Category Archives: Prospect Identification

Money and Messages: The Missing Major Gift Donors

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Did you know that your organization might be missing major gift donors? There is a major gifts trend happening in organizations across the United States and it may well apply enough pressure to burst through outdated thinking and unleash the power of the missing major gift donors. Will you and your organization be among the early innovators and adopters?

Fundraising leadership is waking up to the reality that technology keeps promising instant identification of major gift prospects, but is not delivering, especially when it comes to wealthy women and people of color. And some of the best, most transformative donors are missing – hidden among all the other donors.

Why can’t the tech companies wave their magic rating wands and deliver the prospects?

Because the very best data is locked up inside the donor. Because technology can’t create messaging and relationships with donors that will unlock the mega gift.

Who can’t help but love the story in the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the retired clarinetist, Edward Avedisian, who gave $100M to his alma mater, Boston University? The only meaningful data points were Avedisian’s giving history to the organization and his desire to give that he expressed to the development officer – who listened and acted. Is she ever glad she did!

But if the data can’t find and rate the next best megadonor from your organization’s donor list, what is a savvy development professional to do?

Remember that data supports fundraising relationship strategies – it is NOT the strategy.

Back in 2015, research professional, Preeti Gill, challenged me to research the woman first when profiling. It was a simple demand and it shook me out of my routine enough to realize how biased Aspire had been in its approach to researching households!

Read Preeti Gill’s story in “What About Women?” a free PDF download.

Preeti argued that there was a huge transition of wealth to women and fundraising was ignoring these women. And she was right. Conversations with researchers in the next few years were fascinating.

They expressed problems such as:

  • Sure, I can find women who look like good major gift prospects, but the fundraiser is asking for hard asset amounts and I don’t have them.
  • Our organization tried inviting women to a fundraising program that has been successful for us, but they didn’t come. Maybe women don’t really want to give?
  • We have so many records in the database and none of them are coded for gender. How am I supposed to even run a report to find women?

And slowly, things began to change. Organizations became aware of women as philanthropists through many channels, including the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University and the “Women Give” research series with accessible infographics and presentations. Female prospects were encouraged to make naming gifts and to publicize their giving as a model for other women.

Most importantly, the messages to women donors began to change. Now we hear about a university’s women’s leadership group or an organization’s women’s giving circle that are successfully raising money and cultivating major gift prospects. Now, when a development officer visits a prospect, it’s a known strategy to include the spouse who likely influences and sometimes directs the household philanthropy.

These are not data strategies — they are fundraising messages and strategies – and they raise more money. Have data practices evolved? Of course! To support the fundraising strategy, but not to be the fundraising strategy.

Prospect Research Professionals can be prepared and share.

I was feeling BIG imposter syndrome when Yolanda Johnson asked me to be a panelist at the WOC Symposium this year. As a white woman, what could I know about inclusion in prospecting and research practices?

It turns out that I could add to the conversation. I have been learning and testing and caring about inclusion for a long time. Inclusion is a value and success story for the ages. As a research professional and a human being, I can continuously learn and share.

One of my favorite characteristics of inclusion is that even when the focus is on a subgroup, inclusive actions and messaging means everyone gets pulled in. I can include the spouse in my meeting and I have the opportunity to get the big splash naming gift and a program gift.

Spotlight on a Resource

One of the speakers at the WOC Symposium I attended was Doria Josma, Development & Fundraising Specialist at Cool Culture Inc. The panelists were clearly stating things that needed to be spoken: yes, there are very wealthy donors of color and yes, they are philanthropic and want to give big.

Doria told us about the Donors of Color Network and their newest report, Philanthropy Always Sounds Like Someone Else: A Portrait of HNW Donors of Color.

So many gems in this report for strategy, messaging, and research!

Philanthropy Always Sounds Like Someone Else: A Portrait of HNW Donors of Color

The Study:

The study conducted research interviews with 113 individual people of color with high or ultra-high net worth. Nearly a quarter of the sample reported they had net liquid assets of $30M or higher.

Some Gems:

(Quoted directly from the report with my notes added in parenthesis)

  • The universality of the experience of racism, discrimination, and bias reported by each interviewee is a striking finding of this project. (You have to be mindful with strategies and messaging for this group.)
  • Many shared a visceral contempt for the idea that people “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” and did not see their prosperity as the result of individual effort alone. For many interviewees giving was an expression of gratitude. (Messaging opportunity!)
  • All donors expressed a desire to be more effective as donors, but very few had worked with professional philanthropic advisors. (Your organization could offer networking and educational options.)
  • They expressed great excitement about the possibility of new networks that could connect them to other HNW donors and donors of color. The overwhelming support for the formation of a new donors of color network was striking — support that has translated into the successful launch and formation of the Donors of Color Network.
  • Donors gave most often to educational institutions which many credited as critical to their success, and to racial and social justice causes. (Hello researchers! Data point.)
  • Their giving styles, priorities, and vehicles were diverse: they gave through giving circles, donor advised funds, community foundations, or other pooled strategies, occasionally through their own foundations, and often, directly through their checkbooks. (Research and find and share how we see prospects giving.)
  • However, they belong to an impressive array of civic, professional, and other civil society organizations. (You can usually find this easily online and in bios.)
  • HNW donors of color interviewed were mostly first-generation wealth creators, and often the people in their families of origin who had crossed into a new socio-economic class. (This speaks to messaging and the psyche of many first-generation wealth creators as well as data point to find in occupation.)

How can Prospect Research support finding the next layer of missing major gift prospects? Work smarter AND harder.

When data is the fundraising strategy, the urge is to collect, collect, and collect more data. If only we knew who was a person of color! If only we knew the gender! If only we knew…the clarinetists? Chasing the data points first is a mistake.

In past misguided attempts, I have tried looking for people based on their identity and it is a truly humiliating experience! Trying to define what makes someone Black vs. African American vs. immigrant vs. refugee vs. white vs. European American vs. all the ways a person might identify does not build a better list.

I’m suggesting a prospect approach like this:

  1. Identify the fundraising strategy. Do you want a more robust major gift pipeline overall? Do you want to broaden your donor base specifically to include a certain type of donor? Do you need billionaires? Once the strategy is crystal clear and the activities are sketched out, then research can…
  2. Begin testing the data. Can you pull reports and manually research key points to yield lists that respond to development officer outreach? This is iterative and takes many, many months overall. You may need some data enhancement/appends. Maybe not.
  3. Repeat and evolve your prospect sourcing strategies. Sometimes a report that worked well for the first three rounds dries up. Can you change the list-building criteria? Is there a messaging problem with the organization’s donor acquisition activities? Can you try a new source? Do you need to go outside the donor database?

The tried and true approach to prospecting, when it follows the fundraising strategy and when the organization is engaging and messaging in ways that appeal to the desired audience, works well. It’s a long-term strategy, but it works. But remember that Research and data are not in control of fundraising strategy or messaging. If the strategy and the messaging ignore the needs of the intended audience, that is a problem that no amount of data collection can solve.

Don’t Misfile your Major Donors!

It is not easy to be inclusive – for anyone. Our brains are hardwired to categorize and find patterns. This generates implicit bias, which is what happens when we automatically assume someone works at a store even though their attire or behavior should clue us in otherwise, for example.

As you seek to qualify prospects for wealth and giving, ask yourself critical questions all the time, such as:

  • These two donors have a similar career path but I gave them very different wealth ratings. Am I missing something?
  • First-time wealth-creators might live modestly. Did I check on the size and scope of the company my prospect founded? For example, a trash hauling company isn’t glamorous work, but when that company has a multi-state presence it could be a recession-proof wealth catalyst!
  • What assumptions am I making about the lack of data found? No giving found doesn’t mean the prospect doesn’t give. No second home doesn’t mean a person in a high-income occupation isn’t making a high income.

When research and fundraising leadership partner together, so many good and inclusive things can happen that result in higher fundraising support – regardless of how a major gift gets defined.

Additional Resources

 

A Screening By Any Other Name Would Read As Rich

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Apologies to Shakespeare, but when it comes to the communication between major gift officers and prospect researchers, “What’s in a name?” is an important question worth paying attention to!

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” -William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet

I didn’t realize how important words are until I became a consultant and needed to clarify what services we offer our customers. If I fail in that communication, the consequence is either no work or an unhappy customer.

As it happens, wealth screenings are one of the most frequently misunderstood tools – and words – we use for major gift prospect identification at Aspire.

Notice how I defined that?

A wealth screening is a tool for major gift prospect identification.

However, all too frequently Aspire Research Group’s potential customers and current clients define it more like: Wealth screenings provide accurately matched profiles on prospects.

Why is there such a discrepancy in the definitions?

As much as I am indebted to the big vendors for flooding the nonprofit market with advertising and education on using wealth screenings, they have also perpetuated the myth of accurate electronic data matching and scoring. It makes for healthy sales revenue!

As a business owner I respect that simple marketing messages make sales. But as a prospect research professional it drives me nuts because you can have the very best, most amazing data-matching algorithms and scores and ratings and all things analytics – but it will not be enough!

It will not be enough because ultimately we are dealing with humans, not data.

Do any of these kinds of scenarios sound familiar?

  • Visits with donors that are recorded in the database as actions with text, but no specific coding to know they were qualified or disqualified.
  • Donors with common names, such as Robert Smith, but is it the billionaire or not?
  • Researchers wanting to preserve data and not deleting things like gift opportunities on records when there was never a single two-way exchange.
  • A great structure for coding prospect management in the database – that has old or just completely wrong information.
  • Contact reports that indicate the prospect is ready for a solicitation, but no gift opportunity or prospect status was ever entered or updated, and in the hundreds of names in portfolio the prospect was unwittingly dropped like a hot potato.
  • The data integrity team won’t allow development officers to update contact information on the record and now actively engaged prospects lack the basics such as current addresses or working telephone numbers.

I could go on and on. It’s all so human!

So, what now? Are wealth screenings worthless?

Heck no! Wealth screenings are an important and economical tool for major gift prospect identification. They are designed to help you segment and prioritize large groups of records and they perform better and better as the matching algorithms and accessible data improve.

The auto-matched profiles available with most wealth screenings are also really good. It’s just that they are not anywhere near 100% accurate. They were never meant to be! Matching algorithms keep getting better, but they can’t be perfect. They are good enough to get a great segment to focus on.

Because once you have a top major gift prospect segment, research can prioritize that much smaller list with quick research to confirm the information, and can deliver prospects to the development officer that have current, actionable data.

A screening by any other name would read as rich.

It doesn’t matter if you define a screening as an electronically matched algorithm or a researcher quickly scanning sources to confirm the algorithm’s findings — or both. Bottom line is that screenings help identify new major gift prospects.

One way to avoid confusion over the choices of words used is to describe the desired outcome.  If you are a development officer and want to identify new major gift prospects, say that. If you say “I need a wealth screening” but a different technique would work better, you may not get the best outcome.

As Elisa Shoenberger describes in Top 5 Misconceptions of Prospect Identification, prospect identification is “using the knowledge of an organization, its best prospects, as well as an understanding of wealth and philanthropy to determine which prospects are the best ones.”

This goes for prospect research professionals, too! When someone wants new prospects identified, it’s not always wise to assume a wealth screening will be the best technique. Instead of focusing on a tool or technique, start asking questions about what they will do with the names, or how many names do they need, or other questions to widen the conversation.

And once everyone knows what is desired, then the discussion can progress to the tools and techniques that would best deliver the outcome of identifying major gift prospects.

Are you tasked with doing the work of major gift prospect identification? Check out the Prospect Research Institute’s workshop, Profiles vs. Screenings, where we dive into the difference and research for the desired outcome!

Profiles v Screening 14 Nov 2024 workshop

Top Secret! How to Bulk up your Prospect Pool

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HappyKeySMIn this article I’m going to share the secrets of finding great prospects. Maybe you’re one of those fundraisers who is always reading the Business Journal scouting for a lead, but they don’t pan out. Do you wonder how those other organizations pull in the big gifts? Or maybe you’re new and all the best prospects are assigned to senior fundraisers. You can get great prospects too!

If you read a lot of blogs (like I do) now is where you get skeptical. Is she just going to give me theory I already know (and hasn’t yet helped me find good prospects) or will I get at least a couple of nuggets I can actually use? I’m aiming for the latter. The “trick” is that you still have to work hard!

Fundraising research theory tells us that you need to know who you are looking for so you can spot them. We use jargon like linkage, ability and affinity. And there are tools that give you a competitive edge with that. But you can do it even without bright, shiny tools.

The First Thing…

The first thing any good fundraiser (and prospect researcher) needs to do is learn what it looks like to be wealthy. Watching soap operas may seem like a good education here, but much better is reading through some of the wealth reports like the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2014. You’ll find links for other reports in the sidebar on your right.

And the second first-thing-any-good-fundraiser-needs -to-do is get in front of people, especially donors. You should read and get in front of donors at the same time. Start with known donors because they are the most likely to give (again) and it’s always better to get a gift, right?

Call, visit, and read.

When you are reading about the wealthy at the same time as you visit prospects you’ll start making the connections. When the prospect talks about how he and his wife are taking classes in gemology and he has a watch collection, you’ll remember what you read about this being an investment hobby for the very wealthy. And when a different prospect brags about taking regular trips to Europe on mileage points you’ll recognize that what you thought were luxury vacations probably aren’t.

You can do that without any tools except your eyes and ears. Well, I guess you need to use your mouth to place the phone call…and, okay, guide the conversation. But you get it, right? Recognizing the wealthy – the truly wealthy – takes an education.

Get Your Toolbox Dirty

Getting an education on spotting the wealthy still isn’t likely to fill your prospect pool with GREAT donors – those with linkage, ability and affinity. If you have tools that assign ratings to the prospects in your database, use them! Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work out perfectly the first few times.

For example, you might pull a report of people who rate high for ability and likelihood to make a gift, but find most won’t take your phone call. You may need to add additional criteria depending on your organization. Maybe it’s “donor within the past two years” or “attended an event in the past two years” or some other criteria that makes it more likely they will let you visit with them.

Keep track of your efforts so you can repeat what works best. And, yes, this does mean you will have to make a lot of phone calls that end in “no thank you I don’t want a visit”.

It’s the same even if you don’t have tools that provide ratings. Without tools you have to get more of an education. You might use a free tool like the Washington Post’s interactive map** of the nation’s super zips to identify wealthy zip codes to search for in your donor database and combine that with “donor within the past two years” or other criteria that suggest a “warmness” toward your organization.

The Secret Weapon

If you are really lucky, you have a trained prospect researcher on staff. Use all your fundraising powers of relationship building to get this prospect research wizard on your side!

HOT TIP: your researcher is likely to get the most excited about searching out top prospects if you reward her with feedback from your calls and face-to-face visits.

With a prospect researcher on your team you are more likely to out-produce even seasoned professionals in the race for fundraised dollars. Really, really!

…and if you can’t support a trained prospect researcher full-time, you can always outsource. Just sayin’!

**Julie, Prospect Research Analyst in Pennsylvania and Groundbreaking Student at the Prospect Research Institute, shared this fantastic resource with the class!

Did you get a nugget or two?

I hope you found a useful tip you can apply in your office. Maybe you have great suggestions you’d like to share with others. Please comment and share!

Jenz Favorite Wealth Reports