Tag Archives: fundraising research

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

Research in Fundraising, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

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!

 

A Screening By Any Other Name Would Read As Rich

Prospect Identification, , , , ,

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

launch your prospect portfolio; rocket

Add Speed to Major Gift Portfolios with RPM

Prospect Management, , , , , , , , , ,

When a current client created a job posting for a Research and Prospect Management position a light bulb went off!

Research and                                  Revolutions
Prospect                                            Per
Management                                   Minute

More frequently you’ll see this type of combined role posted as Prospect Management and Research (PMR). But if you reverse that to Research and Prospect Management (RPM) …can you get more speed into your major gift portfolios?

Which comes first – research or prospect management?

Unlike a similar question about chickens and eggs, there is a pretty definitive answer to this question. Research usually comes first in the form of prospect identification.

Most organizations grow into major gifts. A common nonprofit story begins with institutional funding, such as foundations and corporations, who want to support early and continued nonprofit growth. Along the way, nonprofits attract small dollar individual gifts and refine their individual giving program to the point where larger gifts receive more personalized attention and individuals are personally asked for larger gifts.

Usually with the first capital or other campaign, there comes a need to more methodically or reliably identify donor prospects who can give lead campaign gifts. Enter prospect research with major gift prospect identification!

When there are just too many donors requiring personal attention to keep track of in one person’s head, the CRM database comes to the rescue with prospect management. Prospect management provides a systematic way of tracking prospect’s progress from identification to a gift and stewardship.

But what happens to research when prospect management becomes a separate specialty in-house?

Sometimes research and prospect management get out of sync, prompting major gift portfolios to get as stubbornly stuck as a zipper out of alignment!

When research is disconnected from the management of major gift portfolios, various things begin to break down. Sometimes the criteria that research is using to identify prospects does not fit with the funding priorities or the development officer’s views on what makes a great prospect. Research might not be aware of specific regions or development officer portfolios that need more or different prospects than others.

When prospect management is disconnected from research, important information learned from development officers is not passed along. For example, a development officer might learn critical information about a wealth event for which research could provide capacity insight. Also, the prospect manager might not be aware of the criteria used to source new prospects and then they cannot explain it to the development officers.

Adding research in at the “front” of prospect management – the RPM perspective – recognizes that the smooth coordination of prospect identification with portfolio management is where major gift speed is generated.

When the zipper is not aligned, movement is difficult and slow. When there is alignment, the zipper zips easily and quickly.

Similarly, when research and prospect management are aligned, development officers zip through qualifying and disqualifying!

(This all assumes, of course, that development officers are trained in qualification techniques and have a disciplined work process. But that is a different subject!)

Major gift fundraising: Can’t have one without the other

Whether you like to call the work PMR or RPM, the bottom line is that you can’t have one without the other. Without research, pipelines eventually run dry. Without prospect management, development officers lack support to move prospects effectively and efficiently toward a larger, major or transformative gift.

Additional Resources

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If you say ‘no’ enough, you will probably get fired

4Researchers, , , , , , , ,

I have been known to say: “If you say ‘no’ enough, you will probably get fired.” But what if you are a solo researcher and the development team comes at you with a tidal wave of requests? How can you create healthy work boundaries and avoid drowning?

Following are three ideas to help you stay in the moment while also giving yourself time to figure out how to get ahead of the problem.

1. Don’t fight the current.

Many solo researchers start off as database managers or development coordinators with the capability of doing much more. Some researchers come into the first research role created – with or without prior experience.

As you build a positive reputation it can lead to a strong current of research requests that feel random, disjointed, and extremely time consuming. What starts out as flattering can become overwhelming!

Do you have to start saying ‘no’? Sometimes you do.

But before you go there, give the following or some variation a try:

  • “If I could get you what you want, what will you do with it?”

When you ask this kind of question you are floating with the current instead of trying to swim against it. It reduces the tension of having to commit to a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and allows you to discover things such as:

  • They want to send out emails, not call each person individually – so you really don’t have to spend a lot of time qualifying the list. Can you pull an internal list with records that have emails? Can you purchase an external list of prospects?
  • They just want to know what other places the prospect has given to (or something else specific) – so you really don’t need to do a full profile.
  • They are planning ahead (woo hoo!) and don’t really need the work for months – so you can plan ahead too!

But what if it is yet another request for you to find prospects in the community and there is no clear strategy behind the request? Because we all know this happens A LOT.

For now, keep floating with the current and say something like: “That sounds interesting, but I’d really like to think it through some more. Is that okay?” And then…

2. Step back and take time to evaluate.

I’m going to continue with the prospecting example because it really is a common issue. Development officers have a very difficult job. They need to build relationships with humans and put money into the bank. These are two very different and sometimes conflicting goals.

Under pressure to bring money in, a development officer needs to get good at prospecting. Yes, they need to build relationships, but if they do it with people who are solid prospects, they can be more efficient and bring in more money.

If a researcher is being asked to prospect – especially outside the database – the assumption is that there is not enough value inside the organization’s base of donors. Or there may be a fear that the major gift pipeline is going to be running dry soon.

When you get asked to find prospects outside of the database, and you’ve gone through the “what will you do with it” and you need to answer, consider saying ‘maybe.’

If you tell someone ‘maybe’ then you have time to spend thinking through the bigger picture of prospecting at your organization. You can run some exploratory reports to find out things such as:

  • Of the major gift prospects identified, are they being contacted? If not, asking why not is valid and there could be a good reason why not, which will help you do better prospecting.
  • Has the donor base been rated for wealth and philanthropy or a predictive score for major gifts? If so, what is the unassigned potential of high affinity, high wealth prospects?
  • What are all the prospect ID tactics that are underway now or happened in recent past? Were they successful?

Now you can schedule time to discuss the request and explore the bigger picture of how you can help the development officer focus on the best prospects to raise more money. You can re-state the need, review what makes a best prospect, and offer ideas on how to find those best prospects. Ideally, each step of the conversation is a two-way learning experience.

And in the end maybe you just have to do the prospecting request as asked. Either way, you will have learned a lot about prospecting, that development officer, and your organization’s constituency.

And if you are still being overwhelmed…

3. Talk ‘big picture’ with your manager.

Now that you have stepped back and evaluated the prospecting strategies and tactics as a whole and whether they have worked or not, you are ready to have a conversation with your manager. You need your manager to help manage the team’s expectations about what you can do, which means you need to get your manager on board with the best path forward.

Looking at the bigger picture usually makes for a better conversation with leadership. Do your best to stay out of the details of how you do the work and focus on the outcomes. In this kind of conversation, you start by walking the through the same steps as above:

  • What are the fundraising goals?
  • What does a best prospect look like for those goals?
  • What are the ways prospecting has happened and how has that worked?

And then you get to ask…

  • Should I be doing all of them? How should I prioritize requests?

Hopefully, this two-way conversation helps your manager advocate more effectively for you with the team.

Either way, be sure you are writing up each research project with the goal, tactics, delivery, and results. You can present these reports at staff meetings when you update the team on what you’re doing. It could help the development team hold themselves accountable for acting on your work.

Accept the things we cannot change.

Sometimes the development team or the fundraising culture at your organization just isn’t ready for your research prowess. If development officers simply don’t contact the prospects, then it doesn’t matter how many prospecting projects you perform, or profiles you create, or any of the research you are providing.

It might be time to say ‘no’ judiciously, or ask your manager to give you direction on how to prioritize requests.

Regardless of your situation, if you haven’t already, it is definitely time to consider what you want for your career and make sure you plan your next steps.

 

Not asking for Millions? Why should you care about HNWIs?

4Fundraisers, 4Researchers, Focused Fundraising, , , , , , , , , ,

NOT ASKING FOR MILLIONS? WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT HNWIS?I get it. Your organization is not going to ask for millions even if the prospect could give millions, so why should you spend your limited emotional energy trying to understand HNWIs (high net worth individuals) and global wealth trends? The clear majority of nonprofit organizations in the U.S., around 80%, have operating budgets of $1 million or less.

Nevertheless, there are three very good reasons why you should care.

1-Mission

I’ve been a consultant for over a decade and no matter what the mission, every organization is sure that fundraisers with a different mission – children, animals, environment – have it easier. That somehow someone else’s mission is easier to raise money for. The truth is that every mission has passionate donors, but it takes careful, skilled fundraisers to understand the donor base and position the messaging and gift opportunities to match.

Sure, you might not have the budget or opportunities to attract million dollar gifts now, but isn’t your mission worthy of receiving million dollar gifts? Aren’t you working together with leadership to grow your organization’s impact?

If you don’t know anything about HNWIs how could you possibly position your organization’s messaging and gift opportunities to grow into million dollar giving?

2-Career Growth

Especially if you are working for a small nonprofit on a thin budget, you need to be in command of your career training. With rampant content marketing your free learning choices can be a bit overwhelming. You’re reading this blog post so I know you care about sharpening and growing your skills. The next step is to find and manage learning sources that are related, but outside the boundaries of fundraising.

Local and global economics, including HNWIs should be on your list. Following are three really good (and very readable) resources with a hot tip from each:

Capgemini World Wealth Report

Besides having a fun-to-navigate website that lets you dig in to the data, you can download the report to take advantage of the table of contents and the executive summary. But it’s the attractive charts on pages 17-19 that I want to highlight for you here.

Figure9-CapgeminiWWR-2018

For the HNWIs that participated in this study in North America, 12.4% of their wealth is held in real estate. This percentage is excluding the primary residence, which is helpful because individuals who own multiple properties are more likely to be HNW. We don’t want to use our “back of the envelope” calculations on just anyone – only those that have investable assets of at least $1 million.

So, if you have someone who has multiple properties you can now perform some eye-opening “back of the envelope” calculations:

Real Estate ÷ 0.124 = Estimated Net Worth
Estimated Net Worth x 0.05 = Low Gift Capacity
Estimated Net Worth x 0.10 = High Gift Capacity

The New York Times – How to Get the Wealthy to Donate

Did you miss this article on “How to Get the Wealthy to Donate?” Did you hear about the underlying scientific research anywhere else? If not, you may find yourself frustrated and unhappy with the results of your conversations with HNWIs. It is squarely on your shoulders to understand and relate to donor prospects – in situ!

In this consumer-friendly world of content marketing, you don’t have to have a subscription to benefit from great resources like The New York Times. You can usually find a free e-newsletter or mobile app that will tease you with headlines. My favorite way of keeping up with multiple resources like this is to create a Twitter stream in Hootsuite of various topic lists I create from Twitter accounts that I follow.

Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy – Current Research

At Indiana University’s School of Philanthropy, the list of research projects creates a wonderful feeling of abundance! From Giving USA to the Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy to Women Give you can’t go astray.

“Nonprofit boards that include a higher percentage of women tend to have board members who participate more in fundraising and advocacy. Members of these boards also tend to be more involved in the board’s work, new research shows.” –Indiana University

The next time you attend a strategic planning session or any other leadership meeting, you now have scientific research at your fingertips to help your organization continue to grow and expand its reach.

3-Success = Preparation x Opportunity

Notice how I changed the formula adage slightly from “Preparation plus Opportunity” to “Preparation multiplied by Opportunity”? I wanted to emphasize how rare and transformative Opportunity is in this world. According to the Urban Institute, as of December 2016, there were more than 1.2 million public charities and private foundations in the United States. That is a lot of noise! How will donors and prospects hear you?

When opportunity does come, will you recognize it?
Are you prepared to seize it?

If you wanted to compete and win at the Olympics, would you wait until you passed initial qualifying tests before hiring a coach? No way! You would have had a coach from when you were a mere tot expressing interest. Don’t wait to get a fundraising mentor or coach. Regularly consume information about communicating with all kinds of people, including HNWIs.

Sales training abounds and one of my favorite resources is Sandler Sales. They have great white papers, articles, and newsletters. Do you have any kind of commute to the office? Visit www.sandler.com or search on iTunes to find their “How To Succeed” podcast, which is about 15 minutes per episode.

One of their recent episodes was how to make “touch calls.” This translates easily to fundraising! After all, we want to retain our donors and becoming more systematic about it is part of the preparation that leads to success. In the episode there is a reference to the DiSC profile and how each client personality is likely to respond to your call, which you might decide to investigate further.

You can create a personalized coaching team by pulling together key resources, like a podcast, and having the discipline to schedule time every day to learn.

Why am I focusing on Wealth instead of Philanthropy?

It is easy to argue that if you needed to focus on only one thing, it should be philanthropy first. After all, a person can have great wealth and refuse to part with a penny. Hands down, if you are in a smaller nonprofit, focusing on philanthropy first is a winning strategy. I’m not suggesting otherwise.

What I am suggesting is that it is important to focus on philanthropy with wealth. Your organization needs dollars and is worthy of money to pay the electric bill, hire competent staff, and deliver programs that are making our world a better place.

It’s important for all of us to assess our feelings about money and any bias we may have about wealth accumulation so that we don’t neglect our education and skill building around philanthropy with wealth.

Additional Resources

After the Wealth Screening: Taking a New Direction

4Fundraisers, 4Researchers, Major Gift Teams, , , , , ,

Higher education and healthcare dominate the field of prospect research – and for good reason. They have income well above the funds they raise and these big budgets attract correspondingly big gifts. But those industries no longer dominate wealth/prospect screenings. Or at least, they don’t have to.

Prospect research tools such as wealth screenings have become affordable and accessible to the vast number of smaller budget (but not necessarily small) nonprofit organizations serving our communities, nationally and internationally. As I work with three intrepid beta testers in the new Essentials for Successful Fundraising Research course, it’s becoming clear that prospect research is changing shape and diversifying.

We can and should start talking about screenings differently.

It’s about time we recognize that one size does not fit all and the methods and practices of higher education and healthcare do not serve the majority of nonprofit organizations.

Misdirection #1:  Screening results should always be verified before being disseminated to development officers.

The very nature of the constituent records for the majority of nonprofits in the U.S. screams against this guidance. A local food bank has a much different relationship with its constituents than a university or hospital – and usually many fewer constituents overall. They may be attracting more people with mid-level income levels (net worth below $1M), who are local, and who may be very receptive to a phone call.

Screening information combined with a development officer’s knowledge of the community is frequently enough to start making phone calls. The development assistant or prospect researcher, if there is one, can help by looking up contact information as needed and making suggestions about what internal data pieces could be combined with the screening ratings to better prioritize the list.

Misdirection #2: Wealth screenings benefit major gift initiatives the most.

Smaller nonprofits usually know the wealthy people in their community. There might be a few hidden gems in their donor files, especially if the nonprofit is reaching a national audience through social media, but the real value in screenings is often the way the ratings can be used to improve the performance of nearly every fundraising activity.

When development staff numbers from one to ten, everyone in the office multi-tasks, so why should your screening results behave any differently? Your best donors are probably involved with your organization in multiple ways: volunteering, sponsoring, giving, and serving in leadership roles. Your screening ratings can help make your efforts more efficient.

For example, if you can only make phone calls to 50 or so people for a special campaign, or if you need to call people who haven’t RSVP’d for a big event, now you can go beyond past giving and also look at capacity to make a gift. You almost can’t help but raise more money by adding additional filters or prioritization to your efforts!

Misdirection #3: The more in the results file, the better.

A recent conversation with a screening vendor made me examine my own bias about the deliverables for smaller organizations. Overworked and underpaid development professionals take one look at that impenetrable spreadsheet or overwhelming software interface and go hemming and hawing into complete inaction. There is only so much the human brain can absorb in any one day, month, or year.

There are key data points in every screening that are very valuable. The various ratings are top among those. So why are they often buried? Why can’t you get more than one file from your vendor? How about a simple one for import and a more complicated one for your development assistant or prospect researcher to dig into?

If you can identify the key data points from the results and get those imported into your database – well, that’s the only way you are really going to be able to use the screening to improve your fundraising results overall.

Want to get the most bang for your buck out of screenings? Communicate!

Your screening vendors are nimble and eager to hear and listen to how their product could make you more successful. Tell them you want to import the ratings but don’t have dedicated IT staff – can they help? Tell them you need to start making phone calls immediately – can they give you a simple file you can work from?

Even better, your vendor likely has worked with many organizations just like yours. Do they have any success stories to share? Any innovative uses for the screening data? Any common pitfalls to avoid?

Where is Prospect Research in all of this?

Of the three participants in the Essentials for Successful Fundraising Research course, only one has “research” in his title. Nevertheless, these are the intelligent, resourceful individuals tasked with finding and understanding the data. Their organizations are going to have capital campaigns and all sorts of other fundraising initiatives no matter what title they give to these intrepid data explorers.

As part of their training, I created an “After the Screening”reference sheet that you can find in the Prospect Research Institute’s learning community. The reference sheet represents the beginning of the conversation. Once you’ve taken a look, hop into the Everything Prospect Research forum and let me know what you think about it!

Additional Resources

Facebook, Fundraising, and Data Protection

Focused Fundraising, , , , , ,

Are you busy? Do you have any of these: full-time job, children, elderly parents, friends, and maybe even a few interests or hobbies? How are you supposed to keep up with social media and data protection and privacy issues, too? Well, if you are involved in fundraising where giving is predicated on donor trust, your choice is to invest some time and resources now or suffer big losses later. Ask Facebook.

I’m going to give you a quick summary of the Facebook scandal, show you how easy it is to trip on information, and give you three things you can do now. Ready? Let’s go!

Quick Summary of Facebook Scandal

The recent Facebook scandal offers up a few salient lessons for fundraising.

In 2014 Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Center developed an app for Facebook users to take a personality survey. The app scraped some private information from their profiles and those of their friends (Facebook later banned this scraping activity). The Center refused to work with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultant firm, but Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at Cambridge University, developed his own, similar app for Cambridge Analytica.

The users taking the personality survey were told it was being used for academic use, but it was not. The use of the name “Cambridge” aided in this deception. Dr. Kogan collected and passed along the information from the 270,000 survey takers, but also 87 million additional users. This information was then used to influence user behavior by showing them tailored stories and ads so to get them to vote for the designated political candidate.

The Fundraising and Data Issues

Have you heard about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going live in the European Union (EU) on May 25, 2018? Click here for guidance from the Institute of Fundraising. There’s talk of the US taking a cue from the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle to draft something similar. One aspect of the regulation is that the person providing personal information should understand and consent to how that information is going to be used. A simple way to think about this is opt-in vs. opt-out.

When the Facebook users took the Cambridge Analytica survey they opted in, but to what information disclosure and use? Surely they did not understand explicitly what pieces of information were collected and that they would be used in an attempt to influence their behavior in a political election.

Do your donors know that you submit their data to a wealth screening or data modeling? Right now at this very moment could you fluidly explain to a donor what information is used in a wealth screening and why?

And even if you can leap that hurdle with the grace of a gazelle, there is the question of how a prospect not yet acquainted with you or your organization could be researched. How can you inform a donor prospect how you are going to use his/her personal information if you have not yet contacted the prospect? And then, what if you decide s/he is not a good prospect and don’t want to make any outreach? Do you still have to notify the person?

I pose these questions hoping you might begin to feel a little uncomfortable. And when you feel this way I’d like you to see how the US public feels about data protection as told through a Pew Research Center survey.

Roughly half of Americans do not trust the federal government or social media sites to protect their data

If Pew had asked the public if they felt that not-for-profit organizations protected their data, what do you speculate the answers would be? Skewed to the left with “not at all confident” or to the right with “very confident”?

Watch Your Step! It’s Information.

Trust is fickle. Based partly on emotions, trust is a decision and it is subject to change at any moment. You and I both know that the research we perform on our prospects and donors is done with the greatest care. But no matter how careful and ethical we are with information about our donors and prospects, ultimately their perception of our actions will determine whether they decide to continue to trust us.

All of us are subject to a firehose of data every day and our ability to trust any piece of data requires quick decisions. A simple example involves dates. If I want to know the answer to a question and I find an article online, a quick indicator of its value is its date. Is it very old information or newly published?

But look how easy it is to mislead with something as simple as a date:

Chart: What Assets Make Up Wealth? | Visual Capitalist | 2018

To look at the citation above you would believe it is very current. The article was written in 2018, but the data the article relied upon were compiled in 2016. Dates can be surprisingly complex. Ask Sabine Schuller, an expert in international prospect research. She wrote an entire blog post on the subject of dates!

3 Things You Can Do NOW

If you aren’t convinced yet that you and your organization should be re-evaluating data privacy policies, you should know that the UK Information Commissioner’s Office fined charities last year for data protection violations and those fines could reach millions under the new GDPR. The US is likely to enact legislation at some point. So what can you do now?

  1. Evaluate your data policies now. Start with some of the resources provided here and begin crafting a plan to assess and act. If you store and use data on EU citizens, that data will be subject to GDPR. And this goes beyond fundraising to all data held by your organization. Investing time and resources now will save you time and resources later. You need to continue earning the public and your donors’ trust in your organization.
  2. Get better – much better – at messaging around fundraising and prospect research. Do you understand prospect research? Do you still use words like “stalking” or “creepy”? Even in jest? If so, you have work to do to understand and better articulate the reasons for and benefits of fundraising research.
  3. Get serious about donor engagement. If you don’t already have some kind of advisory board or ad hoc committee, maybe it’s time to consider investing the resources to start one. Who better to be reviewing your policies and messaging? Or maybe you want to begin surveying or holding focus groups with your donors. Find a way to engage and listen to your donors.

Data privacy and protection issues may seem overwhelming, but if you start now and tackle it one step at a time you will be routinely strengthening and reinforcing your organization’s policies and procedures. And when new legislation or additional data scandals break, you will be ready and able to reassure the public and your donors.

Additional Resources

Back to the Future with #ResearchPride

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Are you familiar with the imagery of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, both whispering in your ear, trying to influence your behavior? In the information services field it sometimes feels likes we have artificial intelligence on one shoulder and humanity on the other, each trying to get us to follow the path on the right or left.

Does it have to be one or the other? Good versus evil? Artificial intelligence versus humanity?

I had the privilege of interviewing prospect research thinker Valerie Anastasio recently for the Prospect Research #ChatBytes podcast. Years ago when the Apra Talks first debuted at Apra’s annual international conference, she was one of the first presenters. She talked about profiles and the future. Would artificial intelligence take over our profession? Her message: the march is on …but we are just as important as before!

If you haven’t listened to Valerie’s 20 minute podcast yet, I give you permission to go ahead and take a tea or coffee break right now.

Valerie walks us through the dawn of the internet right up to the data aggregators and social media firehose of information available to us now. She talks about what our profession has lost sight of and the opportunities it is gaining as it moves into the future. It’s good stuff.

Advances in information technology have transformed the prospect research profession. Even so, our primary role remains the same. As prospect research professionals we provide the information necessary to guide and support the fundraising effort – the relationship donors have with the organization.

How and what kind of information we provide has changed and will continue to change.

I won’t spoil the podcast for you and share Valerie’s vision for what that change might look like in the future, but I will share with you how you can change your mindset in a way that prepares you for the future of our profession.

  1. Don’t sell products; sell service partnerships. So often we refer to our work as a “product.” We can give you a profile, a wealth screening, or data analysis. The future is in partnerships. We can listen and understand what you need to move fundraising forward, and translate the information to get you there.
  2. Be a sales person. That means communicating in the way your end-user prefers, which could be on the phone or in-person. It also means actively marketing your services. Why should anyone care about the all-in-one rating you created to prioritize the prospect pipeline? Listen to their “pain” and “speak” the solution.
  3. Omit the details. Prospect research must still understand and be accurate in the details, but don’t torture your end-user with them. Big picture thinkers often make good leaders, but they won’t listen to you drone on about all of the options. Listen to them, decide what you think will work best, present the solution confidently, and then you can keep tweaking until it works.

Back to our devil vs. angel imagery, if the march of artificial intelligence is already on, which shoulder should you be listening to – artificial intelligence or humanity? Both! Valerie listens carefully to the voice of artificial intelligence, the advances in information technology, but also to the voice of humanity, the way in which humans behave and relate to one another. She combines them both to create a central path for her organization. This is the path that leads to the deepest connections with the most capable donors.

As you listen to the prophets and skeptics of artificial intelligence, remember your history, and consider Valerie’s description of her experience with the internet revolution. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It will happen, but probably not quite the way we all expect it to.

One thing I am certain about: prospect research professionals will continue to provide invaluable support to their organization’s fundraising programs. So go on, indulge yourself in a little #ResearchPride!

Additional Resources

How about a fun way to show your #ResearchPride at the office?

Click here for #ResearchPride Swag

Women’s Hack Guide to Prospect Research

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Did you know that International Women’s Day is March 8, 2018? Get ready! In honor of women, the Day, and with some recent inspiration from a #FemaleFund Tweet-up hosted by Preeti Gill (@SoleSearcherPR) and Vanessa Chase (@vanessaechase), I thought I’d depart from the usual and have a little bit of tongue-in-cheek fun!

You see, during the Tweet-up I mentioned that my biggest challenge in researching women is that the traditional public sources are weak on information about them. Sarah Bernstein (@srbernstein) mused that since prospect research, like other fundraising careers, is still mostly done by women, are we creating many of our own biased tools?

And the seed to the Women’s Hack Guide to Prospect Research was planted!

(Don’t worry, men, you can read this, too, and still get some great search ideas.)

Preparing for Your Day

  1. Make some coffee.
  2. Review/write your task list for the day, incorporating meetings on your calendar and when you’ll accomplish household errands in between everything else (because you pass the dry cleaning on your way to the library where the book you requested is waiting, and you can finally return your child’s overdue library book, which you found when you were cleaning this weekend).
  3. Mentally separate tasks that require deep focus and those that you can do while chatting with someone who stops by your desk (including updating the database record while the gift officer tells you about her visit with the prospect you just researched).
  4. Sip your coffee and start your research!

Shifting to Inclusive Research

  1. Using the “inside-out” approach, efficiently work through the usual tools, collecting information, but then, regardless of the level of profile, stop and shift to one or two alternative or less traditional search approaches.
  2. Document your alternative search strategies to keep track of what works as you proceed with your research, such as the following:

Female Spouse

Male Spouse

  1. Social media is sizzling for you today! Add the social media sites to your bookmarks, especially if there is a separate search page.
  2. Download a few articles and blog posts about Instagram and Pinterest onto your tablet because you don’t have your own account on them – yet! (and you know you’ll have at least a 30-minute wait when you take your teenager to the doctor’s office later this week – they are never on time.)
  3. Make more coffee! (or switch to tea)

Winding Up Your Day

  1. Hand-deliver the prospect profile to the gift officer because you know he’s excited about his upcoming meeting in the couple’s home. When you mention that the woman was a marketing executive and he dismisses it, listen as you weave the story about why it’s important (The giving is either in her name individually or as a couple, suggesting she is the philanthropic driver in the household. She held a top position at the marketing firm and would probably be a great fit for and open to serving on our development board, while her husband appears overstretched serving on multiple company boards building his career. The children are teenagers and she might be thinking about what she wants to do next – it’s good timing!)
  2. Make a mental note to add information like that to the profile next time!
  3. Pat your back because you just advocated for a woman AND put your organization in a better position to deepen its relationship with a donor.
  4. Finish your last cup of coffee before the commute (race) home begins.

 

Additional Resources

Can You Spot the HNWIs in Your Database?

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So much of what we do in prospect research revolves around finding wealth. Sometimes it sounds like the only thing we talk about is money! As I finish facilitating another Capacity Ratings Workshop at the Prospect Research Institute I am heartened to reflect that in every discussion we had about the money, we were irresistibly drawn to another rating – affinity or engagement.

I’m not trying to suggest that we don’t need to be really good at spotting high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in our database. We do! When we segment our database by wealth we are better able to focus on finding what really qualifies someone as a major gift prospect – how engaged or aligned they are with our organization.

Following are some tips for finding HNWIs who also demonstrate affinity for your organization:

  • Go Beyond the Screening: Yes, verify the information in your top-rated segment, but don’t assume no-one else in your file has wealth. Professional researchers know how to identify the hidden HNW gems such as private company owners, women volunteers, and wealthy families.
  • Prioritize Giving: Don’t get blinded by bling! High lifetime giving and monthly giving are great indicators for planned gifts. The savvy researcher might look for things like long-term home-ownership, too. It’s all about knowing your unique constituency.
  • Leverage All of Your Data: When the gift officer and researcher work as a team, you can test out what pieces of information best prioritize your top prospects. Is it attendance at multiple events? Donors who have multiple points of communication or participation? Donors invited by other top donors to participate and give? Create a feedback loop!
  • Research Wisely: Profile research isn’t about completing a form anymore. The software tools do most of that groundwork for you. When you know what wealth looks like and you know what a top donor to your organization looks like, you can research wisely. Spend more time on the most relevant information – connections to and interests in your organization.
  • Prospect Smartly: Truth is that even if you are at a college or university, at some point most organizations will need to reach out to people who are not part of our existing constituency. Getting good at finding connections and having a researcher-gift officer team to better clarify what a top donor looks like to your organization (wealth + affinity) will position your organization to seize external opportunities for major gifts.

Knowing what a HNWI looks like takes practice. Read the wealth and philanthropy reports published by places such as Indiana University and Capgemini. Once you learn to distinguish between someone living comfortably and someone who has significant wealth, the next step is to understand how HNW donors give differently from others. Cultivation and messaging for this group is distinct.

And the next time you are talking about wealth or estimated net worth and someone asks, “Isn’t it more important to know if they are philanthropic?” – you now know the answer! There has to be both wealth and philanthropy to raise major gifts.

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