If you had asked me this question a month ago, I would probably have argued that fundraising strategy usually comes first and data and research support the strategy. Now, in the middle of uncertainty, it’s easier to recognize that it’s not even a valid question.

I was co-presenting a webinar on relationship mapping hosted by Apra Pennsylvania and as my co-presenter, Marianne Pelletier, was walking through the mapping process in Excel, questions were popping up in the chat. How did she know what kind of file to pull? How did she decide which constituent to focus on?

It reminded me how important it is to understand the purpose or the problem we are trying to solve.When we’re learning a tool or technique, we aren’t focused on the problem or scenario. Similarly, in primary school we had to learn the mathematical principles before we could solve word problems.

In real life, research projects start with the problem to solve or the fundraising strategy. Then we explore the data so that we can understand and focus on which data will solve the problem or fuel the fundraising strategy. But mostly this is a loop that gets repeated iteratively.

Let me give you an example

Let’s say Sweet Charity is implementing its donor outreach plan and asks the research department to identify donors who have stable or increasing wealth during the pandemic. Why? Because leadership has created a COVID-19 emergency fund and identified the organization’s new funding priorities and needs to ask the right people for gifts.

Strategy is driving research.

Using industry segmentation, research identifies donors with stable or increasing wealth. And during the presentation, the results are sliced and diced into many different views in response to leadership questions. This is exploratory.

As a result of this exploration, leadership fine-tunes its strategies based on the potential revealed from the research results. One of the discoveries was that the donors with the most potential were the least likely to have email addresses.

Instead of producing a video series as planned, leadership decides that everybody is trying to get online eyeball attention. They will play to their strengths and do a letter campaign for their key priority–children’s education. They have their program participants submit original artwork and craft inspirational messaging.

Research is now driving strategy.

Next research is asked to identify everyone in this smaller donor segment who has children and those who do not. The refinement continues!

Be an active part of the solution

Prospect research professionals are not always asked for their expert opinions on how the data can inform fundraising strategy. Most of us have been told at one time or another that this is, indeed, NOT our role.

And yet the use of data to inform strategy and enhance performance is a very real competitive edge. It’s time for fundraising research professionals to actively engage leadership in exploring the data, acting as translator and co-strategist.

Engaging leadership can be as simple as saying “yes” a lot more often. When leadership asks you to print a report five different times, it’s annoying and feels like there is no method, just madness. But what if you say “yes,” and “by the way, I could use the conference room projector to create these data views in real time as you think through the results.”

Hopefully, if you are involved nonprofit fundraising you can use this time of disruption to think differently.

In the example above, Sweet Charity could have insisted on pursuing its original video strategy and spent money, resources, and time sourcing email addresses. Viewing snail mail as a strength took a shift in perspective brought on by the uncomfortable stress of dwindling funds and rising demand for services.

May disruption work for you, not against you!

Additional Resources

• To Build Strategy, Start with the Future| HBR IdeaCast | 2020
• Have We Forgotten How To Research? Does It Matter?| Jen Filla | 2019
• The Bots Are Coming! So What?| Jen Filla | 2019