Blog - Helen Brown Group

January 18, 2013 By Helen Brown

Four Great Free Firefox Add-ons and a New Crush

I spend a lot of time in my web browser, and I’ll bet you do, too. With the amount of time I spend there, I need widgets and add-ons that make my life easier and add value.I wanted to share these four time-savers and life-enhancers with you. They take just a few seconds to click and download – enjoy!

CLICK&CLEAN
Clearing your cache, cookies and browsing history is something we all know we need to do regularly, but unless you’ve clicked your settings to do this automatically, navigating through a bunch of windows to clear your cache means it doesn’t happen very often. Free add on Click&Clean lets you do it all with one easy click.

GHOSTERY
Everything you do on the web is being tracked. The pages you look at, how long you stay on each page, and where you move on to based on what you learn. Those sidebar advertisements that have the very shirt you just searched for an hour ago aren’t just a happy coincidence. As a professional researcher working with confidential data, I have to protect my client’s information. So I use Ghostery, a free add-on doesn’t allow sites to install web bugs, cookies or other tracking devices unless I exempt them. Ghostery works in the background and shows me who would have tracked me if I didn’t have it. When one of my usual go-to sites generated a list of 14 trackers and web bugs, my eyebrows nearly hit my hairline.

SENDTOKINDLE
I love my Kindle, but sometimes it’s a real pain to get non-Amazon things on it. Enter SendToKindle, a Firefox add-in that allows you to grab blog posts, articles, and other web things onto your Kindle for easy reading when you’re on the beach, a plane, or anywhere else that doesn’t have web access…yet.

(ALMOST) AWESOME SCREENSHOT
This app is called Awesome Screenshot, and if it was working perfectly at the moment it would be completely awesome. Once you load the app, Awesome Screenshot allows you one-click access to grab all or part of a web page to highlight sections, draw arrows and circles around text or pictures, blur out sensitive or confidential information, and save a copy of the image. Normally it allows you to save a copy of your work right to your hard drive, but until they upgrade it you will need to save your work at their site. You simply visit the link they provide and right-click on the image to save it. It’s a small workaround for such a great, free app. I used it to capture the screenshots of add-ins for this blog post.

What’s MY NEW CRUSH?
You’ll have to visit HBG’s Facebook page to find out! If you’re a Google Reader or iGoogle fanatic like me (and even if you’re not), I think you’re really going to like it! (And speaking of ‘Like’ing things, why don’t you ‘Like’ our Facebook page while you’re there? We use our FB page to post quick tips, useful links and other great stuff!)

January 3, 2013 By Helen Brown

3 Daring Relationship Management Solutions

I was recently asked by a client if there were a few simple things I could recommend that would help them re-energize their prospect management system – even if it meant they had to do something scary and daring. Sometimes just making a change of any kind can be daring, but we usually only regret the things we don’t do in life, not the things we try to do to improve things. I hope these 3 ideas give you something to dare to do in the new year!

The Conundrum: strategy paralysis

My client had a lot of prospects that were in the discovery stage – those still to be met for the first time. It was a great problem to have, but it was creating systemic paralysis – who should they see first?

The Solution: un-frieze the system

Each of these new prospects was not equal in his or her capacity to give or in their feelings of affinity to the organization. Leadership was shy of doing an electronic screening because the last one had just sat on the shelf and so they felt it was a waste of money. We helped our client re-screen the group and verified the results for them. Together we set up a rating system and ranked each of the new prospects. The fundraisers could then start from the top and work their way down the list.

The Conundrum: cultivating overly fertile fields

In addition to all of those great newly-ranked prospects, there were prospects who had been in our client’s relationship management system for at least 2 years with no forward progress. These constituents were being invited to dinners, lunches, and other events but they had not converted as major donors. Leadership was starting to ask the chief fundraiser questions about justifying the expense of all of these activities.

The Solution: some fields just need to lay fallow for awhile

Although changing out portfolios is hard, we can’t keep cultivating people forever, especially if there are higher-rated prospects waiting in the discovery stage. We recommended that our client switch any prospects who had been in the system for over 2 years without progress to a new prospect manager for 6 months to see if someone else would have better luck. If there was still no forward progress, these non-donors needed to be moved out of the major donor portfolios to make way for better prospects.

A larger organization might be able to move these prospects into actively-cultivated annual fund officer portfolios.

The Conundrum: moving targets

As we looked deeper in our client’s relationship management system, they asked for an idea of how many cultivation moves each fundraiser should realistically be expected to do per month.

The Solution: targeting moves

Since this was a relatively young program, we suggested a goal of 2 completed moves per day. Each month, fundraisers would have a result of 40 moves, and should be able to have at least one meaningful contact with everyone in their portfolio every quarter. The result would be 480 great moves per fundraiser for the year.

To recap, three quick and daring solutions to improve your prospect management system:

Prioritize and make a plan to involve the best brand-new prospects
Keep the pipeline filled with people who want to be there
Set a daily goal for prospect moves and watch annual totals beat expectations

December 26, 2012 By Helen Brown

12 Great Ideas for Prospect Research in 2013

Resolving to make better use of prospect research in 2013 – or just interested in some new ideas for the coming year? Here are some suggestions to inspire you!

January

Are your organization’s fundraisers taking trips to warmer climes for events and meetings with snowbirds next month? Now’s a good time to do some simple data mining to find great prospects for fill-in visits while there.

February

Now is a good time to do an electronic screening of some or all of your organization’s new donors from the previous year. Which ones have the most potential to be major donor prospects? Develop a strategy to engage newly identified prospects by May.

March

What did your fundraising division do exceptionally well in 2012? Where do you need to do some work? Use analytics in-house, or have an independent audit done to measure last year’s fundraising/research performance. Set targets for using research throughout the year based on the priorities and needs you identify.

April

Tax season is here! Which of your prospects have giftable stock options? Several free and fee-based sources allow you to create alerts to keep current throughout the year on directors and executives of public companies who are required to report their stock and options holdings and sales.

May

Take a lesson from political fundraising: Targeted emails based on click-throughs and web usage have meant huge gains in involvement and donations during the last two presidential campaign cycles. Can you use market research techniques for prospect research purposes to discover what your annual fund donors are specifically interested in supporting?

June

For many educational organizations, June is the time to research parents of incoming students. How well do your data transfer systems integrate for ease of access to allowed information? Do you have a plan to manage this time-sensitive research? Create a process document for this important activity so that your best practices are repeated every year.

July

This is the month to declare independence from all of the prospects in your tracking system that have not budged (despite your best efforts) on the pipeline in the past year. All of the great new prospects you identified back in February should now be in your relationship management system. Draw up plans for new ways to engage them in the fall.

August

The beautiful waterfront of Baltimore, Maryland will be the location for the annual conference of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement on August 7-10. The APRA conference is the place to be for prospect researchers and front-line fundraisers who want to learn cutting edge techniques and resources. Come prepared to learn – this is a no-fluff conference, and every aspect of research is covered, from the ABC’s through complex algorithms.

September

Back to school means making sure you have up-to-date information on your very top prospects, and on all of the new prospects you’ve identified over the year. Get ready now for those year-end solicitations so you’re not faced with a December research profile queue crush.

October

Find creative ways to use social media and relationship mapping to identify potential board members and other top volunteers. Who amongst your constituents have high Klout scores? Which ones are hubs on a relationship map? Find and use tools that help you pinpoint influencers who can be advocates and help you engage with a new circle of donors.

November

Does your organization put on a lot of events this time of year? If event briefings are part of the research priorities that you set back in March, now may be the time to update your event briefing template(s) and policies for information access – not overload. Plan now so that the right people are getting the right amount of information on time and within budget.

December

Before you renew research subscriptions for the coming year, take a look at the fundraising operating plan and talk with colleagues about priorities ahead. Will the chief fundraising officer be traveling internationally to meet with donors? Maybe it’s time to look into international research resources, training, or outsourcing options. Are you about to launch a campaign? You might need to budget for screenings or analytics now.

What resources will you need to be successful next year? Great success with prospect research is all about being prepared. Happy New Year!

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