Category Archives: 4Researchers

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

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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?

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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

What is a Major Gift? That is the Question

4Fundraisers, 4Researchers, Major Gift Teams

What is a Major Gift? That is the Question!If you ask a consultant the question “What is a Major Gift?” you will no doubt get the answer that “it depends.” Of course it does! But how does one figure it out? Surely we don’t guess what it is, do we? Lots of people consider $1,000 to be a threshold number. But what if a $100 gift would you give you goosebumps? Is that a major gift for your organization?

“What is a Major Gift?” is a major question worth some deliberation, but let’s set the stage for that discussion with a structure based in actual data upon which we can rely. In fact, you might consider that there is an Actual Major Gift amount and a Strategic Major Gift amount. Allow me to suggest…

Actual Major Gift vs. Strategic Major Gift

In order to have a meaningful conversation about the dollar amount that defines a major gift, we need to know what giving amounts actually happen at our organization.

Once we look at the actual giving data, we can move on to discussing how we might want to lower or raise the bar (we almost always raise the bar!) on that amount based upon our fundraising strategies and goals, to land on a Strategic Major Gift amount.

Actual Major Gift Data

There are so many fun ways to explore your giving data! And if I don’t mention your favorite, it would be nice if you would comment and share here.

Using your most recent one, two, or even three fiscal years of total annual giving by donor, following are a few ways to slice and dice the pie:

  • Calculate the mean, median, and mode. You remember those formulas, right? Excel even has a Data Analysis ToolPak anyone can install that calculates this automatically from your file.
  • Figure out the 80/20 Rule on your donor file. The Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule suggests that 80% of your fundraised dollars comes from 20% of your donors. Using your list of donors with total annual giving for each, you can figure out the largest gift amounts that total 80% of all giving and then look at how many donors it took to reach that 80% of giving.
  • Subjectively evaluate the top gifts over the past three years. Are you noticing gaps in between the low and high or higher gift amounts? Are there clusters of giving at certain amounts? What do you know about how your organization fundraises that could be causing those results?

Over at the Prospect Research Institute, I develop learning materials. If you need more help exploring data like this, you can find tutorials and practice exercises in the Learning Community Research Connectors members-only section or as part of the Generalist Research on-demand Training.

Once you have the Actual Major Gift data to discuss, you are ready to add your Strategic Major Gift amount. This is the one that will help you achieve your ambitious goals.

Strategic Major Gift Amount

Once you are ready to start a major gift program, whether that is a campaign or simply intentional effort and dedication of resources, or if you are evaluating your major gift program for any reason, there are a few lenses through which you might consider your major gift amount strategically.

Following are three that make the top of my list:

  • Capacity of your donors. If you submit some or all of your donor records for a wealth screening, you will have a big picture view of potential capacity. How does your actual major gift amounts and your actual amount raised from those gifts compare to the capacity of your donor file?
  • Protection against undue influence. Before you get too excited about the prospect of asking for a colossal gift, consider that you don’t want a tiny number of donors to have undue (perceived or real) influence over your organization because of their support. Campaigns are a popular way to leap your major gift amounts to a higher plane because they offer discrete, one-time opportunities for impact. What percent of your annual budget would be too much for a donor to give?
  • Value of gift opportunities at your organization. It’s a “good” problem to have, but if you have donors capable of making transformational gifts, but your organization has no plan for transforming, there’s a dangerous disconnect. Donors need a gift opportunity that matches the level of their gift. It doesn’t have to be naming or endowment or even restricted giving, but it has to further your mission responsibly and meaningfully.

The Value of Thinking it Through – with Data!

There are so many things we take for granted in this world and the definition and meaning of industry words and phrases – including “major gift” – is way up there on the list. Having a conversation about how you define major gifts at your organization is not as simple as at first it might appear.

And hopefully it will lead to important discussions about fundraising and mission strategy. Surely that makes it a worthwhile conversation!

Additional Resources

After the Wealth Screening: Taking a New Direction

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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

Get Ready to (Prospect Research) Work in 2018!

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Back in 2016 when Mark Noll posted “When Technology Killed the Fundraising Star” I wasn’t wholly convinced that Skype was about to replace face-to-face major gift visits. Then, only a little over a year later in August 2017, The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote “15 New Fundraising Ideas That Worked: Part III” and included one about digital-gift officers. Could it be?

When I look back over the PRSPCT-L list-serv posts in 2017, the eye-popping number of prospect research job openings really gets me thinking about more than the research we perform. It has me wondering about the conditions under which we do it. The nonprofit world is not particularly known as cutting-edge leadership when it comes to managing its workforce, but I muse about whether fundraising could lead the way in helping to redefine the workplace.

Development officers must travel and nonprofits and institutions have been right there with for-profit sales offices in establishing “field offices” where fundraisers work out of the home office in the geographic location where their prospects live. As digital-gift officers emerge, why do they need to be located in a specific place? And with nonprofit leadership skills in hot demand, more leadership candidates are using that leverage to demand to work remotely, too.

And then there’s fundraising research – interacting intimately with development officers and headquarters. Prospect research is also in a great position to work from home!

But you don’t have to listen to me speculate. You can listen to three real prospect research professionals tell you about their experiences working remotely. Warning: it isn’t all sugar and spice.

I was inspired by how candid the panelists were. Pioneers all three! And it felt so good to be among fellow prospect research professionals who share so many of the same experiences working remotely that I experience. It can feel isolating to be the only prospect research professional in a fundraising office, but that gets compounded when you work remotely!

If you work remotely you will love to hear the stories of these three women and if you don’t work remotely, but want to, you will gain a lot of practical and tactical advice. Developing rapport and maintaining presence in the virtual world requires a new skill set. Thankfully, whether you are a development officer or researcher, fundraisers happen to be well placed to learn the ropes!

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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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Cure Analysis Paralysis with this Visual

4Fundraisers, 4Researchers, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In this wonderful era of exciting, off-the-shelf prospect research tools and one-click-away data analysis, how is it that we still struggle to prioritize our donors and prospects? But we do. The results come in, the scores are assigned and yet there are still way more highly-rated prospects than our staff could possibly contact. Which names do we call on first?

Human brains are not wired to interpret and act upon long lists of names with appended information, such as those found in our databases and Excel spreadsheets. And when you need 50 names, but there are 300 that all have the same top score, it can be paralyzing!

Whenever I hear about data visualizations I always see pictures of charts and graphs in my mind’s eye. But when I was grappling with how to deliver a prioritized prospect list to a client recently I decided against charts and graphs. I wanted something that would give them a colorful visual with graphics, but also actual donor prospect names with dollar signs.

The organization had decided to create a more formal corporate giving program. It had been happening accidentally and now they wanted to get serious. So she sent me a list of over a thousand of their best donors based on giving history. My job was to sort it out and send it back.

We decided to focus on two variables that we labeled engagement and gift potential. Engagement was based on RFM scoring, which stands for recency, frequency, and monetary and represents a giving history analysis. We also appended some estimated sales and other data to determine gift potential.

As you can see from the picture below, the key to the data visualization was limiting the presentation two only two, easily understood and highly relevant variables. (The information in the grid is fictional.)

Click to enlarge

Following is how you “read” the picture for this donor list:

  • Stars = high engagement, high gift potential
  • Loyal = high engagement, low gift potential
  • Opportunities = low engagement, high gift potential
  • Likes = low engagement, low gift potential

I knew that my client, a talented fundraising professional, really wanted to begin her efforts with a fighting chance of receiving major gifts in the first year. Who wouldn’t want that? It was up to me as a researcher to understand how to translate the organization’s fundraising program intentions into data points, create or get those data points, and then translate it back into fundraising actions.

My client didn’t need to understand exactly how I sorted and filtered to assign donor prospects into each of these categories. She needed to be able to recognize some names, be pleased and surprised to see some names she didn’t recognize, and be able to quickly make decisions about which ones she will call tomorrow.

No matter what kind of fundraising professional you are – front-line, prospect research, or something in between – you now have a simple way to visualize two variables that you can ask for or apply to the data yourself.

If you have a data visualization triumph I’d love to hear about it! Reply to this email or better yet, comment on the blog post.

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Fake News, Research, and Fundraising

4Researchers

In prospect research, the rule-of-thumb has always been to find at least one, and preferably two, corroborating sources for information found on a prospect. With the onrush of data, technology, and some of humanity’s evil proclivities, could that rule-of-thumb all too easily turn into a sore thumb?

The idea that completely fake stories circulate on the internet in pursuit of clicks and the resulting ad revenue – and that these stories are obscenely successful – makes me feel like I’ve reached for my wallet to pay for a meal only to discover my purse was stolen. At some point in our lives, most of us have done a quick Google search to answer a question and have taken the results at face value without clicking through to more carefully verify. I’ve certainly done it.

As the prospect profile shapeshifts in response to really good aggregators and an on-demand, as-needed approach to fundraising, could we be duped by perniciously false or even simply erroneous information?

I’d like to believe that prospect research professionals already go beyond the corroborating source rule-of-thumb and consider the quality and reputation of the source, the date, and the sensitivity of the information, especially when there appears to be a lot of value-laden words or outright bias.

A simple example of this is a Wikipedia article. While Wikipedia provides a nice summary, clicking through the article’s sources and reading the original cite is critical. Another example that came up recently on the Apra PRSPCT-L list-serv was evidence of a criminal record.

Sources such as Lexis Nexis for Development Professionals allow us to see certain criminal records. Sometimes we find news articles, court documents published on attorney websites, and other sources, too. We worry about the risk to our organization’s reputation and whether the information will impact a prospect’s ability and interest in making a gift. But understanding the process for convicting someone and finding all the information can be a time-consuming, complex task.

In addition to complex information such as a criminal offense, we now face completely false information in our quest to better understand our prospects. Right now I can feel a whole day slip away trying to research a false news story… can we efficiently and deliberately navigate this mine field?

Yes we can…but only if we have a Venn diagram!

There are three key competing demands as we evaluate the information we find:

  1. Source Integrity: Most of us are pretty good at this. We know that the government is likely to be a more credible source than an industry blog. We also look for corroborating sources, dates, and even the language used.
  2. Ethics: Apra (the Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement) as well as AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) both have guidance on ethics. Your organization probably has policies and documentation on gift acceptance, prospect management, and more that can help you make decisions.
  3. Law of Diminishing Returns: As we chase the details of any piece of information there comes a point where further research is without value. You might not need to know all the exact details about a criminal offense to make a decision about a prospect. Knowing when to stop is tricky. Ask for help!

All of these three items overlap to find the sweet spot for dealing with prospect information. It doesn’t matter if you are finding quick information before a visit, verifying a prospect screening, or digging deeper during cultivation and solicitation. Questioning sources is just as important as it ever was.

Consider this: voice recognition is getting so good that with enough recorded voice to learn from, machines can fabricate new audio recordings that sound exactly the real person. Next up? Completely fabricated videos.

The rapid pace of technology is enough to cause alarm! It’s comforting to remember that we have the fundamentals, such as the three elements of the Venn diagram above. All we need to do is stay aware and apply them to the ever-changing online world.

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