Prospect identification Archives - Page 4 of 5

March 12, 2015 By Helen Brown

BRICS are out the window; it’s MINT that’s growing now

It’s that rich time of year when you make a large pot of something hot to drink, grab a cookie or three, and settle down to read about the wealthy. The really really wealthy.

Out now are the Forbes Billionaires list (with a record 290 newcomers), and the 2015 Knight Frank Wealth Report, providing a global perspective on ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) and the variety of ways they hold assets.

If the collective wealth of these 172,850 UHNWIs – clocking in at nearly $21 trillion – was the fuel moving a private jet, the sonic boom would be so stratospheric that the astronauts in the international space station would be able to hear it. According to the K F report, an average of 15 people joined the ranks of the ultra-wealthy every day last year. But even that group doesn’t have money like some have money. K F say:

“Moving up the wealth brackets, nearly 1,180 people became centa-millionaires in 2014, taking the world’s total population of those worth over $100m to 38,280.” [Read more…]

March 5, 2015 By Helen Brown

Billions of Possibilities

This month, I’m delighted that HBG Senior Researcher Elizabeth Roma shares her insights on Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI) and their potential to affect transformational change in the world through philanthropy. Elizabeth and Kenny Tavares have been studying the infrastructure and impact of HNW Family Offices, and she will present a session on the topic in June at the Mid-Atlantic Researchers Conference in Baltimore. I hope you’ll be able to join her there!

Do you want to hear something that will blow your mind?

In 2010 there were 388 billionaires whose combined wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 50% of the world’s population.

Amazing, right? But that’s nothing.

In 2014 there were 80 people whose combined wealth equaled that of the poorest 50%. According to a report from Oxfam, the wealth of those 80 people has doubled since 2009. If these trends continue, Oxfam predicts that the richest 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% by 2016 (yes, that’s next year).

Things are changing, and not necessarily for the better (at least not for those of us in the 99%). But does this have to be all bad news? [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 25, 2014 By Helen Brown

Prospect identification: 5 steps to get action on the front line

Prospect identification is a bi-polar experience for many prospect researchers and analytics professionals: it’s both pure joy and deep-seated frustration. Not all of the time, but mostly.

On the one hand, it’s creative. It’s super fun. (And at work, yet!)

Prospecting sure beats the heck out of doing profiles. Not because profiles aren’t interesting in and of themselves, but because prospect ID projects come from *your* heart. You dream them up, you make them happen. Sure, the project may be in response to a request, but how you fulfill it uses your own chosen palette to create the masterpiece.

But then, on the other hand, you pass off the list of names and what do you hear back? Crickets. [Read more…]

September 18, 2014 By Helen Brown

Prospect identification: 4 ways to help retain new donors

One of the scariest things we know as fundraisers is that donor attrition is at stratospheric levels.

Studies by the renowned philanthropy scholar-evangelist Adrian Sargent have shown that (on average) charities lose 50 percent of their cash income from brand-new donors between their first and second gift, and up to 30 percent after that. (Read Dr. Sargeant’s outstanding article in Nonprofit Quarterly here). [Read more…]

September 11, 2014 By Helen Brown

Prospect identification: Grow Some Feet

These days, prospect research is seen as a fairly cerebral task where you sit at your desk gathering information using a computer while trying not to snack (or maybe that’s just me?).

Back in the day, though, being a researcher meant never needing to say “boy, I really need a gym membership.” Typically, a journal entry for a day would go something like this: [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…]

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 20, 2014 By Helen Brown

What your capital campaign plan is missing

There’s a critical piece of information missing from most capital campaign feasibility studies:

The amount of money an organization’s constituency can actually give.

We need the answer to that before we can set the goal, right?

And yet… most of the time nonprofit organizations launch their campaigns without knowing the full answer to that question. They wait until after they’ve launched to finally get all the pieces in place. Which seems kind of crazy to me.

[Read more…]

September 12, 2013 By Helen Brown

Fundraising Analytics ABCs – Donor Modeling

Chances are good if you are in the fundraising field that you have heard the term “fundraising analytics.” You’ve probably also heard the terms “data mining,” “donor modeling,” “reporting” and “prospect identification,” too. Do these terms mean the same thing? What are the differences among them?

I asked Marianne Pelletier, who leads the HBG Analytics team, to help me put together a series of short articles designed to make sense of these terms. In each, she will describe the method and give examples of how they can be used. To continue our series, we describe the questions that Donor Modeling can answer.

Let’s begin with a case study:

A museum is in the planning stage to launch a major fundraising campaign. Their last campaign was over 5 years ago, and while they had a number of significant gifts, the coming campaign will require many more major gifts in order to be successful. After developing a table of gifts for the campaign, it quickly becomes apparent that there are huge gaps that need to be filled with prospects at every level. Significant prospect identification needs to happen.

To score the museum’s database and identify the top prospects, the museum decides to use a technique called predictive modeling, also referred to commonly as donor modeling.

What is donor modeling?

Donor modeling uses statistics tools to score a group of records using a variety of methods, including regression analysis, clustering, decision trees, neural networks and support vector machines (SVMs) amongst lots of others. Let’s take a look at just one of them, regression analysis.

Regression analysis uses calculus to find the slope of a line, which helps us visualize trends in the data. For example, we could see (based on a number of factors) which groups of people in the museum’s database have the most capacity to give as well as affinity, or connection to, the museum.

Here’s a standard matrix that is often built for major gifts programs. After downloading records and using regression analysis to score the group studied, prospects would be shown along the slope of the red line based on their relative affinity with the museum and their capacity to make a major gift.

Affinity, or “how much they love the museum” might be measured by the number of times someone attended events, or donated in consecutive years, or bought tickets to special exhibits, amongst other things. Capacity, or “how much they can give” might be found through primary or secondary research, such as a visit, prospect research or an electronic screening.

A graphic describing the relative level of a group of prospects’ affinity using a number of hearts (ranked on a scale of 1 to 3) and the relative level of their gift capacity (ranked 1 to 3) by dollar signs might look something like this:

In this example, the top-right box represents those with greatest capacity and affinity for the organization, and the bottom-left box shows those with the least.

If you were the chief development officer at the museum, whom would you want to approach first? Your answer is likely to be those in the top right group. Unfortunately most of the time that group is also the smallest population among the scored groups, and are usually the donors you know fairly well.

Whom to select next, then? Often, two of the largest groups, represented by the larger boxes, are the $$$ ♥♥ and the $$♥♥♥ groups. And of those, it might be hard to decide which to choose.

So, your next donor modeling study might be to look at the museum’s past track record with each of these two groups. What is your level of success in cultivating each group? What motivates them to become major gift donors?

Donor modeling helps answer those questions. The characteristics of top level donors are compared to various segments of the pool, and their scores help bubble up the best future prospects.

What else can you use donor modeling for?

Although it’s most often used to identify major gifts prospects, donor modeling can also rank groups like these:

Annual giving prospects who are most likely to renew
People who are likely to be good board/volunteer candidates
Planned giving prospects
People who would be great prospects for a specific project or campaign (like a library fund, or for endowment)
People who would be most likely to accept a request for a visit
Top level annual giving prospects
Prospects best suited for a particular gift officer or volunteer

Donor modeling can even help determine the best ways to acquire new members for a member recruitment campaign. It’s a powerful tool to help your organization identify new donors, whether you’re in a campaign, thinking about a campaign, or just looking for new donor prospects.

What do you need to know?

Our series on the ABCs of fundraising analytics continues next Thursday, September 19 with a look at data visualization.

Do you have questions about donor modeling or would you like to see it at work at your organization? Contact us at info [at] helenbrowngroup [dot] com for more information.

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