Tag Archives: education

desk with coffee and laptop and picture of jen filla

Upskill your Development Team with Research – Without Breaking the Budget!

When people hear “prospect research” they often assume that prospect research is a software or using Google to find things like company bios or, sometimes, that it is an employee that creates prospect profiles. Usually, the definition relates to the kind and scale of development operations they have been exposed to. And, really, everyone is as correct as they are wrong!

When we consider the growth of an organization from start-up to raising billions of donor dollars, the core of prospect research is the act of better understanding your donors through data and information.

Even if you have the luxury of a full-time, prospect research professional, everyone on the development team needs to be good at some basic prospect research skills. And if you don’t have the luxury of having a prospect research professional on staff, there are great ways to upskill existing staff to provide additional research support.

Finding contact and occupation

When it comes to personally asking a donor for a gift – most often in a mid-level or major gift program – the first thing you need is contact information: address, phone, email, or social media.

Hand-in-hand with contact information is the donor’s occupation. Occupation is useful for a few reasons:

  • Finding business contact information is easier and usually more accurate.
  • Psychologically, at work we probably expect to be contacted by people we don’t know more than at home.
  • Especially in higher education, development officers can connect with donor prospects on LinkedIn, if appropriate.
  • Occupation is a quick and easy indicator of likely wealth.

Everyone on the development team needs to be good at finding basic information about donors and this is why Aspire and the Prospect Research Institute created the booklet, Search Tips for Fundraising Research.


Search Tips book cover

This 15-page booklet introduces the five fundamental building blocks for fundraising research and gives you tips, tricks, and resources to find what you need. Purchase your copy today!


Information is great – when it’s accurate!

Once everyone is upskilled on basic search —  from the president’s assistant to major gift officers to the database administrator and beyond – it’s time to address whether the information everyone is finding is correct.

The proliferation of misleading and outright erroneous information can be overwhelming. As anyone who has clicked through a scam email knows (and c’mon, we’ve all fallen for one at least once!), when you’re busy, stressed, or preoccupied, it’s difficult to maintain a critical, watchful eye for discrepancies or take the time to double-check information.

At Aspire, we were once asked to perform due diligence research on a donor prospect with whom the organization was in negotiations for a major gift. Beyond reputational risk, the question was whether he actually had the wealth he claimed to have.

It was super challenging! Why? Because the information we sourced seemed to be in a perpetually unconfirmable loop. For example, what appeared to be a published interview was really his own blog article. Live media interviews only seemed to cite information that he had seeded in his biographies and multitude of websites.

And the worst? He claimed to have bought out dozens of bankrupt companies – all incorporated in Delaware with no owner information published!

After hours of creative searching, we finally found the fatal flaw and it was in plain sight. If you tried to purchase any of the products or services on offer through the various companies there was either no option to purchase on the website or no physical address to visit.

Finding accurate information is so important, the Prospect Research Institute created a FREE course to educate your development team (and anyone really) – Solid Intel.


Solid Intel Course

Solid Intel is a multi-module course teaching you how to evaluate sources critically and feel confident in the accuracy of the information you present. Fun quizzes test your comprehension. Share with your team and Enroll Today.


Wealth and philanthropy indicators

If your organization needs deeper research to support major gifts and hasn’t had this support previously, you may want to upskill an existing staff member, such as a development coordinator or database administrator.

You probably have a few specialty tasks you’d like this person to accomplish, such as the following:

  • Identify major gift prospects from the database
  • Provide prospect profiles prior to solicitation
  • Help coordinate moves management for the team

Leveraging your existing staff member or hiring someone at entry level can be economical and helps build internal capacity for upgrading donors and moving toward major gifts. In the past, training a staff member on prospect research support for the growing nonprofit was challenging.

Prospect research industry conferences are expensive and dominated by sophisticated healthcare and higher education environments. Webinars and local conferences offer tidbits, but usually don’t give your researcher key skills with step-by-step instruction on how to apply the skills to their work.

Recognizing the need, Aspire developed a course at the Prospect Research Institute specifically for the nonprofit researcher that needs to do all the research things – and at an economical price.


The Essentials for Successful Fundraising Research course is at least 7 to 8 weeks of on-demand content with a downloadable textbook, homework feedback, ability to earn a digital badge demonstrating competency, and 12 months of monthly group coaching. Give your organization the research edge. Enroll Today!


Growing your Fundraising with Research

When your development team has the information it needs, big things – and gifts – can happen!

  • Routine stewardship can happen with better contact information
  • Stewardship calls can turn into major gift prospect qualification
  • Donors can be moved more methodically toward larger gifts
  • Deeper information can give development officers greater confidence to ask for larger gifts

Upskilling your development team doesn’t have to break the bank. Aspire, through the Prospect Research Institute, has created a variety of training options to meet your needs at affordable prices.


What are you waiting for?
Visit the Institute now!


 

7 Resources That Keep My Fundraising Loaded!

Keeping my skills current and keeping up with the field of fundraising and prospect research is critical to my role as a prospect research consultant. Slowly I have been shaping my favorite reading list, trying to get it to represent what I need to know most – because I don’t have the time to browse aimlessly!

I run a small, virtual business and that means, like many of you, my head is piled high with hats! I manage to juggle all the hats pretty evenly, catching each one and passing it along … until something new gets thrown into the mix. Then I start playing catch-up. One hat falls down and I let it stay there until I can get used to the new hat in the mix. Once I adjust to the new rhythm I can grab the lost hat and keep going. In this case, I dropped my blog writing while I adjusted to some new skill building.

Now that I am back on track and blog writing is in the mix, I thought it might make a lot of sense to share with you my favorite sources for prospect-research-biased fundraising news and clues. Since readers are of a mixed variety, I’ve kept the really technical research reading out of the mix. I hope you will chime in and comment in whatever platform you find this article. What am I missing? I’m always looking for the best, must-have reading favorites!

1-Chronicle of Philanthropy

Not having been in a traditional “office” for years, I had neglected to subscribe. As soon as I did, I realized once again the Chronicle’s charms. First, they send me paper. Love that. So I can catch up on the weekends or over lunch on the balcony. The Chronicle prints a great mix of information and I get good clues about changes and trends. The October 18th edition, especially the articles on the Missouri Arts center and The Y, really had me thinking about fattening the middle $1,000 to $5,000 donor pool and how that translates into approaching the data.

2-AFP’s Advancing Philanthropy and APRA’s Connections

These are my two all-time favorite associations and I love, love, yes love, their magazines. Okay, so AFP is moving digital and APRA is already there. I have a printer. And paper. Every issue of these magazines goes beyond the how-to and gives me something real that changes my thinking or expands my ideas.

3-Advancing the Nonprofit Sector

This blog is written by a number of different fundraising consultants. I like it because it reminds me that the fundraising world is bigger than prospect research and it helps me stay in tune with the practical needs front-line fundraisers face daily. I like that it covers local Florida topics too.

4-CoolData

Kevin MacDonald does an amazing job of making me want to read his blog. Not only is he having a conversation with me, but he uses lots of pictures and graphics to demonstrate what he is talking about. Okay, so it’s pretty technical stuff. But it is the kind of conversation that every fundraiser needs at least a cursory understanding of. The power of data analytics is as earth-moving as the power unleashed when our donor index cards turned into relational databases or the horse was replaced by the tractor. It is the kind of conversation that is deciding our future. And if I’m going to participate, or just eavesdrop, I’d prefer to do it with Kevin. And his cool guest bloggers like Peter Wylie too.

5-The Agitator

No, it’s not a washing machine cycle! This is another blog where I get practical, but a little more in-your-face, fundraising cents. What I really like is that it talks intelligently about direct response fundraising, which might just be the black sheep of the fundraising family. Yes, everyone loves major gifts, but getting broad support is more than money. It’s the community giving credibility to your mission and how you are performing. And if you do it well, it means you treat all of your donors well. That’s special in my book. Which brings us back to that great article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the Missouri Arts Center…

6-Well Planned Web

I have followed a lot of different marketing and social media and other technology blogs, but this one has been the most relevant to me. It’s not too technical. I get a good feel for a topic. It makes me feel smart and current instead of dumb and behind the curve. Most of us have to operate in a constantly evolving online world. At some point we all wind up being impacted by or responsible for at least a piece of our organization’s online face. The Well Planned Web will make you feel good about it.

7-Hootsuite

When data analytics guru, Audrey Geoffrey at the University of Florida Foundation first showed me this website at an APRA-FL board retreat I thought it looked like the most confusing, most complicated website that I would never use. I just couldn’t understand why I would want to keep track of things that way. Now I am a convert. I love being able to customize the way I view and participate in social media. I can narrow my focus to the topics and people who provide me with exactly the content I need to see.

I hope you found a gem among my 7 favorite resources, but I really hope you will share yours too!