Tag Archives: prospect research

Cooking up Planned Giving with Julia Child

Discussion, Major Gift Teams, , , , , ,

by Kate Rapoport.

I met Julia Child when I was a senior at Smith College. It was the first annual Julia Child Day at Smith, an event designed to honor Ms. Child and the revolution she had brought to the way Americans think about food. Julia Child was a Smithie herself, having graduated in 1934 with a degree in history. Even in her old age, she was a force to be reckoned with, her strong voice carrying as she talked to her many admirers. She had had an affection for Smith in the many years after graduation and had decided in her later years to include the college in her planned giving.

In Nonprofit Essentials: Major Gifts, Julia Ingraham Walker outlines the different types of planned gifts. These include gifts of marketable securities, donated art or other real property, charitable lead trusts which provide a stream of income over a period of years to the non-profit and then revert back to the donor at the end of the agreed upon time, and real estate that is gifted to the non-profit which the non-profit then sells.

Ms. Child chose the planned giving option of donating her house to Smith College. In 1990, she entered into an agreement with Smith, formally donating her house to the college, but keeping the right to live in it for her lifetime. She had lived in her home since 1956 and had filmed one of her famous cooking shows in the kitchen. The kitchen itself Child left to the Smithsonian, giving Smith the right to sell the house after her death.

In 2002, Ms. Child decided to move back to California, her childhood home. She accelerated her gift, giving her home in Massachusetts to Smith while she was still living. The proceeds of the sale of her home supported the construction of Smith’s Campus Center. Ms. Child died on August 12, 2004. An etching on a window of the Campus Center Café honors her generosity to Smith. Of the many ways to honor a donor, I think that that was a fitting tribute to Julia Child, who is rumored to have cooked for her friends and classmates while at Smith. There has also been a Julia Child Day every fall since 2003, continuing to honor the impact she made on Smith and the world.

The choice that Ms. Child made to give Smith College her house allowed her to make a significant gift to an institution that she strongly believed in supporting, while allowing her to live in her home until she made the choice to go home to California. That is the beauty of a planned gift. It gives a donor the chance to support a non-profit organization with a major gift, while still allowing her to use her resources during her lifetime.

Is Prospect Research Too Expensive?

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Kevin O’Brien, Senior Vice President for Development at The Chester County Hospital and Health System, is in Pennsylvania and Aspire Research Group (ARG) is in Florida, but we had a great discussion over the phone about prospect research that I would like to share with you. Thanks Kevin!

ARG: What first got you thinking about prospect research?

Kevin:  My first development job was at Drexel University in 1993. Prospect research was a critical component of development at Drexel with two or three full-time prospect researchers at that time. With a tight budget we treated prospect research as a precious resource. As a result it was common practice to wait to request a profile until just prior to a solicitation.

ARG: Why is it important to you now to use donor prospect profiles?

Kevin: There are three reasons prospect research remains important to my work. First, as a professional fundraiser I think it is critical to “do your homework” before soliciting a prospect or donor for a significant gift. I want to make sure that the size of the gift I am soliciting is reasonable given the capacity and inclination of the donor. I feel that the best way to determine their capacity is to obtain an in-depth, thorough, research profile that is able to assess, as much as possible, that capacity in an objective manner.

Second, I consider fundraising to be both an “art” and a “science. A successful fundraiser has to have, among other things, good judgment, good instincts, good interpersonal skills, and good communication skills. Those are what I consider some of the “artistic” skills of fundraising. A successful fundraiser must also gather information, analyze that information, and make critical decisions based on that analysis. This is what I consider the “science” aspect of fundraising. I need the prospect research to help me apply that “science” to my work.

Third, I need to work efficiently and be sure I am focusing on our best prospects. A professional research profile provides me with an objective capacity rating that helps me prioritize that particular prospect among the many others.

ARG: What tips or advice do you have for other fundraisers?

Kevin: Prospect research can be an expensive resource if not used efficiently. By staying focused on major gift prospects nearing solicitation and outsourcing the profiles to Aspire Research Group I get a high rate of return on my investment. While not every prospect I have had profiled committed to a major gift, many of them did. In my opinion, if you want to make sure you secure the largest gift possible from each and every solicitation, you need prospect research to help you prepare for that solicitation.

About The Chester County Hospital and Health System

The Chester County Hospital and Health System is a leading provider of care to patients in Chester County, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas, and a national model for quality and service excellence. The Chester County Hospital is the only remaining nonprofit, independent community hospital in Chester County.

What I like about Google Searching

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"Sherlock" Kate goes Google

As a new prospect researcher with Aspire Research Group I am constantly reading and learning new techniques. I recently came across a very helpful document on the internet: Google and Beyond: Making the Most of Search Engines for Prospect Research by Steven Hupp. He explains many useful search options within Google Search and expands upon the topic to speak about other search engine and meta search engine options. I thought I would share the search techniques that I found most useful while reading his presentation.

When using Google Search, you can use the ordinary Google search box or click the Advanced Search link near the box. I am describing how to use the everyday Google search box.

Using Quotes
The first advanced operator (otherwise known as useful thing to help make your searching more productive) is one that most people who have used Google already know about. When searching for a prospect (Jane Doe) put her name in quotes: “Jane Doe”. This weeds out all the search results that have Jane and Doe but not together. I use quotes for all the known combinations of the donor prospect’s name (e.g., Jane Doe, Jane E. Doe, Jane Evermand Doe)

The Asterisk
You can also use the asterisk with quotes. If you put “Jane Doe * Pennsylvania”, the * acts as a wild card and will produce search results that include all Jane Doe “any word at all” Pennsylvania. This can be helpful if you are not sure where in Pennsylvania a prospect lives or want to find all the places she might be involved within the state.

The Minus Sign
Another advanced operator that can be very time-saving is the minus sign (-). When you are searching a prospect’s name and it is relatively common or there is another specific person who is not your prospect who keeps showing up and taking over all the search results, simply put “Jane Doe” –ski ball and all the ski ball results will go away.

Domain Search
One can also use Google search to look specifically at a single website. Site searching looks like this: “Jane Doe” site: aspireresearchgroup.com. This will produce search results that only include Jane Doe’s name when it shows up on the website in question.

Type of File
The final search function that Mr. Hupp mentions that I think could be really helpful to people doing prospect research is the filetype search. In order to do this search type: “Jane Doe” filetype: pdf (or whatever file type you want) and the Google search results will only include documents of that particular file type where Jane Doe is mentioned. This would be particularly useful when used with PDF documents, as so often they include foundation reports and donor lists.

Happy Searching!
By using these tips on more productive Google searching, I hope that your searches will become less like searching for a needle in a haystack and more like searching for a colorful drinking straw in a haystack. 😀

Go Ask Aspire
And of course you can always ask Aspire Research Group to find your donor prospect in the haystack for you! We provide some of the most thorough donor prospect profiles in the business! Click here for more information.

Estimating Hedge Fund Manager Compensation

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Kate is detailed and thorough and I know you won’t be disappointed with her first article on Estimating Hedge Fund Manager Compensation. We have added it to Aspire Research Group’s library of free articles here.

Kate Rapoport officially signed on in March as our new research associate. From time to time she will write about solutions to various research questions she encounters.

She wrote her debut blog post about Millenial Donors. Check it out here.

Research 101 Workshop in Tampa

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Want to know where to look for information online? Do you wonder if you are asking for the largest gift amount appropriate? Maybe you want to understand how prospect research fits into fundraising and how to leverage it to maximize your fundraising?

APRA Florida has teamed up with the Nonprofit Leadership Center of Tampa Bay to answer your questions with a Prospect Research 101 course the morning on the first day of the APRA Florida annual conference on May 19, 2011. Click here for more info about Research 101 and click here for more info about the conference.

I am so excited to be presenting the Research 101 Workshop with my friend and colleague, Debbie Menoher, Director of Research for the University of Florida Foundation. During her tenure, UF completed an $850 million dollar capital campaign, and UF is currently in a $1.5 billion dollar campaign.  She is also one of the founding members of the APRA Florida chapter!

The conference and workshop will be held at The Children’s Board in downtown Tampa. Workshop cost is $59 and conference is $125 for two days. The theme this year is The New Philanthropists: Prospecting in the 21st Century.   

I will be presenting at the workshop and attending the conference. If you are in Florida, I hope you will too!

Yes! You Can Still Raise Major Gifts Without a Wealth Screening

Focused Fundraising, Fundraising Analytics, Major Gift Teams, , , , , , ,

I sat next to Heidi Shimberg, VP of Development and Marketing for the Glazer Children’s Museum, at the Suncoast Chapter meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals in March. She told me an amazing story. In September of last year the Glazer Children’s Museum held its grand opening. Only six months later, they have a whopping 6,000 members!

Her fundraising dilemma? To do a wealth screening on 6,000 people would put an unhealthy bulge in the budget. “So why not filter your list and send a smaller number of records to be screened?” I suggested to Heidi. She had thought of that, but when you are brand spanking new, what do you filter by? She felt that if she filtered by wealthy zip codes or addresses, she might miss some “hidden” prospects. It troubled her.

As I was driving my cat to the veterinarian the next morning, my conversation with Heidi was on my mind. Then the light bulb went off. Heidi might not need a prospect researcher on staff, but she sure needed a prospect research strategy. She was averaging 1,000 members a month!

When there are no big dollars in your budget how do you get smart – and still get big dollars in gifts?

Depending on the amount of pressure to raise funds, Heidi has some fun choices.  She could go for the wealth screening and decide on a fundraising strategy for cultivating people with known wealth – maybe joining a special society as a first step and/or one-on-one meetings. Armed with the wealth screening she knows exactly who can give and won’t waste any time approaching members who can’t give.

Or she could swing wider and filter her list by addresses, making a first contact without any real wealth information. Cultivating more people in small groups instead of one-on-one would allow her to find “hidden” donors in her community. Ask the Benevon people about that one. It works.

I can hear you calling me to account. “But Jen, you have not addressed Heidi’s concern about missing the hidden prospects in her member list!” Well here’s the answer. Without a giving history to the Glazer Children’s Museum or any other history (like event attendance etc), Heidi cannot know a crucial piece of information – affinity, or how close someone feels to the museum. It’s just too new. You can’t screen for that on a newborn list. What she can do is methodically approach prospects while developing her entire member list.

Going from “A” to “Z” contacting 6,000 members is foolish. Heidi knows this. Picking 1,000 and working them in small groups will have Heidi training another gift officer next year when her well-stewarded member list, which has also been solicited for unrestricted operating dollars, gets filtered again for the next 1,000. And since she started with her best prospects, she can now feel better about having a trainee cultivating the “B” list. By year five there isn’t likely to be a “hidden” prospect, especially because now there will be money in the budget for a wealth screening on a well-kept donor/member database!

If we could all start out with the very best prospect research tools, so much more could happen. But that’s not reality and it doesn’t have to stop a fundraiser like Heidi from exceeding her major gift fundraising goals.

Aspire Research Group wants to see you succeed. If that means a one or two-hour consult to brainstorm for a mean-and-lean strategy, we’re all about it. Call us today! (727) 231-0516 or email jen at aspireresearchgroup.com.

Florida Prospect Research Conference

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This year the APRA Florida conference will be in my hometown – Tampa! Click here for more info on the conference. Registration is now open! And none too soon as the conference is May 19 and 20, 2011. Our theme is: The New Philanthropists – Prospecting in the 21st Century.

The Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) does an incredible job of keeping us prospect researchers well educated and it thrills me to have an active chapter here in Florida. This year I am serving as the chapter president and it has been a privilege to get chest deep in association waters. 

So I know it’s true when I say that our conference committee is going to bring you excellent speakers and fantastic networking and problem-solving opportunities. If you are in Florida, I sure hope to see you in Tampa in May!

Spire2 Added as New Resource Partner

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It takes a community to support a nonprofit organization or academic institution and Aspire Research Group is pleased to announce that Spire2 has been added to our Resource Partners. As a fundraiser, you have many needs and want an expert that gets results. Spire2 is just such an expert:

  • Designs and develops direct mail campaigns that get opened
  • Creates email communication programs that convert strangers into friends
  • Develops websites that don’t just tell people about your mission, but become part of the way you are reaching your mission

Prospect research is most effective when you have a donor acquisition strategy as well as a strong annual campaign for unrestricted dollars. Data mining for major gift prospects works best when your database is full of well-cared donors and prospects. Spire2 can help you get you get there.

Call or email Jeff James at Spire2 today and ask him about my favorite story – how he helped Wheaton College reach out to its young alumni, who are now giving at the same percentage as the general alumni population. Call 630-462-2567 or email jjames at spire2.com. You won’t be disappointed!

Are You a Leaky *Nonprofit* Corporation?

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I’m often a little behind reading my subscription to the Economist, but I keep chugging along because they have so many brainy articles on things that often relate well to nonprofits and fundraising. Their article in February on The Leaky Corporation is no exception.

If you are awake then you are likely to have heard something about WikiLeaks in the past few months. Most recently WikiLeaks is threatening to leak documents from a bank that will expose wide-spread corrupt practices. As the bankers are sweating, the Economist discussed the myriad of options out there to protect data. But ultimately the suggestion was to decide what information is most critically private and focus on protecting it.

And what is more critically private than your donors’ personal information and giving history? Universities and hospitals have regulated layers of must-have data security, but thousands of nonprofit organizations do not. And more and more donor databases are hosted online. Even so, I would argue that the threats are more mundane than hackers. It is the accidental leak that poses perhaps the greatest threat to nonprofit organizations.

What hits the news harder than a laptop stolen that contained database or spreadsheet files full of names, addresses, social security numbers and other private info? But how about the university professor who posts a spreadsheet on a public server he thinks is private? Or the staff member who emails sensitive information to the wrong email address?

In my research I have found nonprofits who posted their confidential board list – the one with cell phone numbers, spouse names and more – on their website or attached to their public IRS Form 990. Out of pity and horror I emailed one webmaster suggesting they remove the file. I did not use the private information in my prospect profile.

There are thousands of examples of accidental errors, but what can you do to prevent them? Educate! Educating your staff and volunteers and then routinely reminding them goes a long way. Open discussion about something as simple as deleting old spreadsheet exports from your servers could avert disaster.

Consider purchasing a secure, online space for board members to view important documents instead of email and discuss the safety of any documents they download.

Establish one day a year devoted to security education and data storage clean-up so that everyone is talking, cleaning up old files, and reassigning files to safer storage space – online or offline.

Whatever you do, I hope you will seriously get thinking about your data security. Every time you hire a new employee, engage a new board member, or buy a new piece of software you face a certain degree of risk.

Aspire Research Group is committed to ethical fundraising and prospect research. Why not check out our fun, 7-minute video on ethics in prospect research? Click here.

About Those Millennial Donors

Discussion, Focused Fundraising, , , , ,

By Kate Rapoport, Aspire Research Group, Prospect Research Trainee

Researchers and historians have given a name to the generation born after 1981, the Millennial generation. The first generation to come of age in the new millennium, this group has become the focus of a great deal of research. How does the Millennial generation think, shop, live, give? A great deal of early work on this generation assumed that the most important thing about the age group was their experience with and immersion in all sorts of technology and social media. However, further research is bringing to light a truth that shouldn’t be so shocking. Despite all the technology the Millennial generation is surrounded with, interpersonal relationships and face-to-face meetings are still crucial to the decisions that this group makes.

A point that 2010 Achieve and Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates’ study, Millennial Donors: A Study of Millennial Giving and Engagement Habits found is that while giving via mobile/text and social networks is an up and coming way of soliciting gifts, 91% of Millennial donors are at least somewhat likely to respond to a face-to-face request, but only 8% are likely to respond to an email request. The personal touch and a specific project are still the best way to reach the Millennial generation.

So where does this information leave professionals at non-profit organizations? Research into Millennials’ habits gives us some suggestions about ways to focus an ask. In 2008, The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University for Campbell’s & Company conducted a study called Generational Differences in Charitable Giving and in Motivations for Giving. One finding from this study stands out: the Millennial generation gives their money when they feel that it will help make the world a better place. They care less about what influence they will have on an organization and more about making a difference.

This finding is supported by the 2010 Millennial Donors study, referenced above, which found that over 55% of Millennial donors are likely or highly likely to respond to being asked to give more to a specific project, while the same 55% are unlikely to give to a general, non-specific request. These studies indicate that when approaching a Millennial donor, one needs to have a specific project that the donor would be interested in. If what you need are unrestricted operating funds, make the request sound like a project – limited time-frame, measurable objectives and a dollar goal.

If you want to identify Millennial donors for a targeted campaign, contact us at Aspire Research Group and we can help you add ages to your donor records. And be sure to check out our expert Resource Partners too!

You can reach us at (800) 494-4132 or (727) 231-0516 in Florida, or jen at aspireresearchgroup.com.