Helen Brown Group

By Leave a Comment

More than just prospect research

Next month, members of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) will gather in Baltimore, MD for the association’s annual conference. If you know someone who is thinking about a career in prospect research or are a supervisor with a staff member who needs training, this really is the conference for them to attend. Topics will range from basics training for new researchers to in-depth training on fundraising analytics and everything in between.

Throughout the rest of the year, many APRA chapters offer excellent continuing education, including networking events, brown bags, and conferences. Both APRA and many of its chapters also have monthly or quarterly newsletters as well.

BUT…in addition to APRA, there are a variety of allied professional associations that are highly relevant to prospect research, and reading their newsletters and blogs, and following the associations or members on social media can be a great way to enhance a researcher’s knowledge. They include:

  • the Association of Advancement Service Professionals (AASP)
  • the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP)
  • Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP)
  • Special Libraries Association (SLA) – Information Outlook, their association’s bi-monthly newsletter is available free at their website.

Finally, besides the newspapers and magazines that we may subscribe to keep up on business and industries there are also several journals, websites and blogs that provide insight about the craft of information discovery and searching. They include:

 

What resources do you follow to stay up on the craft of research? Share!!

By 12 Comments

Prospect Research’s Strategic Advantage

chess piece

If you’re not a prospect researcher, or if you’re new to the field, you might not know that we researchers have a running conversation going on every day on a listserv called PRSPCT-L (affectionately known as “the L”). Researchers, front-line fundraisers, and vendors to our industry post helpful resources, interesting articles, questions and the occasional “Friday Funny.”

Sabine Schuller (who always seems to have her finger on the pulse of what’s important in search) recently shared an article on the L, which she found in a monthly eBulletin published by the professional association of Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). As we read it, Sabine suggests that we replace “competitive intelligence” with “prospect research”:

Is a “Googlized” Workplace Replacing Dedicated Competitive Intelligence Resources?

It’s an opinion piece by Dr. Ben Gilad, President of the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence, who – rather provocatively – claims that in-house competitive intelligence officers (prospect researchers) will soon be a thing of the past – made redundant by vendors and consultants who provide easier, direct access to information that decision-makers (front-line fundraisers) need. His thesis (for our purposes) is:

If fundraisers can get answers quickly themselves, or have it fed to them by push technology, why do they need an in-house person to do it?

Which is a good question – if fundraisers are truly getting their questions answered. But I don’t buy into the notion that they are. Or that all in-house researchers will go the way of the dinosaur.

Some small-to-midsize organizations might end up eventually dissolving their prospect research departments because (in the long run, with strategically outsourced help), it may be cheaper and more efficient to do so. And by prospect research, I mean profile-writing, prospect identification and data analytics, which are easier to outsource. Prospect management, the other leg on the prospect development stool, is harder – although not impossible – to outsource.

But for large shops like universities and medical centers, research would still be more cost-efficient to keep in-house as part of a dynamic and effective knowledge center. Why?

Experience.   Context.   Strategy.

In the long-term, small to mid-sized organizations may not want to (or be able to) afford to train and sufficiently support a researcher to the level and years of experience that makes the critical difference when the rubber hits the campaign road. At some point, it is inevitable that a good researcher will want to leave for a more challenging assignment with better resourcing. And then the small shop is back at square one, rebuilding again. It’s a cycle that gets expensive for a shop with limited resources in the first place.

Universities, medical centers and large prospect research groups like HBG can afford to invest in training and resourcing staff to build that experience and strategic knowledge. It’s worth doing. Look at the huge impact it had on Brown University’s campaign.

How do we professional researchers set ourselves apart so that the difference between what can be gotten from technology and what prospect research can do is apparent?

It’s easy: Fundraisers are looking for more than just information, deeper than what’s found in Google.

They want answers to questions like: What does this job title mean? What kind of assets are we talking about? What is the prospect’s lifestyle like? Who do they know? What do they care about? How much should we ask them for? How can we connect with them? Who else should we bring into the pipeline?

Experience, context and strategy. These are the things we can bring.

Is technology going to make prospect researchers obsolete? I doubt it, at least for now – especially considering Google’s obsession with personalized search, which takes them farther away from being a reliable professional search resource. When computers reach Star Trek level, when they can provide strategy based on all of the information provided – then we’ll be in trouble. But based on how Watson fared on Jeopardy, I think we’ve got a couple of years yet before we have to worry about that.

BUT: In order to stay relevant, now and in the future, we professional researchers must provide what technology does not.

 

By 4 Comments

Getting at information sideways – job interviews

Interview

As the economy starts to pick up, particularly here in New England, I’m seeing more jobs opening up in prospect research. People are starting to feel confident enough to move around, move up, or expand a research department in anticipation of a capital campaign.

Which means lots and lots of job interviews will be happening over the coming months.

An interview isn’t just stressful for the candidate. For the hiring manager, it can be really stressful, too, especially if they’re not comfortable doing interviews. A lot of time and effort goes into training a new employee – even an experienced one – and getting the right person in the job is incredibly important.

Trust me here: tired old chestnuts like “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” are not the way to go. An interviewer will rarely find out what they need to know, and it signals to the interviewee that their potential new boss isn’t creative or super-sharp.

The key is to ask questions that make the interviewee think on their feet and that shed light on their personality, ambition, intelligence and work habits. It’s what I call getting at information sideways.

I recently found a great article from Inc. magazine called “14 Revealing Interview Questions” that I thought you might find as interesting as I did. My favorite questions were:

1. If we’re sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great year it’s been for you in this role, what did we achieve together?

I like this question because it encourages the candidate to imagine the impact they can have on a program but also to reveal where they think their limits might be. It encourages them to be creative and to express what they know about the job and its purview.

3. If you got hired, loved everything about this job, and are paid the salary you asked for, what kind of offer from another company would you consider?

This was a real stumper for me, as I can imagine it would be for any interviewee. The person who came up with the question, Ilya Pozin, founder of Ciplex, said “I like to find out how much the candidate is driven by money versus working at a place they love. Can they be bought? You’d be surprised by some of the answers.” Answer this question for yourself right now – does your own answer surprise you?

Getting at information sideways

There are 12 other great questions in the article that encourage interviewees to reveal the things a hiring manager needs to know. Is the candidate smart? Creative? Efficient? A problem-solver? Self-starter? Team player? Truthful?

A question I like to ask is “Tell me something about your current/most recent job that you don’t like.” I once had a candidate tell me “Nothing. I like everything about my current job.” For the rest of the interview I wondered “How can that be so? If they like absolutely everything, why are they sitting here? What aren’t they telling me?”

Another favorite of mine is “Tell me about an experience at work where you had a conflict with another person, and what you did to resolve the situation.” One candidate answered, “Oh, I just smacked her.” I waited the requisite three beats for the mischievous look and the “Just kidding!” – but they never came. Yikes.

What interview questions do you like to use that get at information sideways? What questions have been asked of you that really made you think?

 

By 6 Comments

Prospect Research for Fundraisers – the Book!

 

BookLook at what arrived by special delivery today!

It’s an advance copy, meaning that for all of you who pre-ordered (and thank you for that, by the way!), yours will be arriving very soon.

If you haven’t already ordered it, now’s the time to get your very own copy hot off the presses! Just click that little book cover over there on the right to buy it at a discount (!).  It will be on your doorstep in no time. This book has got everything anyone working in fundraising needs to know about prospect research. You’re going to love it.

Thank you to everyone who was involved: those who agreed to be interviewed, who were the subjects of case studies, who provided quotes and who read (and re-read!) drafts and offered sage advice and suggestions. And the biggest thank you to my co-author, the awesome Jen Filla.

By 2 Comments

Send your best researcher home

office distractions

Tell me the top 3 things that you love about working here.

Now tell me the top three things you don’t like.

When I work with a client to audit their prospect research department, the answers to those two questions tell me a lot about both the nonprofit and the person I’m interviewing. When I review the answers of 10 or 20 employees, I start to see patterns of strength and gaps to be filled. Taken across several organizations, I hear a lot of the same things. From prospect researchers, I almost always hear

I wish they would let me work from home.

I would like flexible hours.

When I bring this up with their supervisors or leadership, I often hear “Yeah, yeah. Employees always say that. It’s never going to happen. They’re not living in the real world.”

Here’s Real World: A recent survey by career-management firm Right Management found that 86% of the people they polled said that they planned to actively search for a new job in the coming year, up 26% since 2009. A combination of work-place stress and doing more for the same salary were the major contributing reasons.

The reality of a typical prospect research professional’s work environment is that it’s a 90 percent computer-based job. If researchers and front-line fundraisers in medium to large shops communicate, it is mainly through email, forms, or on the telephone. Face-to-face time is generally a very small part of the relationship, maybe a couple of hours a week.

Research requires concentration – a lot of it. Have you ever tried to add up a column of figures while someone else is carrying on a conversation in the next cubicle over? It doesn’t matter if they’re discussing a work project or dishing about Downton Abbey, a constant background hum like that is distracting. The more distractions, the more on-the-job stress there is.

On Marketplace Radio, Stephen Dubner, the Freakonomics co-author, told the story of C-trip, the Chinese equivalent of Expedia. In order to save money on expensive office space, the C-trip CEO, James Liang, PhD (Economics, Stanford) decided to try an experiment. C-trip allowed 255 workers that wanted to work from home to try it out for 9 months. The company figured that they would save money on office space and attrition, but lose money on productivity. They hoped that those factors would balance each other out.

What they found was that productivity from the work-from-home group was actually 13% higher than their in-office peers. Employees’ stress from commuting was eliminated, they took fewer sick days and they got to work on time more often than their office-commuting colleagues.

In fundraising, we all know that it’s always cheaper to retain a donor than it is to acquire one, and the same is true for workplace talent. Some people prefer (and thrive in) an office work environment, and working from home is certainly not for everyone. At-home workers have a responsibility to track and maintain their same (or increased!) productivity levels, and the arrangement does require a commitment to communicate well. But for the manager of a valued, reliable prospect researcher, the flexibility of offering that worker the opportunity to work from home even a few days a week might be just the perk that not only retains them, but increases their job satisfaction, their loyalty to the organization, and their overall health.

Here at HBG, we have a new and beautiful main office where I and two other colleagues work most days, but the rest of my senior staff work from home. It works out well for all of us, and I think it’s one of the reasons why my staff work hard, produce great research, and stay with the company.

Does your nonprofit allow you or others to work from home? If so, what are the positives and negatives that you’ve found?

For further reading:

The Brown university white paper on the C-trip experiment can be found here.

Richard Branson’s recent blog post: Give People the Freedom of Where to Work

Forbes blog guest post by Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk: Marissa Mayer Is Wrong: Freedom For Workers Means Productivity For Companies

By Leave a Comment

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?

By 2 Comments

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!

By Leave a Comment

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?

By Leave a Comment

We don’t need no education

Well, that’s just a big ‘ole fat lie, isn’t it? Any prospect researcher out there who has blown your socks off with a list of great new prospects they got from mining the database has training to thank for it. Ditto someone who proactively provides information from alerts they’ve created from Lexis Nexis or a search engine.

These sorts of skills don’t grow organically out of a new researcher’s brain, I don’t care how smart they are. Investing in prospect research training makes staff more efficient, and it also makes fiscal sense.

For example: everyone on my staff (myself included) is required to attend at least two continuing education seminars or conferences a year as part of their annual performance evaluation. If we’re not keeping up on the latest resources and techniques we’re not doing our best for our clients, and that will sooner or later impact my company’s bottom line for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which is team-member satisfaction. When I get a great employee, I want to keep them.

It’s good business, whether you’re a for-profit or a nonprofit.

Can’t afford it with the budget you’ve got? There are lots of free or low-cost continuing education options out there, too, through professional associations like APRA and through vendors.

Take a look at upcoming events for the next few months both virtual and in real life:

September 18: APRA/WealthEngine web seminar: “The New Face of Prospect Research” (Free to APRA members)

October 10-12: APRA-Canada conference: “Leading Discovery” at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown in Toronto

October 19: NEDRA day-long seminar: “Research Basics Bootcamp” at Northeastern University

November 9: APRA-Upstate NY Fall Conference: “Predictive Modeling from the Ground Up” at the University of Rochester

Not to mention lots and lots of free or low-cost replay seminars from APRA and most of the vendors out there.

Have I left any off? Want to promote your prospect research event? Comment and let us know!

By 2 Comments

Breaking into prospect research

So after much soul-searching and advice from friends, partners, relatives and career/guidance counselors, you’ve decided that prospect research is the career path for you. Congratulations! It’s the best job in the world. Yes, really.

You’re not alone, though – this time of year I usually speak with three or four people who have recently discovered prospect research and are interested in informational interviews to learn more about breaking into the field. Most of the time they ask, “How can I differentiate myself?” Here’s my advice for ways to do that:

1.  Do your homework

If you want to get into prospect research, you need to prove that you’re a natural at it. Prospective employers are looking for people that can’t help but find the answers to questions.  Here are some to get you started:

  • What professional associations do prospect researchers belong to? Is there a local chapter nearby?
  • Do the professional associations provide introductory training?
  • Are there other places for training available as well?
  • Is there a listserv for prospect researchers? 
  • Are there leaders in the prospect research/fundraising field active on social media? (Follow them! Read what they recommend!)

2.  Network

Contact people in the field near you and ask them to meet you for 30 minutes in person (preferred) or on the phone for an informational interview. Chances are good they are not going to hire you, but if you make a good impression and they hear of a job in the near future, you could end up on someone else’s short list. Some key things to remember:

  • Be respectful of their time. Start wrapping up your call or visit after 28 minutes have passed – if they encourage you to stay longer, follow their lead.
  • Have your list of questions ready – remember, you are the interviewer. 
  • Provide them with a resume at least 24 hours prior to meeting you.
  • If it’s natural, weave into the conversation things you have learned about prospect research from your homework as a basis for your questions. (For example, “I saw on prspct-l that researchers talk a lot about analytics. Would you say this is an area of growth in the field?”)
  • Ask for others they might recommend you speak with (but don’t be surprised if they ask to think it over).
  • Send a thank you note or email within 24 hours.
  • When you do get a job in the field, get back in touch to let them know and thank them again for their time with you.

3.  Educate yourself

Remember those local chapters and those training sessions you found out about when you were doing your homework?  Go.

  • If you’re serious about a career in prospect research (or any field), you need to invest in your future. You’d expect to take the time to learn and to pay for an advanced degree in business, architecture or any other specialty before you broke into those fields, wouldn’t you?

 4.  Offer to volunteer

Some established prospect research shops need extra help that they can’t afford to pay for. In exchange for some of your time, you’ll get valuable on-the-job training and (if you do a good job) a reference and another line or two on your resume.

  • Although nonprofits large and small need volunteers, if you are specifically looking for prospect research training, focus on volunteering where there are experienced researchers that you can learn from.
  • Be willing to do some clerical work in exchange for training on research resources, methods, and search skills, but be clear in your expectations for volunteering what you want to gain from the experience.

 5.  Keep a positive attitude

I know, it’s really hard to break into a new field. But if this was what you were born to do, keep at it. There are nonprofits hiring researchers right now, and there are job boards to keep a watch on. Keep educating yourself and become engaged in the research community.

Have you been successful in breaking into the prospect research field recently?  What suggestions do you have for others?

ABOUT HBG

The Helen Brown Group was formed in 2002 with a goal to be different.

Allow me to explain my personal philosophy to you.

Latest Intelligent Edge Articles

Privacy Quick Links