospect search, analytics and management.

graduationcapSMBut Do We Want to be Certified?

The remaining question to be deliberated is not can we have a certification, but do we need or want one?

Common sense suggests that a certification is useful for those entering the field or looking for promotion to a new skill level or skill set. Certifications demonstrate proficiency to employers, especially when they include testing and have a strong reputation.

But many questions remain.

  • In our relatively young profession, will a certification become outdated each time information technology creates new terms and expands the scope of the tasks we perform?
  • Would certification give birth to future generations of researchers with a higher quality, more uniform set of skills?
  • Would different levels of certification encourage more people to join the field or crossover to ever-growing specialties?
  • With a certified “definition” of our field would fundraising employers better recognize our value and create more specific jobs?

Speculation is all part of processing information and defining our future deliberately. I’d love to hear your speculations and opinions on certification in the prospect research field!

Do Your Own Research? You Bet!

4Fundraisers, Discussion, , , , , , ,

KeyboardCoffeeSXCsmOne of the hot topics in the prospect research field is whether we researchers are going to be replaced by all of the great software products out there. With the click of your mouse you can search multiple public records databases and spit a profile out of your printer. Even data analytics has become more accessible with easy software interfaces. When it’s that easy, you’d be crazy not to do your own research! Right?

Well, nothing involving people and the parting of their money is ever that simple, is it? Yes, you can find raw information about your prospects and have it formatted into a printable document or have key items seamlessly imported into the donor database record. No, a software program can’t verify that information for accuracy or provide useful insights into donor motivation and wealth.

But there’s way more to the fundraising role of prospect research than donor profiling.

Prospect research is about managing information in a manner that leads prospects toward a gift. In that sense, everyone in an organization plays a prospect research role at some level. Program staff record accurate contact and participation information. Gift entry records the gifts. Frontline fundraisers record information about face-to-face contact.

The professional prospect researcher uses her skills in process and analysis to corral all the information and produce actionable insights, leading to solicitations and stewardship.

Are you confused? Let’s use an analogy.

Fundraisers expect everyone in an organization to participate in fundraising and they work to create a culture of philanthropy. From the janitor to the program staff, all the way up through leadership, everyone is responsible for representing the organization and giving people the opportunity to give in a meaningful way.

The fundraiser uses her skills to coordinate all those messages and contacts with donors and prospective donors, leading to solicitations and stewardship.

Fundraisers focus on messaging and people-to-people contact. Prospect researchers focus on information. They both work together make sure fundraising goals are met.

So, should you do your own research after all?

Of course! In this world we have to be constantly learning and using new tools. There are very few excuses anymore for not making use of software tools that provide you with critical information on your donors at the click of a mouse.

But a professional prospect researcher can take you way beyond prospect profiles and into a world where the power of your fundraising information is harnessed and used to drive your fundraising up to a whole new level of success.

With a prospect research professional your fundraising “shop” becomes a fundraising “machine” – persistently methodical, lean, and more productive.

Care to brag about your professional research staff? Wondering what it takes to find a professional prospect researcher?

Comment below or email Jen at Aspire Research Group.

Other Articles You Might Like:

Yikes! Donor Personality Traits Can be Predicted?

Discussion, Focused Fundraising, , , , , , ,
Who’s watching your brain?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could discover the personalities, values and needs of our donors and prospects? Now we have access to demographic information – things like age, sex, marital status, residence, average income. But what if we could really *know* what makes our prospects tick?

Of course, businesses would love this deeper layer of extremely personal information too. And a group of researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California are getting much closer to making this information accessible. How? Well, just for fun, let’s use the current buzzword – Big Data!

But it’s a little more nuanced than that. Really it’s social media. That’s the place where we bare ourselves the most. We talk with our friends candidly and share our feelings along with facts. Led by Eben Haber, the IBMers are capitalizing on research done by Tal Yarkoni at the University of Colorado on how certain words correlate with certain personality traits. Dr. Yarkoni looked at blogs. Dr. Haber and crew are looking at Twitter.

What do you say in your Twitter feed? A new product created by Dr. Haber and his team is being tested by a financial services company. The claim is that in just 50 tweets it can describe your personality reasonably well. In 200 tweets it gets uncomfortably accurate.

The big question is: Could we use information about personality traits to raise more money?

Up until now, the big data sets have been pretty exclusive to higher education and sometimes other large institutions. This is not because they have so many individual records (although they often do), but because universities have so many pieces of data on each of their alums. They keep track of things like what clubs they belonged to, how many degrees received, events attended, participation in directories and more recently, online alum communities. The local food bank is not likely to ever have that much information about each of its donors. But could organizations have more information in the future?

Multi-channel fundraising – print, email, website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – means that organizations have access to multi-channels of data. This data is attached to specific individuals. Before you can blink your eyes, the software to ride the big social media data beast will drop in price and become more accessible to the masses of nonprofit organizations. Okay, maybe it will take a few eye blinks, but if the past is a good predictor of the future, it is definitely coming.

Right now the most common piece of data we use to determine whether someone has an affinity (likes our org) is giving. We want to see things like frequency, recency and longevity. We can do a wealth screening to identify people capable of giving a lot, but that does not help us turn them into donors – into people who have an affinity for our organization and its work.

Now close your eyes and imagine … wait! read this first before closing your eyes … that you can run your database through a screening that assigns rated personality traits to each constituent record. Ahhhh! Now you can group people by personality traits and create messaging that resonates with who they are – resonates with the core of their personality. WOW! People would convert to donors at amazing rates! Right?

Until that magical day, let’s see if we can’t work on our current messaging. Little things like communicating with donors in the medium in which they like to give. No more of this sending paper to people who have demonstrated online giving. Many organizations are still struggling with what feels like “traditional” message segments, but are quite new to many. Messaging. It’s like exercise and good nutrition. There’s no magic pill (or database screening) that will ever replace it.

Which brings us back to the heart of fundraising – relationship building. Some organizations are better at it than others – regardless of budget size or the depth of data.

So although it is always fun to play with new technology and to imagine a day when science will turn “magic” into a software product, the feet on the ground (you and I) need to stay focused on what builds the best and most relationships with our organizations and missions. The right messages. The phone calls and face-to-face visits. Being real with real people.

P.S. Are you on Twitter? Let’s connect! You can find me @jenfilla I promise I won’t try to predict your personality!!

Other Resources You Might Like

Alert! Speakers Now Give Tweetable Insights

Discussion, , , , , , , ,

As I was honing my tweeting skills at the 2013 AFP International Conference this week, it did occur to me that some conference sessions lent themselves better to tweeting than others. In the same way that the general public has been trained to speak in news-byte sentences in the hopes of being featured on television, clearly some presenters are leading the way in presenting tweetable insights – whether they are doing it consciously or not!

Looking back on the AFP conference session I presented with Helen Brown and Debbie Sokolov, we could have created more tweetable insights in our “theory” overviews, but I don’t regret that we included Debbie’s storytelling. Presenting the structure for thought and learning and then weaving it into a real life story helps with retention and deepens understanding. Stories provide the context to which our brains can connect the theories. Maybe the answer is to provide the tweetable 140-character summary on the PowerPoint slide while the story is being told!

And there is another issue with the tweeting craze and really, with the information overload. As we all board cars, trains and airplanes to head home and return to work, once tweeted, is it forgotten? What do we do with all of the information we learned? How do we act on it? Will we be able to translate a trend or someone else’s story into our reality?

One of the things we lost forever at the end of our presentation on prospect research was the pile business cards people left for us. We turned around and poof! They were gone.

If you were one of those generous card givers, I hope you will comment here or email us so we can continue the conversation. Please also email me, Jen Filla, or Helen Brown or Debbie Sokolov if you learned something new, but are struggling with *exactly* how to implement it, if you need the *detailed* steps to make it happen.

Our presentation was designed to be an overview and yet our attendees were craving the details, the formulas, the exact solutions:

  • Some of that detail is readily available and we can point you to it.
  • Some of your questions can be answered in a short conversation.
  • And sometimes those exact solutions require an assessment and a plan.

For me, the biggest joys at the conference were being a part of the more than 4,000 people dedicated to philanthropy and fundraising and being a part of the giving by contributing a new book, some prospect research tactics and techniques, and new friendships.

About the Author

Jen Filla is president of Aspire Research Group LLC where she works with organizations worried about finding their next big donor, concerned about what size gift to ask for, or frustrated that they aren’t meeting their major gift goals. She is also co-author of Prospect Research for Fundraisers: The Essential Handbook.

You can follow Jen on Twitter: @jenfilla

Seriously? Would a consultant work with You?

4Fundraisers, Discussion, , ,

It’s a tough job to hire a consultant, but have you ever considered how hard it is for consultants to find the right clients? Have you ever stopped to consider if you would make a good client? Maybe it’s a question worth pondering before you spend your hard-fundraised money!

Obviously a consultant is searching for clients who have budget dollars and a need that fits her skillset, and clients are searching for consultants who have great skills and fees within reach. But assuming those two conditions are met, following are five questions I ask when evaluating a potential client and the reverse questions you might ask as you evaluate a consultant.

(1)  Is the client prospect likely to be successful with my help?

I frequently work with major gift programs. The client needs to have fundraisers capable of cultivating and soliciting donors successfully. And those fundraisers need to operate under leadership that provides the setting and the tools for creating a compelling case for support. All the research in the world can’t overcome those two critical elements.

Reverse:  Is the consultant trying to sell me more than I can handle or less than I need? When the project is completed, will I be raising more money than before?

(2)  Does the client prospect have a plan, or are they constantly in crisis mode?

Prospect research provides information, insight and process. When someone is unable to decide on a course of action, changes direction frequently, or has “urgent” requests that are then cancelled, it is often because there is no real overall fundraising plan or strategy for achieving goals. I’m happy to make a sprint when needed, but only when it moves everyone forward, not in a circle.

Reverse:  Does the consultant clearly paint a beginning, middle and end to the project? Does she identify meaningful milestones along the journey?

(3)  How easy is it to communicate with the client prospect?

Every organization is different and I lost my mind-reading talent years ago. If someone is unwilling to take the time have a conversation, I know that there is a good chance I will not meet (unknown) expectations and I probably won’t be able to develop the kind of deeper relationship I enjoy with my best clients. We don’t have to be dearest friends, but I want the opportunity to make my clients very successful. That requires a return phone call.

Reverse:  Does the consultant do a good job of rephrasing my needs accurately and explaining the process without being too detailed? Does the consultant return my phone calls and emails promptly?

(4)  Is the client prospect ready and willing to commit to the project?

Most of my projects require the client to put time, effort and resources into it. From something as simple as setting up a remote login to the database, to planning, evaluating and testing new systems and procedures – all require the client’s time and energy.

Reverse: Has the consultant explained what will be required of me to make the project successful? How will my efforts affect the timing and outcomes of the project?

(5)  Does the client prospect trust me enough to tell me what’s really wrong?

I have been approached by potential clients who want to talk about prospect research, but when we have the conversation, will only describe a perfectly working scenario or will focus on a small problem and refuse to discuss the problem that is impacting dollars raised. Being able to have candid conversations is critical to success. Sometimes trust takes time, and sometimes it never happens.

Reverse: How well does the consultant discuss a solution with me even when it makes me uncomfortable or requires a difficult transition?


When you step back and look at the whole picture, the consultant-client dance is not all that different from most relationships. There needs to be some chemistry – you have to like each other. And you want to agree on fundamental values and philosophies and avoid unproductive drama. Make a list of your basic criteria (such as, must return phone calls promptly) and then have some conversations.

Other Articles You Might Like

5 Ways You Know You Need a Research Consultant

3 Consultant Relationship Types That Succeed. Which One for You?

The Shocking Truth about Prospect Research Consultants!

About the Author

Jen Filla is president of Aspire Research Group LLC where she works with organizations worried about finding their next big donor, concerned about what size gift to ask for, or frustrated that they aren’t meeting their major gift goals.

The Future of Donors in Your Data

Discussion, , , , , , ,

From Pushing information to Partnering to Creating Conversations, prospect research has come a long way to uncover donors in your data.

Before the internet and before relational databases, the world had a different perspective on information. Gathering information, analyzing it and producing a thoughtful presentation that pulled all of the pieces together looked like books, white papers and other time-consuming and laborious efforts. Post internet and relational databases, it can still look like that. But now those books and white papers have a whole lot of other company in the form of shorter and/or more precise groupings of information, and often leave us, the users, to draw our own conclusions.

Pushing Information

Before the world went digital, prospect research required visits to the library, combing through paper files and interviewing people in the organization. After this manual collection, the information was compiled into a profile. You might have gotten suggestions on how to cultivate and what gift to ask for from the prospect, and you might not have. Browsing newspapers and magazines for who’s who in the community was dominated by the front-line fundraisers.

Now, the internet supplies us with extraordinary access to information in our town, state, country and in the world. With some prospects, the challenge is not finding information, but whittling down the information to what is most relevant and useful for fundraising. Relational databases give us the ability to store multiple levels of connecting information, such as all gifts made to a fund over a period of time or one individual’s gifts to a fund over a period of time. We can ask questions that our database can answer quickly and easily. Because of this, prospect researchers have moved out of the library and onto the computer.

Becoming Strategic Partners

For many researchers, we have stopped pushing information and have begun partnering with our front-line fundraisers. We don’t create the same prospect profile for every request. We customize our research to answer the most common and most pressing questions. More and more we are being brought to places like the campaign planning table, where we present information about our donors to assist leadership in making decisions. Questions answered might include, “Do we have enough prospects with the capacity and affinity to make the leadership gifts we need to launch the campaign?” or “How many of our annual fund donors made their usual operating gift plus a gift to a special project when asked?”

Prospect research has been providing reactive research such as profiles and proactive research such as filling prospect pipelines and maintaining relationship management systems. In many organizations, especially higher education and large hospitals, prospect research has become a strategic partner on the fundraising team. Prospect research ensures that front-line fundraisers have the prospects to visit and the information intelligence to solicit the largest and most appropriate gift.

The Explosion of Big Data

When you combine the storage and retrieval advances of relational databases with the internet, especially social platforms, you have an explosion of information – most often referred to as “big data”. Most people are aware of the results of harnessing the power of this much data, but few understand how it works and are capable of applying it to new situations. Results look like Amazon.com offering you suggestions on what others purchased with that book you were browsing or other popular titles in that section. It also looks like Google’s Flu Trends that helps specific hospitals predict patient volume during the flu season.

Creating Conversations With Data Analytics

The future of prospect research is already here. Right now, organizations across the country are using new tools to answer complex questions and track complex trends. These new tools are visual and manage multiple file formats with the same ease with which Superman leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Your database might be clunky and difficult to get information out of, but as long as the data is consistent, these new tools make analysis and reporting pretty simple. Often using an online “community” setting, prospect researchers create projects and share them with other fundraising staff. In some cases, with a little training, those front-line fundraisers and other staff can tweak the results on their own.

For example, using intuitive drag-and-drop technology, a prospect researcher can view information from the donor database from multiple perspectives. Let’s say the business school wants to send invitations to exclusive events around the country to raise funds for a new program. Our researcher might start with a quest to find business school alumni, within a certain graduating year span, who were members of a particular school club. She uploads that file to the project area. Next, she calls the business school fundraiser. On the call, the researcher and fundraiser discuss the project they can both view live on their desktops. They begin to “play” with the uploaded list.

  • Can you show me who made gifts at $1,000+?
  • Now who lives within 50 miles of the first location?
  • Hmmm. Too small.
  • Okay. What do the people who live within 50 miles look like? Wait! We limited the graduation years. Can we include all graduation years?
  • Another file is uploaded to the project space with much broader information this time.
  • What do the people who live within 50 miles look like? Gift size, graduation year, club participation, frequency of giving and whether they are assigned to a gift officer.
  • The researcher creates a bar chart of giving frequency because she thinks there might be a pattern.
  • Wow! It looks like club participants are frequent givers. What if we look at all frequent givers whose past 5-year total is over $5,000?
  • The researcher clicks on the bar in the bar chart of most frequent givers and “pulls” it out. She then applies a filter for past 5-year total giving.
  • Okay. That’s still too many. How many live within 50 miles?
  • The researcher clicks on the new list and applies another filter.
  • But I can’t invite anyone who is already assigned to a major gift solicitor.
  • Another filter is applied.
  • That’s a good number of people!
  • The researcher saves that “report” so the fundraiser can pull it for the mailing and RSVP list. The unique constituent number is attached so that the invitation mailing and other activities can be recorded in the donor database.
  • After the event, a new file is pulled into the project space so that the effort can be evaluated using the same techniques.

This was a simple example, but notice how the researcher was beginning to create conversations around the data? She could recognize certain trends and demonstrate them visually to the front-line fundraiser.

Do You Have Enough Data for Analytics?

If you think that you don’t have enough “big data” for projects like this, I suggest you think it over. Most organizations collect more data than they view or use in any meaningful way. We have Facebook friends, Twitter followers and email campaigns. We have the data, but it’s like the junk drawer in your kitchen. It’s all a jumble and finding anything specific takes too much time. For example, lots of organizations of all sizes are still struggling with email campaigns. New email donors receive snail mail instead of email, or nothing at all. Especially for emerging organizations, all of these separate fundraising and stewardship/marketing efforts are often collecting data separately and they may or may not be able to access that data in any meaningful way.

But if we could throw our jumble of data files into a “project”… we might learn thing like we have (a) donors who (b) like us on Facebook, (c) click on our videos more than other posts and (d) make higher online gifts than other online donors. That would be useful information, right? You might then want to learn which video topics generate a better response than other video topics. If you had no idea this was going on, you would continue to randomly post videos on whatever content, and maybe even platform, that felt good at the moment. Combining donor data with Facebook data yielded new insights that could change behavior leading to higher giving with less effort.

Is Analytics Really Out of Reach?

Even if you feel that these “sophisticated” techniques are out of your reach, either because of staff skill level or cost, I urge you to take a larger look at your fundraising program – just to be sure. Many of us lament that leadership does not see the value in investing in fundraising staff or donor acquisition. We wish they could go beyond counting existing dollars to see the magic of investing in a staff member who raises far more funds than her salary. I am inviting you to step out of your technology “counting” and see the magic of streamlining your fundraising efforts through the efficient use of data.

I’m not suggesting that you jump into “big data” collection and analysis – unless you really see value there. I’m suggesting that you consider how a combination of outsourcing and internal skill-building could lead to consistently improved results. What if you could…

  • Put in place a routine appeal evaluation (snail mail, email, or social media) that showed you in numbers, and visually, how you performed this time and compared to other efforts.
  • Know how much you could spend on donor acquisition and still make a great return on your investment based on knowledge of existing donors?
  • Tightly track the behaviors that lead to consistent major gifts – whether that’s multi-year pledges to special projects or high-end yearly gifts?

And those examples don’t even touch social media, website performance or whether your stewardship program actually leads to loyal, increased giving.

You are Never Too Small, Too New, Too Anything, for Good Strategy

When you hire a prospect researcher, as a consultant or staff member, you can hire and train a strategic thinker who will help you streamline your fundraising, raising more money with lower costs. Prospect research has something of benefit for all organizations. Whether or not you join it, prospect research’s path in fundraising continues to move forward into new territory, leaving behind it a clear and certain trail of fundraising success!

Other Posts You Might Like

Millionaires Use Social Media

The Multi-Channel Fundraising Game

Facial Recognition Software and Donors

About Aspire Research Group LLC

Headquartered in Tampa Bay, Florida, Aspire Research Group was founded so that every development office could have the benefits of professional prospect research. Known for our creativity and clear communications, we work with organizations who are worried about finding their next big donor, concerned about what size gift to ask for, and frustrated that they aren’t meeting their major gift goals. Do you need to close more major gifts?

www.AspireResearchGroup.com 727 231 0516

So you have a prospect researcher on staff. Now what?

Discussion, Focused Fundraising, , , ,
Data is only as good as the people who use it!

You know that managing and using your donor data is becoming increasingly important to fundraising success and now you have a person designated to perform prospect research tasks for you. Congratulations!

Do you have any idea what your prospect researcher should be doing?

I have three suggestions that will put you and your researcher on a productive path in no time!

1 – Budget for Serious Training
Prospect research is a broad skill set that requires training and practice over time. It involves so much more than putting a prospect name into a search engine or software subscription. It is about using data to drive fundraising strategies. That means understanding fundraising *and* how to research. And that means training. Seriously consider sending new and experienced researchers to the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA)’s national conference. Get a grant or a scholarship. Just do it. Even if she sleeps through half of it you should notice significant productivity gains when she returns – it’s that good!

Also, it should not be overlooked that prospect research can be a painful hot button if your board and staff are not well educated on how it works. Your researcher needs to understand how to perform her job ethically and responsibly and be able to communicate that to others.

2 – Ask Really Good Questions
As a front-line fundraiser you should know what is in your overall fundraising plan and what your goals are for the year. Based on that knowledge you need to begin asking your researcher really good questions. Such as…

We are going to add planned giving prospects to our major gift pools. How many of our donors have a lifetime giving of more than $$, and have given more than once a year for the past 2-5 years? And of those, how many live in a geographic area where we can visit without significant expense?

Hopefully, it is obvious how asking good questions related to your goals could open up productive conversations with your researcher. Now she can say things like…

I noticed a cluster of matching zip codes so I reviewed the names. Did you know that one of our trustees lives in a community with 10 percent of the people on the list you asked for?

Now I bet you are asking, “I thought researchers did prospect profiles?” We do that too. Proactive research identifies opportunities through data. Reactive research, like prospect profiles, gives you the information edge to maximize giving.

3 – Include Researchers in Fundraising Discussions
A trained researcher who is engaged in the conversation around using data is a marvelous asset to your team. So be sure to include her in your fundraising discussions. Musing over a capital campaign? She could have a LOT to add about who is in your database and best practices and trends in research used by similar organizations.

But I’m not just talking about formal meetings or discussions. After your meeting with a donor, mention new information or strategy you are thinking about. Was the ask amount on target with the wealth information found? Debriefing your researcher means she can learn and grow, providing you with more and better information next time.

Prospect Research Adds Value – So Value Your Researcher

It is virtuous circle – the better trained and engaged your researcher is, the better able she is to help you raise more money. And thankfully, researchers are often independent learners. If you can communicate your fundraising objectives and where you think research could provide support, your researcher can probably figure out and communicate to you the best practices in the field.

These conversations might pull you and your researcher out of your comfort zones for a while, but your efforts will be well rewarded by more dollars raised for your mission. And heck, you’ll probably have more fun at work too!

Jen Filla founded Aspire Research Group so that every development office could have the benefits of professional prospect research. Known for her creativity and clear communications, she uses her direct fundraising experience to craft research solutions for organizations across the country that answer the questions that lead to more and higher gifts, guiding fundraisers comfortably every step of the way.

Other Posts You Might Like

3 Actions That Demonstrate Your High Prospect Research IQ

The Dangers of (Not) Managing Prospect Research

Can you really trust prospect research? 10 things you should know