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December 29, 2016 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

The most popular articles of 2016 from The Intelligent Edge

I’m going to get to the top posts of 2016 in just a second, but as we bid goodbye to 2016 – a rollercoaster year if ever there was one – we at The Helen Brown Group wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

To our clients, thank you for making 2016 our best year yet. Your missions – and your personal dedication to them – inspire us to do our best work for you. Our appreciation also goes out to the kind folks who point others in our direction – grateful thanks for your referrals.

To our 1,200+ Intelligent Edge subscribers and to the readers who drop by, thanks for signing up, for reading, and for your comments, both on and offline. Two years ago, our mailing list comprised 65 hearty souls! We couldn’t be prouder of the way our readership has grown or thank our wonderful guest bloggers enough. Thank you.

We also really appreciate our vendor partners, who make the great tools we use and who share our commitment to using quality information to make the world a better place.

And to our colleagues in the prospect development community – thank you so much for your support and for the part you play in building and growing this wonderful profession.

And now, to our top five… [Read more…]

June 9, 2016 By Helen Brown 4 Comments

Boss keys: The best apps, extensions, and add-ons for your browser

I’m switching browsers this week. I do this about once every three years, so that I can get out of a rut I don’t even know I’m in, and try out new ways of working and thinking. It’s a great way to discover new apps to help me be more efficient or that are just plain useful.

To get a head start, I polled the HBG team on their favorite apps, add-ons and extensions in order to shortcut my level-up. I thought you’d find their suggestions helpful too, so here they are, the HBG Top 10! [Read more…]

June 2, 2016 By Helen Brown 8 Comments

Why Virtual Workers Are a Real Asset

This month we welcome HBG Research Associate Heather Hoke to the blog. Even before she joined HBG, Heather had years of experience with the benefits of being a remote worker. In this week’s post, Heather shares her knowledge and some of the latest research on why virtual workers may make sense for your organization.

Are you looking to hire or retain a superstar fundraising researcher? Consider implementing flexible work arrangements, including work-from-home (WFH) policies. There are benefits to both employers and employees.

Based on what I see on Prspct-L and APRA’s Career Center, many nonprofits are hiring new staff in prospect development. There are some 5,300 colleges and universities and more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the US, and there are about 2,000 APRA members worldwide. As you can see, the potential pool of development researchers to be employed at these institutions is quite small. If you are not looking to hire now, you likely will be in the future. A survey released by CareerBuilder found that more than one in five employees are planning to leave their current place of employment during 2016, a 5% increase since last year. Why not do something that will keep your best employees and expand your hiring pool to include people that live in other states? [Read more…]

March 31, 2016 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

Thank You for helping make change

I know you know this, but you are awesome.

As we say au revoir to another #ResearchPride month, I wanted to let you know that I (and all of the other #ResearchPride bloggers**) deeply appreciate that you have read, supported, and enthusiastically shared this month’s posts through social media and word of mouth. It’s a big deal to us, and we thank you. [Read more…]

December 17, 2015 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

The one thing every research profile must do

It doesn’t matter how in-depth a research profile is. It may have the 4 key elements of every strategic profile should have. But if it doesn’t do one critical thing, you might as well not have spent the time creating it.

The one thing every research profile must do is

Answer the Question

When a fundraiser has a research request, what they are really bringing you is a question. And the question depends on who’s asking. [Read more…]

December 10, 2015 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

The 4 key elements of every strategic profile

What makes a great prospect research profile? What are the key elements that help us determine how quickly to start a relationship with a new prospect, or decide how best to involve someone with our organization? A great research profile can help answer these questions and many more.

Each member of my team at HBG works directly with at least one client on a dedicated basis, and each one of those organizations has their own favorite way to receive information. We brainstormed as a group this week in a very fun, rapid-fire instant message session, and as we ‘talked’ we discovered some important commonalities.

The following presentation is a distillation of the 4 most important elements we determined that no strategic profile should be without.

Do you agree? Do you have more elements to share?

September 17, 2015 By Helen Brown 10 Comments

Morningstar Sunset

What is your prospect research shop doing to prepare for the Morningstar/10K Wizard demise?

10K Wizard has been a staple resource for many prospect researchers over the years for information about publicly-held companies (and the people that run them). I thought it was a curious marriage when Morningstar bought the company in 2008, but as long as 10K was still running I didn’t really think much of it. [Read more…]

July 16, 2015 By Helen Brown 6 Comments

Bookmark These Five Great Deep Web Research Resources

It’s really valuable to keep an eye on (and share!) the tools our colleagues in allied fields are using to do their research. This past week I stumbled upon these five great resources I wanted to share with you.

ONE AND TWO

First off, I’d like to mention two books, the Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting and the Verification Handbook; a Definitive Guide for Verifying Digital Content, both edited by Craig Silverman a leading expert on media errors, accuracy and verification, and (among other things), founder of Emergent and former fellow with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Both books are available free to download in pdf format – scroll down the page here – or you can purchase them if you prefer hard copies. They are written by experts in research, journalism and investigative reporting including Paul Myers (more on him in a minute), Fergus Bell, and Steve Buttry. Don’t miss chapter 10 of the Verifying Digital Content volume, called Verification Tools. There are tons of handy tools there for you to check out! [Read more…]

June 25, 2015 By Helen Brown 2 Comments

The 2015 World Wealth Report: 5 Essential Takeaways

The 2015 Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management World Wealth Report is out! Every spring, it makes for fascinating reading for those of us in fundraising, and for financial advisors and wealth managers working with high net worth individuals (HNWI). [Read more…]