Helen Brown Group

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Five key features of great prospect research departments

 

As the new year builds up a good head of steam moving toward February, now is a good time to take stock of your prospect research department, whether it is you, or someone else, or (lucky you!) a department you supervise.

Today I was thinking about what makes for greatness in a prospect research department. Here are the components I’ve noticed from the organizations I’ve worked with, learned from and mentored over the years.

They know what their research is for

Great research departments understand the nuances between what is needed for identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship research. They work closely with fundraisers to target how much time to spend on a request, and they stay focused on exactly what is needed.

They know the priorities for today, 6 months from now, a year away, and 5 years out.

Great research departments work closely with peers and managers to develop an operating plan that helps them stay on task – geared to what the divisional priorities are. They use metrics to communicate their impact on the bottom line, and to make sure their work remains relevant and aligned.

They embrace innovation

Whether it’s creating new report formats or ways of delivering information, learning new research methods or investigating a new trend, great research managers embrace change and innovation. They go beyond reading trade journals to read books like Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon, the Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, or Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh of Zappos to see how innovation and ideas from allied fields can elevate their department’s quality, productivity and visibility.

They stay current on resources, trends and skills

The best research teams regularly attend continuing education conferences and web seminars, benchmark with peers and take advantage of free learning by following people on Twitter, blogs and other social media. Some of these smart and generous folks include bloggers like the collective at APRA Mid-South, Chris Cannon, Chris Carnie, Mark Egge, Jen Filla, Kevin MacDonell and Liz Rejman, just to name a few. You can find these folks on Twitter, as well as others well worth following – visit this list to see the prospect research tweeting superstars. (If you’re a blogging or tweeting prospect researcher and you’re not on this list, please let me know!)

They believe in the mission

Great teams consist of people who get paid for the privilege of working somewhere they would care about even if they weren’t on staff. There are over 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and life is too short to be unhappy at work. Great researchers find a mission to believe in and give it their heart and soul. They also believe in the mission of prospect research as a profession, and are proud to be “out” in the community representing what we do best: helping nourish, protect, educate and grow our communities and our world.

What other key features of great prospect research departments do you think are important?

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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:

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

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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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They’re going to leave (unless you keep them)

This year’s AFP/Urban Institute Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that for every 100 new donors that supported a small-to-medium sized nonprofit in the United States last year, 107 donors left. Even more starkly, “every $100 gained in 2011 was offset by $100 in losses through gift attrition.”

Every year small-to-medium nonprofits are working harder just to break even.

Overall the study found that the largest gains come from new donors and the largest losses came from lapsed new donors.

Lapsed new donors.

These are the friends that should be easiest to keep. You’re still in the honeymoon phase. They’re excited about your organization enough to make a first gift. Sure, some of them will have given because of a road race or a golf tournament or in memory of someone. But most of those new donors should spell opportunity, not the promise of future loss. And as we’ve been told a hundred times, it costs less to retain a donor than it does to acquire one.

For larger nonprofits (organizations raising $500,000 and more) the figures are very different. For the most part, the more money an organization raises per year, the less likely they are to have donors leave them. Their losses due to attrition are cut by half.

So what’s the difference between small organizations and large ones? How are the larger ones able to keep their new donors?

A stronger fundraising infrastructure makes a big difference; overhead isn’t a bad thing when it is used effectively. The report strongly recommends building internal capacity overall and then annually providing extra budget support to the areas showing the greatest opportunities and success. Most of the larger organizations use prospect research to identify the new and renewing donors that have the highest potential to be upgraded. If yours doesn’t do that already, now is a good time to start.

What can you do now?

We’re swiftly coming up to year-end and your organization will, with luck, have an influx of brand new donors that you don’t want to lose next year.

This January, use prospect research – do an electronic screening of those new year-end donors. Apply data analytics to find the hidden gems in your database. Research the ones with the most potential to find their interests and philanthropic capacity. If you don’t have internal capacity, hire a professional. Prospect research may be an overhead expense, but it’s more expensive to keep treading water year after year.

Resolve to keep more of your new donors next year. You can start now.

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How the Occupy movement is changing philanthropy

My friend Allison is a filmmaker who creates spellbinding, gorgeously crafted visual stories. Allison’s movies pull you into a microcosm and then surprise you with how a story about a creature you’ve never given a second’s thought to impacts your daily life. For her current film, Allison used KickStarter to help fund her project costs.

My friend Jim is also making a movie. He’s using Indiegogo to crowd-source funding for his upcoming film, Pretend. I noticed while I was at Jim’s fundraising page that the American Red Cross is also using Indiegogo to raise money for those left in the wreckage of Hurricane Sandy. In fact, Indiegogo and PayPal have teamed up to waive all fees to lots of verified nonprofits raising money for Sandy disaster relief.

Services that help (frequently well-established and large) nonprofits enable walkers, runners and golfers to raise money for their causes have been around for a long time. But more directly “people powered” philanthropy is on the rise and these new infrastructures like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GlobalGiving and pioneer microlenders like Kiva help donors directly fund people and tiny nonprofits that wouldn’t normally come up on their radar.

I started thinking about this evolution in giving when I read a New York Times article someone shared on Twitter last week about Rolling Jubilee, a 501(c)(4) fund created by Strike Debt, an offshoot of the Occupy movement. Called “a bailout of the people, by the people,” funds donated are put into a pool that purchases – and then dissolves – peoples’ consolidated debt for pennies on the dollar. According to the Rolling Jubilee website, for every $1 donated, $20 of debt is absolved. As of today, Rolling Jubilee has received over $362,000 resulting in over $7 million in debt relief. People-powered philanthropy that even Forbes thinks is a good idea.

What do these new ways of giving and interacting mean for the future of fundraising? And why should we in prospect research care? Crowd-funding, social impact bonds and micro-lending don’t immediately spring to mind when you think about select, small groups of donors that prospect researchers normally concentrate on. But for the data analysts amongst us, it’s an exciting proposition: large numbers of new donors that are deeply, personally invested in our cause. Is our field’s recent growth in the application of data analytics perfectly timed to meet this new way of fundraising?

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When do you use prospect research?

I’m preparing a web seminar for fundraising consultant Lori Jacobwith’s Ignited Online Fundraising Community this Thursday to introduce her group to prospect research. Lori has been providing coaching and continuing education to her clients through the Ignited Online community for over four years, and I’m impressed at her dedication to capacity building within the fundraising profession. I’m looking forward to sharing what prospect research can do and when to use it.

As I’m putting together my presentation, I was thinking about how to graphically show when prospect research is most helpful, and created this image.

We may identify new prospects with a wealth screening, with data analytics, by happenstance, in conversation with our volunteers or a number of other ways. Something in our identification methods tells us that a prospect is a good fit, but most of these ways don’t involve intensive one-by-one research.

As the relationship progresses with mutual interest on the part of the donor and the nonprofit, Research is used intensively help build a deeper connection. Information gathering is both primary (in conversation with the donor) and secondary (using online and offline resources to collect information).

After the gift is given fundraisers tend to need very little information; much is already known about the donor and their interests. Research may be used to help with stewardship of the donor or their family. For example, news alerts may be used to send a note of congratulations for a birth in the family, a company sold or a marriage announced.

Does this match your experience? When does your organization use research the most?

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Are you ready for ‘Back to School’?

When there’s a kid in your house, ‘tis the season for starting fresh. New notebooks, new pencils, a new calculator…it’s equal parts thrilling and daunting to look at the pile of brand new things and imagine them being used. Even though I’m long out of school, for me September always brings with it a sense of excitement and nervous anticipation about what’s ahead, even more so than January 1st.

In fundraising (or really in any field that uses reports), now’s a good time to take a fresh look at how we share information with each other to be sure that we’re doing it well.

What might that mean for you?

  • Are the reports you created during the last campaign still working for the between-campaign period?
  • Do you have new leadership that has a lot of information needs (but you’re giving them reports their predecessor helped you create)?
  • What do frontline fundraisers and leadership need to know to do their best work? Is it different than four years ago when the profile format was created?

In this pre-dawn period before the fall season really heats up with meetings and events and homecoming and all of that – now’s a great time to set aside a few hours to talk with end users of your work. Ask your clients…

  • Are we giving you too much information? Too little?
  • Can we create a variety of report types that meet different needs?
  • How can we help you be more self-sufficient?
  • What kinds of information would you like pushed to you?

Be creative! There are all kinds of cool tools out there now for you to try! Do a little fun research to find dashboards … mapping … analytics … apps … even something as simple as re-thinking report formatting can help breathe new life into the mundane. (In fact, I heard a little bit of gossip from the APRA conference: a certain university with an awesome name now formats profiles so they can be easily read on an iPad – how’s that for creative thinking!?)

What do you want to do differently this new school year?

 

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Ten tips for a successful wealth screening

You may remember a few months ago I talked about how Brown University got a 500% return on the proactive research they did for the Boldly Brown campaign.  One part of that was successfully integrating the results of several wealth screenings that they did.

Because some of the vendors are offering database screenings at a deep discount this quarter, a number of our clients are taking advantage of the savings … which means that it’s screening analysis season here at HBG!

Andrea, Jennifer and Maureen have been collaborating closely as a unit and with our clients on these screenings, and I’ve been really interested as I listen to them share ideas over lunch or at our afternoon tea breaks.

There’s a lot of delight and excitement when a screening is returned, but also some regret when they find an opportunity that was missed.

What I hear from their conversations underscores that how you approach a screening really makes a difference in the end result.

So I thought I’d ask them to share their top tips for making the most of an electronic screening so that we can all boost our return on screenings to Brown proportions.  If you have more tips to share with readers, we’d love for you to add them!

From Andrea:

I’ve become a big fan of wealth screenings lately.  I’d say my top three tips are:

  • Include as much information as possible: middle initials and spouse names are particularly important in helping save time later.
  • Don’t trust the database’s judgment: verify everything! Screenings are a good jumping off point but the human element of analysis is important.
  • Once the data is returned, try several different sorts to see if there are any trends.  I generally start to look for patterns sorting by confirmed assets, then by identified assets and filtering by state, zip, and past giving.  It’s really interesting what you can find!

 

From Jennifer:

  • Pay particular attention to high net worth individuals in New York City – chances are if they own a co-op apartment that the entire co-op building is being counted in their assets.
  • Cleaning the data beforehand is well worth the time investment. Fix any typos and check to be sure addresses are consistently entered – bad data is the #1 way why matches aren’t made. Time spent on this in advance can save lots of time (which is money!!) confirming later.
  • Don’t include anyone that only has a PO Box address.  Either leave them out or find their street address.

 

From Maureen:

  • Purchase an address update (NCOA) as part of the screening if you haven’t done one recently – a significant match point for assets is address.
  • If your budget is tight, don’t waste it on screening donors that you already know well.
  • Depending on the size of your screening, make sure to allocate at least one staff member to do the analysis when the results are returned.  Screenings are expensive and you don’t want the results to just sit there gathering dust.
  • Don’t screen if you don’t have the front-line fundraising staff to follow up on the leads that are produced.  Be strategic in the number of prospects that you screen and consider doing rolling screenings.

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Solutions for the frustrated

 

I’ve been thinking about Chris Cannon’s blog post “3 Solutions to Prospecting Problems” ever since I read it earlier this week.  Chris’s solutions to common issues we face in the development office are these:

  • We need to respect our colleagues, honor their experience and their contributions…
  • …come up with a good plan …
  • …and stick to it.  No personal or organizational distractions (to the degree that they can be avoided).

It’s not rocket science, but it’s true.  We lose our tempers, we lose our focus, and then we lose our way.

Don’t we accomplish so much more on a personal level when we stick to those three things?  Imagine what we could do as a development team.

For me, a lot of wasted potential I see in development shops comes down to communication and training. 

“I’ve stopped requesting research,” said one fundraiser to me recently. “It just takes too long to get it back and by the time I get the profile, the visit’s already happened.  It’s just too frustrating.  Google’s my researcher now.”

“I don’t get it,” said a researcher. “I’m working for four fundraisers and each one asks me for full profiles on people they’ve never met.  It takes me two days to do each full profile along with all the other stuff I’m doing, and then when I finally give it to the fundraiser I never hear anything back!  It’s frustrating!”

“The researchers don’t understand what I need,” said another fundraiser. “I work with a very specific group of high-level donors in a particular industry.  I get profiles back on people in the same industry with wildly varying capacity ratings.  I know what people make in this industry and every rating is wrong!  I need consistency from profile to profile and an understanding of this industry and what people make.”

“Sure, I would love to go to a training seminar on private equity compensation/lawyers/oil & gas futures” said a researcher to me recently. “We just don’t have the budget for training right now.”

There’s one really simple answer for each of these frustrated people.  Do you see yourself in one of them?

Great teams communicate well together.  We’re in the communicating and relationship building business, and the communicating and relationship building needs to happen both externally AND internally.

Talk to each other.  Respect each other.  Make a plan.  Do it.

 

Update:  Great infographic on exactly this subject:

Elevate Communication Between Your Colleagues

 

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We’re writing a book!

Jen Filla of Aspire Research Group and I have just signed a deal with John Wiley & Sons to write Prospect Research for Fundraisers; The Essential Handbook. We’re thrilled!

This book is going to be handy for every single front-line development officer, from the solo fundraiser in a one-person shop to the VP for Advancement overseeing a large university research department.

We’re going to highlight the successful partnerships, the innovative ground-breakers and the hair-tearing learning experiences, and our findings just may surprise you.

If you’ve ever wondered…

…then this book is for you!

We’re interviewing fundraisers and researchers to gain lots of perspectives, and the book will be chock-full of case studies and examples. We still have some space, so if you’d like to be featured for your great front-line/research collaborations, let us know!

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