Tag Archives: fundraising research

Facebook, Fundraising, and Data Protection

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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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Pictures and Patterns: Decision-making with Fundraising Insights

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Imagine you emerge from a strategic planning session and your task is to raise more money from corporations. Your organization wants to expand its reach and you need to take the thousands of corporate donors in the database and transform them into a fundraising program. Why? Because everyone “feels” like there is a lot of opportunity there. Where do you start?

One of the most common mistakes in fundraising is to make decisions and invest money and resources in strategies that are based on intuition and anecdotal evidence alone. Let’s face it, sometimes it works, and maybe that’s why the behavior is so persistent. But much of the time data-weak decisions fail miserably, often slowly and painfully with lots of fingers pointed. There is a better way.

Leverage the talents of prospect research to paint pictures and identify patterns!

Well-trained prospect research professionals are methodical and analytical. That means that we enjoy solving problems, untangling messy information, and putting order to chaos. Share with us your dilemmas, your problems …your fundraising hopes and dreams. We can help you succeed!

In the new corporate fundraising program example, it means painting a picture of our corporate donors:

  • Where are they located?
  • How many of them are there and at what giving levels?
  • How long have they been donors?
  • Are they small, closely held companies, or large corporations?

And then identifying clusters and patterns:

  • Are there groups of donors in particular industries, geographic locations, or company size?
  • Do the donors that give the most and most frequently have anything in common?
  • Is there anything about the data that can help us understand the giving behaviors? Can we see any correlations between data points?

There is no standard checklist for exploring this kind of information. It requires a keen understanding of the fundraising being undertaken matched with an analytical mind trained in using data to solve problems.

When a prospect research professional works with you to explore your data and make an initial assessment, you can decide on strategies and tactics that will raise the most money now and in the future.

For example, you might discover some companies are more “ripe” for a new approach than others. If they have been giving frequently and increasing their giving, visiting them and discovering their philanthropic needs might uncover a unique corporate approach for your organization that you hadn’t thought of!

Knowing that your best donors are dominated by small, closely held companies gives you the opportunity to find out why. What makes your organization so attractive to them? Are they really individual donors in disguise or do they have company objectives for their philanthropy?

Uncovering an unusual pattern, such as expressions of faith on the company website, might give you an insight that challenges the way you perceived your donors and that opens the door to much deeper relationships.

Fundraising success through insights is not so much about the tools – data mining, statistical analysis, profile research – it’s about giving the donor story inside your data a voice.

When you hire a prospect research professional to help you understand your data, you are hiring someone with a unique skill set – someone who can uncover and communicate the “story” inside your data.

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Can you Achieve Faster-Better-Cheaper Profiles?

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“I need a profile on this person today…can’t you just Google it?” It’s the kind of question that makes prospect research professionals cringe. But why shouldn’t a development officer want it faster, better, and cheaper? Why is your organization paying thousands of dollars a year for research tools if it still takes forever to get the information needed?

So what’s happening to cause this disconnect between development officer and prospect researcher? I suspect there a few causes, but first, let me tell you a story…

As a consultant I charge a flat fee for projects. I want my clients to be able to budget, and as a professional I should have a fair idea of how long it will take to do the research. Profile-type research falls into this category. And it’s this kind of pressure that keeps us razor sharp. It’s me and the team against the clock!

That’s how I “rediscovered” one of my favorite tools the other day – DonorSearch.net.

Faster-Better-Cheaper with DonorSearch.net

At Aspire Research Group we’ve taken on a few new clients that, in addition to standard profile research, needed some “situational” research done. Things like prioritizing, quick checks to be sure assigning for a visit is appropriate, or key items researched to prepare the president. So I asked myself, “How could we manage our time researching, keep up the high quality of information, and make it the right price?”

In my quest, I took a fresh look at our tools and settled on DonorSearch to start our projects. Of course, being able to upload a small batch of names for a prospect screening is a time-saver, but even when we entered only one name into the Integrated Search, suddenly everything was at our fingertips. DonorSearch had made so many updates to their product – the combined result meant we could be very competitive.

For example:

  • Time Management: The big name family business was clearly the source of wealth, but why was the prospect not listed on the website? Open Corporates in the Integrated Search demonstrated a long list of companies where he was a director – many with the same word in the name. From there a quick Google search revealed his specialty in the family business. Faster.
  • High Quality: There was a large, outlier gift to an organization with a strange name. I didn’t want to put it in the list without checking, but didn’t want to have to do a distracting search. A click on the source link gave me a searchable PDF – and lo and behold – it was an organization with a mission similar to the client! Better.
  • The Right Price: By letting the tool do all of the upfront “grunt” work finding relevant information we spent less time gathering and more time thinking, and that meant we could charge the right price. Cheaper.

Ask the Librarian: Can’t you just Google that?

But if you really want your research to achieve the business mantra of better-faster-cheaper, you need more than a great tool like DonorSearch. You need to start with a really good understanding of the need and continue with really good communication throughout.

So why do researchers get asked to Google it in seconds flat? Let’s go ask the librarians! Librarians are trained to interview the customer. When you go to the reference desk, the librarian has to figure out what you are trying to accomplish and then help you navigate your way to success.

While we don’t view the reference librarian as an expert on the subject matter that brings us to the library, we do view the librarian as someone who has received training in library science and is an expert on helping us find information. The librarian is a professional.

The “just Google it” request suggests that any amateur without training can perform quality prospect research, which can be insulting … but it also happens to be a great opening for a really good conversation to clarify the  problem to be solved.

Professionals are Always in Demand

The more that software tools are able to do, the more important prospect research professionals become. Librarians don’t worry that books will put them out of business!

And on the flip side, the more that software tools are able to do, the more we must use our communication and problem-solving skills to provide flexible, custom solutions.

If you manage a prospect researcher, if you are a prospect researcher, or if you want to be a prospect researcher, you can arrive at better-faster-cheaper profile research if you recognize the importance of great training (including communication skills) and tools. It’s what qualifies us as prospect research professionals!

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How do I make prospect profiles work for me?

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I work with quite a few fundraising professionals who are taking a leadership role for the first time or are heading into their first ever serious fundraising campaign. Suddenly you have to figure out how to make the leap into managing significant gifts and create a major gift program that delivers. That’s a lot of pressure!
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So, of course, you demand – and get – a budget for prospect research. Way to go! Now what?

What is prospect research exactly and how does one USE profiles?

As I mentioned in Re-Wiring the Trusty Profile, it helps when you and your team discuss and recognize how and where traditional prospect research, such as profiles, fundraising analytics, and relationship or prospect management intersect at your organization. Even in a small team, you’re no doubt running a full development program. Research will likely touch many parts of that program.
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For example, I had a researcher describe to me how her initial snapshot profile went directly into the donor database for prospects that were assigned for a first visit. It was up to the gift officer to print the snapshot report and make the visit. Is that traditional prospect research (e.g., snapshot profile) or prospect management (e.g., proactive prospect assignment)? Well, it’s both, isn’t it?

But to know what you can get out of a profile, you need to know what goes into it.

In 3 Strategies to Choose a Research Tool I show you a graphic and describe the five building blocks of the profile. This structure identifies what information is relevant for fundraising, but your profile format could be any kind of mix-and-match from these building blocks.
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In Can You Really Trust Prospect Research? I talk about some of the commonly held misunderstandings about the voo-doo we researchers do. There’s a lot of confusion about what information we can find and how accurate or complete it can be.
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As a fundraiser meeting with donors, you are performing primary research. You find out all of the information we researchers usually can’t. In your face-to-face meetings you discover people’s philanthropic passions, family and health situations, and their interests and personal connections to your organization. What information do you need to perform those visits and ultimately ask for a major gift? Once you understand the five profile building blocks, you will be much better placed to answer that question well.

But the very best move you can make to use PROFILES WITH POWER is to communicate with your researcher!

With the five building blocks of the profile as your conversational guide, examine what you need to know at each stage of your interactions with donor prospects. What does your researcher recommend in terms of software subscription tools versus manual research?
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In some situations you might do well with a quick look-up in a tool on your own and a first visit before asking for a researched profile. And sometimes getting a researcher’s edge from out of the starting gate will deliver better results in a shorter period of time.
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Once you understand what you need and when, can you break it down into two or three types of standard profile requests? Of course you can always make exceptions – you’re the boss! But standardizing your practices will make it easier to manage expectations and easier to onboard new staff as you continue to grow.

Prospect Research is good and exciting work!

Discovering people’s paths to wealth and their expressions of philanthropy is sheer pleasure. As a prospect research professional I love being part of the team that connects people to the joys of giving. When I can work closely with a front-line fundraiser to cultivate and solicit a transformative gift it’s a breath-taking experience!
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The power of profiles can be yours – especially if you treat your researcher as one of the fundraising team. Who knows? Your prospect research professional might just turn out to be your secret weapon!
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More Resources

Learn to perform basic prospect research and find information on your prospects – fast!

Get your free Knowledge Seekers membership and gain access to profile templates, commentary, and more. Click here to discover Prospect Research Institute’s learning community.

Communicating Better with Researchers in 5 Questions

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Have you ever been in a conversation with someone that felt like an argument or debate, but it turned out you were both saying the same thing, just differently? I had one supervisor where this happened quite a bit before we realized what was happening. Many times the very skills that make great frontline fundraisers and great fundraising researchers translate into two very different languages!

When it comes to conversation starters, donor motivations, and wealthy lifestyle indicators, fundraisers like you have deep and intuitive knowledge and awareness. How else could you be so successful at raising large gifts?

Recently a long-time client came to me with a completely cold prospect pulled out of a news article. The article was about an 8-figure gift to another institution for the same cause, but a completely different aspect of that cause. He wanted contact information so he could follow-up on his letter to the couple.

I was skeptical. The data (the news article) was not suggestive of a good fit. The prospects’ affinity was clearly elsewhere.

And then the couple accepted a meeting!

We did more in-depth research and found quite a bit of data suggesting that, indeed, there were indicators that a relationship could be developed. I will not doubt a veteran fundraiser’s intuition again, I assure you.

If frontline fundraisers and fundraising researchers have such complementary knowledge about prospects, why do they many times struggle to communicate with each other?

Prospect research professionals operate in the world data. We need to be very specific and to break things down into pieces. We need to be analytical and able to turn text into numbers to efficiently prioritize prospects. And we often struggle to focus on or see the big picture, feeling more comfortable among the tasks that lead to the bigger goal.

If this sounds like your researcher, or if you have ever struggled to communicate with a researcher, consider the following questions before your next encounter:

  1. How will you use it? When you ask for research to be performed, try painting a picture of what you expect the resulting research to look like and how you will use it. This avoids confusion over the amount of time you expect the researcher to spend. “Get me everything on this guy” is a painfully vague request for a researcher. Explain what actions you plan to take using “everything” and you might get what you really need.
  2. How important is this request? When you are talking to someone who loves process and procedure – like many researchers do – it is important to emphasize how your request fits into other priorities. Profile research can feel high priority when there are meetings scheduled, but finding new prospects to fill a campaign gap has a much higher priority when you recognize the lead time you need to cultivate for a campaign gift. More targeted profiles or outsourcing could be time-freeing compromises.
  3. Do I need to know this? We researchers get excited about our work! If you start feeling overwhelmed in a conversation about a request or project, just let us know. “I feel like that’s more detail than I need right now” is a very helpful statement – especially if you follow it up with a clear picture of what you need (see “How will you use it?” above).
  4. Do I need to help my researcher make a decision? Maybe you don’t like going deep into the details, but sometimes details matter a lot – especially with data. You don’t want your organization in a news headline about data impropriety! Asking the obvious question can help you and your researcher get through a lot of detail: “Do you need help making a decision about this?” (If the answer is “no”, see above.)
  5. Have I given feedback? Until ESP becomes a requirement for employment, researchers need feedback on the work they provide to you. Especially if you are unhappy because you didn’t get the information you needed, take the time to discuss it with your researcher. It could easily be a case of saying the same words, but defining them very differently.

We know that staff diversity leads to better outcomes for our organizations, including fundraising, but it also creates friction as different personalities and perspectives struggle to communicate. Taking the time to think about frustrating conversations afterwards can help you identify tactics to communicate better in the future.

Some type of prospect research is behind every fundraising success. If you are fortunate enough to have a prospect research professional on staff, your efforts at better communication are bound to turn into big wins for you and your organization!

More Resources You Might Like

To Advocate or Not to Advocate – there is no question!

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advocate
“Advocate” by Nick Youngson, is licensed under Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0

Something big and very exciting is happening in the field of prospect research. It is at once both thrilling and terrifying, but then again, the best things in life usually are! Do you know what I am talking about? Prospect research has become the center of attention concerning the use and abuse of data in nonprofit fundraising.

The Thrilling Aspect

For years prospect research languished in basements, yearning for that exclusive seat at the leadership table. Thrillingly, prospect research professionals in the U.K. have been thrust into that seat with all the anticipation of slowly ratcheting up the roller-coaster-mountain and the subsequent terror of being dropped with a 5.5 G-force speed down the other side.
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It’s official. Data is a big deal. And the guardians and operators of data in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are prospect research professionals.
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So after working long and hard behind the scenes, after advocating to fundraising leadership for the use and respect of prospect research, we have arrived at the leadership table. And my, what an entrance we have made!

The Terrifying Aspect

In the U.K., the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been fining charities for violations of the Data Protection Act 1998. The fines have ranged from a low of £9,000 to a high of £25,000. The IOC has done a lot of interpretation of the Data Protection Act 1998, and has surprisingly used emotional language.
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The fines include best practices in prospect research such as the following:
Is this the end of prospect research in the U.K.? I doubt it. There will be changes as NGOs adapt their data and privacy policies to carefully reflect their fundraising practices. Some NGOs will even seize this as an opportunity to share their fundraising “data story” with the public.

New Perspective Fueled by Advocacy

After this terrifying plunge, the interpretation of the Data Protection Act 1998 by the ICO may shift as NGOs, fundraisers, prospect researchers, donors, and other constituents react and lend their voices to the conversation. For example, the Institute of Fundraising issued a report, Good Asking, exploring why charities research and process supporter information.
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On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, instead of a tightening of data privacy, the U.S. has been experiencing a loosening of data privacy. On April 3, 2017, President Trump repealed a set of privacy regulations requiring “internet service providers to request authorization before selling sensitive customer data to advertisers, or using that same information for marketing campaigns.” (Click for article)

What Can You Do? Advocate!

Whether you are in the U.K., the U.S., or any other country, we prospect research professionals are most often the guardians and operators of fundraising data in our organizations. We may have little or no leadership authority (yet), but that doesn’t mean we can’t advocate for our profession and for solid data practices – before we find ourselves the subject of unflattering news headlines.
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It’s easy to say we should advocate, but what might that look like in real life? Following are three steps to help you advocate effectively:
  1. Define the change you desire. Just as in goal setting, clearly defining the change you want to effect is important. Are you advocating for the creation of a data privacy policy, or are you advocating for your prospect research position or department?
  2. Determine your strategy. Strategy comes before tactics. Who needs to be persuaded to make change happen? Where are the obstacles to the change you seek?
  3. Craft your tactics. Tactics are the kinds of actions you take to fulfill your strategy and effect change.
Consider the story of Suzanne Harris at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is a classic case of advocacy gone right! Suzanne wanted to introduce RFM scoring. She talked up RFM scoring and quoted gurus in the field. She built a relationship with IT to create an automated score that could be refreshed. Then the Development Department threw a party for all staff, on a day fundraisers were likely to be in the office, and used games to educate and demonstrate the value of the new scores.
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Advocacy isn’t just for associations or organizations with a cause. It’s something all of us do all the time. We advocate for a raise, to have dinner at a certain restaurant, or to visit somewhere special for vacation. Advocacy becomes more complex when there are more players and procedures in between the current status and the change we desire.
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Considering the level of strategic complexity we navigate when we provide insights in prospect profiles, analyze prospect portfolios, and perform data mining, we can handle advocacy!

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Lowering the Prospect-to-Donor Ratio

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Do you dream of creating the perfect prospecting system? A system so flawless that the ratio of prospects to donors drops to 2:1 or even (gasp) 1:1? I do! And yet, barring advances in ESP, a 1:1 ratio feels quite out of reach. We simply don’t have access to people’s complex, internal motivations for giving until they get visited and share. Even so, we still have plenty of room to achieve better prospect-to-donor ratios.

Interview with a Donor

I had the joy of interviewing Tim Horton, a venture capitalist for the Prospect Research Institute’s #ChatBytes podcast. About halfway through the interview he shared some of his philanthropic motivations with me.
  • Childhood sentiment – He gave to the March of Dimes as a child and still gives.
  • Family culture of giving – He was taught to give while young and now gives his time and money to mentor youth.
  • Political passions – He feels strongly that Africa has been left out of the capitalist economy and wants to remedy this.

Mr. Horton is a very private person and his giving is anonymous. If you research him you will find all of the usual public information, especially businesses where he is a listed officer. Isn’t it natural for us fundraising researchers to consider that given his venture capital history he might view his giving as an investment or wish to be involved in giving to entrepreneurial issues or causes? And yet, if we deduced his giving motivations from the data collected we would be all wrong.

Insights and Integration

Whether we are sourcing a fresh list of prospects or taking a deeper dive to qualify already identified prospects, achieving a lower prospect-to-donor ratio requires insights and integration.
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As an instructor at the Prospect Research Institute I have introduced “insights” as a capstone project in any course where it makes sense – because crafting insights takes practice. Usually we researchers are happy to craft insights from community involvement information. We can look at patterns of giving, nonprofit board service, and family foundation histories and provide suggestions about where and how a prospective donor might want to make a gift. But we often stumble over providing insights from wealth information.
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And yet, wealth information is where we researchers can really shine a light in the darkness! When we begin to learn and imagine how wealth and assets could affect a prospective donor’s ability to make a major or transformational gift we offer a tremendous service to the gift officer. Suddenly the multi-millionaire with 85% of her wealth tied up in her business becomes recognized for life stage and likely liquidity, opening up a long-term relationship that yields some major gifts now and an eight or nine-figure gift fifteen years later.
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So if your gift officer comes to you asking for estimated net worth or a liquidity percentage on his prospect’s wealth, take a deep breath and resist the urge to say that it isn’t possible. Instead consider this the perfect opportunity to integrate prospect research into front-line fundraising. Open the conversation. Discuss how we collect wealth information and how we might better inform the gift officer. Look to other fields, such as financial services, to find out how they evaluate liquidity or other facets of wealth. And provide those insights in some evolving format.
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Because once you become part of the team conversation around how a prospective donor’s wealth impacts ability and motivation for giving, you are providing the kind of insights your team desperately needs to bring the prospect-to-donor ratio down and to build deeper and more respectful relationships with constituents. You begin to drop the “cost center” designation and become integrated with the “revenue center” designation.
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And even better, you get to learn. You get to hear what happened after that visit. You get to find out how right or wrong your guesses were and speculate with the team on why that might be. You get to discover great new ideas on how to perform even better in the future.
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It’s time to step-up and lean-in to a new relationship with your data, your fundraising team, and your profession. It will take some practice, and perhaps a few mistakes along the way, but you’ve got this!

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