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December 11, 2014 By Helen Brown

Capacity Ratings, 747s, and Volvos

Mark Noll, AVP of Research and Development Services at the University of Rhode Island started a conversation earlier this week in an article titled “Why Capacity Ratings are Bunk and What You Can Do About It.” In the post, Noll discusses the difficulties of assigning an accurate capacity rating to prospects. There’s just too much we prospect researchers – and frontline fundraisers – will never know about the totality of someone’s assets and their liabilities. Noll provides a solid lesson on what actually goes into a capacity rating. And what is logically missing. [Read more…]

November 20, 2014 By Helen Brown

International wealth screening companies

If you’re like most mid-to-large sized charitable or educational organization, you have a growing number of prospects and donors that live outside your home country.

Researching international prospects can be overwhelming, especially if you have a number of constituents and very little information. It’s fairly easy to hit up against a brick wall. What’s the most efficient way to get a window on your very best prospects overseas?

While not perfect, a wealth screening [Read more…]

September 4, 2014 By Helen Brown

Prospect Identification: Going beyond the same old same old

The theme for our HBG September blog is prospect identification and, because it’s one of her favorite activities, I asked Senior Researcher Jennifer Turner to give us some creative ideas for finding new donors. Over to you, Jen!

Your usual prospecting assignment: Find high net worth individuals (HNWIs) with the capacity to make a gift in a specific target range and with a likely interest in your cause.

Sounds like Prospecting 101, right?

Your usual method might be head to donor lists of organizations similar to yours to see who is giving, and at what level.

But what if you took some slightly unusual approaches – ones that shake up the traditional ways you normally prospect? Might that result in viable new prospects as well? My experience says yes! [Read more…]

August 14, 2014 By Helen Brown

16 cool resources every fundraiser should know about

This list of resources answers many of the frequently-asked questions we get from clients asking “where should I go to get…?” Everything on the list is free (or very inexpensive) and will help you be more efficient and get the best expert advice.

Great free tool: the gift range calculator

This is the tool you use when you’re new to fundraising and your board chair says “Welcome aboard. I need you to tell me what we’ll need to do to raise $10 million.” No need to panic, just use this handy little gift pyramid calculation tool as a starting point.

Contact report get-it-done-quick short cut

[Read more…]

August 7, 2014 By Helen Brown

Fundraising intelligence

There’s been a sea change in prospect research, and it was front and center at our international industry conference last week. The 27^th annual APRA conference, held in steamy Las Vegas, was called “Prospect Development 2014; new approaches, new connections.” The Twitter hashtag was #APRApd2014 (have a look – good stuff there). As always, it was a great conference with lots of meaty takeaways.

Nonetheless, I kept shaking my head every time I saw the conference name or used the hashtag. I’m just having a hard time with “prospect development.” Not the profession – the name. Prospect development is relatively new as a descriptor for what we professionals formerly known as “prospect researchers” do. [Read more…]

March 27, 2014 By Helen Brown

Why wealth screenings are a waste of money

Money down the drain

“Yes, we did a wealth screening a couple of years ago. We didn’t really find it very helpful.” <pause>

“Well, to be honest, we didn’t really do anything with the information when it came back. It just kind of sat there.”

If I had a twenty for every time someone said that to me I’d be making major gifts already.

It absolutely kills me, too, because wealth screenings

a) are not cheap, and

b) can be worth every single penny.

[Read more…]

March 6, 2014 By Helen Brown

Coming out

Prospect research pride flag

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Across the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and a growing number of other places around the globe, there are more than 5,000 of us.

People who, at one time or other in our professional lives have faced bias and, at times, even open revulsion from the public or the very people we serve. Most of the time we face well-intentioned misunderstanding without even knowing it.

[Read more…]

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