(In)Accuracy and #ResearchPride

Uncategorized

As a fundraising prospect research professional, how would you approach this question:

Companies House in the UK was founded in which year? 1844, 2001, or 2015

Would you approach it differently if I told you first that Toby Savin had written on the Helen Brown blog about a fantastic resource in the UK? If you just said, “yes,” then you are in good company!

Now, just for a bit of fun, stop reading and go ahead and find the answer. Then come back to see if you’re right.

If you were part of the #ResearchPride Global Scavenger Hunt this year, you’ve already been on this quest. And like it or not, many of you got the wrong answer. Hang in there! I’m going to share why that’s okay.

The ‘Year of the Founding’ Plot Thickens!

At first this really confounded me. People gave me three different answers: 1844, 2001, or 2015. I couldn’t figure out where some of those years were coming from. So, I asked one of the most precise and detail-oriented researchers I know – Bryan Campbell – who is a member of the Prospect Research Institute.

Bryan tackled this in classic Miss Marple style. Much like Agatha Christie’s fictional detective, he used his past experiences to approach the current problem. While Bryan never lived in Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, he did work as a librarian. And he had to manage the “stacks” and find missing items.

At the library, he had to think like someone harried and new to the classification systems. What are the common mistakes they would make in shelving the books? Tasked with helping me figure out where these unidentified years the Companies House was founded came from, he approached it much the same way.

What was his theory?

Bryan speculated that people started by going to the Helen Brown blog post written by Toby Savin. If you were viewing the blog post in search-engine-results-style you might see these clips:

…astonishingly popular across many sectors of the economy since being introduced in the UK in 2001,

What’s more, it’s free to access this data: in 2015, a Beta version of the register – freely available to anyone with an internet connection – was launched as part of the UK…

How often are we guilty of scanning the search results and not clicking through the links to fully read the reference? How carefully do we seek out corroborating sources that are unique and not simply citing each other?

I’m not saying there isn’t a time and place to stop and take the search results at face value, but we aren’t finding a restaurant or birthday party venue. Researching gift prospects or finding scavenger hunt answers is not the time or place.

Because… it was limited liability partnerships (LLPs) that were introduced in the UK in 2001, and while internet access was opened up in 2015, Companies House was not founded in 2015. It was founded in 1844.

And really, if you stop for a second and think about it, as old and historied as the UK is, it would never have made sense for Companies House, a repository of company data, to have been founded after the year 2000.

Which brings us to Wikipedia, of all places! Wikipedia had a great article on Companies House, complete with the founding year and generous citations. And if you wanted to corroborate beyond Wikipedia, it gave you plenty of avenues to pursue.

Finding and Feeling the Research Pride

At first, I thought it was a bad idea to write about a common research error from the scavenger hunt. I don’t ever want people to feel stupid or inadequate. We researchers usually suffer from enough angst! Every one of us, myself included, make mistakes all the time.

I will never forget an exchange with a client in my first few years as a research consultant. I had delivered a profile with a pretty low capacity rating. He wanted to talk about it. He felt there was more money there. As we walked through the profile, he pointed out the very big mortgage. I had considered the mortgage as a sign of less wealth. He pointed out that the prospect had to have a pretty high income to get approved for that big of a mortgage.

Of course, he was right! I admitted as much and added another nugget of knowledge to my ever-increasing experience as a prospect researcher.

Research Pride isn’t about being perfect or 100% accurate. Research Pride is about belonging to a profession that mentors, teaches, develops best practices, and nurtures and encourages continual growth and improvement – a profession that fosters excellence.

We live in the internet age and it is both glorious and fulfilling, and also rife with misleading and inaccurate (dare I say dangerous?) information. Information technology introduces swift and significant changes to our tools and our work processes on a daily basis.

All of this can be disruptive and difficult to navigate. We need to own our mistakes, take time to untangle them, make changes, and share with others. Because we have Research Pride!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2021 Research Pride Global Scavenger Hunt, from the brains behind the event, to the clue holders, to the hunters. The talent in our field is jaw-dropping I am proud and honored to be considered a part of this profession.

Additional Resources