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February 14, 2019 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

A lot to love

There’s a lot to love about fundraising intelligence (aka prospect development), which, for those of you who are new to the term, is comprised of prospect research, prospect management, due diligence, and fundraising data science.

In research, each profile we build is a love letter, of sorts, to the donor prospect we’re writing about. We gather the information carefully. Ethically. Lawfully.

We are curious and diligent. We pull every loose thread.

We paint the individual, company, or grant-giver in their best possible light in profiles. We shine them up and present our diligent work like a bouquet.

Especially if the prospect is someone we found through our own efforts, we want them to be chosen to be asked to join our nonprofit in doing the extraordinary. Pick this one! She’s going to be a great partner for us!

If it’s due diligence we’re doing, we research to protect something else we love – the reputation and future well-being of our nonprofit. Our research then is personal; we are the stakeholders protecting all the other stakeholders. Watch out for this one – they could bring trouble.

In fundraising data science, our love of puzzles and patterns and queries and questions helps us surface the very best amongst the previously hidden. We love finding whole new swathes of possibility. These are the ones with potential – let’s show them some love.

We put our hearts into prospect management, too, because we want our frontline fundraisers to be the most successful they can be. So we shuffle portfolios like cards, pulling the aces, kings and queens of hearts up to the top for them, moving the twos and threes for later.

As I’ve said many times before, though, the main thing I love about fundraising intelligence is our brilliant, smart, vibrant community and our willingness to share, show, and tell each other the innovative things we’re doing. As you may remember, March is prospect development pride month, and this year I wanted to shine a special spotlight on women in our field who are doing cutting-edge work.

The focus of our Research Pride Month special spotlight this March will be prospect management. Our star bloggers are going to talk about why a strong prospect management system is so important; how to start one from scratch; critical metrics to have in a more established system; and how to fix a broken prospect management system and make it work again.

I’m delighted to welcome to the Intelligent Edge contributors Jessica Balsam from the University of Washington (March 7), Janna Holm from the Trust for Public Land (March 14), Misa Lobato from the University of Colorado (March 21), and Lisa Howley from the University of Southern California (March 28).

Their knowledge and experience will bring you great ideas and new ways to think about starting or improving your prospect management system.

I hope you’ll make a special effort to read, comment, and share their articles with your colleagues. I’m sure you’re going to get a lot out of each article, and I can promise there will be a lot to love.

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Relationship management, Research Department Success, Strategic planning Tagged With: #ResearchPride, Janna Holm, Jess Balsam, Lisa Howley, Misa Lobato, prospect development, prospect management, relationship management, Research Pride

November 23, 2017 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

More Giving, Thanks to Thanks Giving

When I read this week’s featured article by Kathy Mills on the Apra-Carolinas website, I knew I had to ask share it with you today. Kathy is Senior Donor Identification Analyst at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and I wanted you to read her description of the way that their prospect research and annual giving teams partner together.
They’re making relationship magic – joining their talents to give sincere thanks to donors, and it’s a great lesson – for this season and all year round.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and warm thanks to Kathy and the kind folks at Apra-Carolinas for allowing us to re-share this!

The Impact of Thanking Annual Fund Donors

When I was younger, my mother forced me to write thank you notes to anyone who had given me a gift for my birthday. It seemed like a chore at the time, but as an adult, I came to appreciate when I was thanked for sending a gift – and I certainly remembered those that never thanked me. Today, sometimes a simple “thank you” seems like a dying art.

As nonprofit organizations, it’s critical that we thank our donors promptly. That $25 annual fund donor could turn out to be a $25,000 donor in the future if he or she feels appreciated right from the start. But every organization sends a thank you letter. What if you took it one step further? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Non-profit trends, Relationship management, Research Department Success Tagged With: Apra-Carolinas, Kathy Mills, stewardship, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

October 19, 2017 By Helen Brown 4 Comments

Don’t make the real estate mistake

          “home yellow” Photo by nikcname (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Flickr

Should we – or shouldn’t we – include real estate as one of the factors we use to determine a prospective donor’s gift capacity? It’s a conversation we had just this week in our HBG group chat room.

Everyone commiserated with one HBGer’s lament that some development offices don’t include primary residence – or even any real estate – in their capacity ratings.

And I’ve heard people say on multiple occasions, “Our prospective major donor is never going to give us their house (or sell their house and give us the money), therefore we shouldn’t include it in our ratings.”

Which is true. The donor is probably never going to give your nonprofit the deed to the house they’re currently living in. (<stage whisper>: I won’t mention “planned gift” at this point, okay?)

THE THING IS…

They are also never going to give you their salary (unless they’re Chris Long), sell their yacht, their plane share, or their horses to make a donation, either. They won’t liquidate their art collection, grandma’s diamonds, or that vintage Chanel worn to last week’s benefit. The privately-held company they own will remain unsold. Likewise the stock options that don’t convert for another 5 years.

If the argument is that they’re not going to sell their house, then we should disqualify those other assets, too, right? Because they are never going to give them to you, either.

You can’t pick and choose.

If you randomly take one non-liquid asset off the table, you should take all of them. And you’d never do that, right? It would be illogical.

Figuring out someone’s gift capacity is hard enough to begin with. Purposefully handicapping yourself makes absolutely no sense to me.

I UNDERSTAND

Real estate certainly isn’t the be-all-end-all, but like all of those other assets I mentioned, if nothing else, it’s an indicator of wealth. But I think there’s much more to real estate – even primary real estate – that should be considered.

To start with, it’s solid information. We’re already operating in a realm where anything concrete is in short enough supply. So why ignore a valuable, real, solid, asset?

Also:

Real estate is a green flag. When I’m trying to find new prospects in a sea of regular donors I may skip over someone who lives in a $850,000 home in San Francisco, but I’m definitely not going to ignore a donor who has a $850,000 condo in Aspen. I’m now going to search to find a separate primary residence.

Real estate is a red flag. I was once asked to research someone who had approached an organization out of the blue offering to make a multi-million-dollar gift. What I discovered – by just looking into the prospect’s primary residence – was the first red flag that probably saved the nonprofit from months of wasted time – or worse.

Further:

100% of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWI) own real estate. And for the more privacy-aware among them, real estate is sometimes the only hard asset we can find for them. Knowing what kind of real estate they own gives you clues into the type of personality they are, how they may want to be cultivated, and what philanthropic investments may interest them. For example:

The billionaire who owns a 20-bedroom party house on Miami Beach is very different from the billionaire living in a three-bedroom ranch in Omaha. Their real estate choices can give you clues to their lifestyle and engagement preferences. One may be a better prospect for naming opportunities with big splashy events. The other may prefer funding boots-on-the-ground clinics for vaccine delivery and student scholarships.

In addition:

We can use real estate for estimates. According to the Capgemini World Wealth Report, real estate accounted for 17% on average of a HNWI’s total assets globally last year. (In the US, it’s 11% of total assets; in Europe it’s 18%). So if all you can find is someone’s real estate holdings, you can still come up with a decent guesstimate of their total assets using that one ratio if they’re in the HNW classification.

And finally:

Real estate is critical to planned giving. There, I’ve said it, and this is really important.

Let’s say you work at a small college and you’ve got childless husband-and-wife alumni couple with a ski resort condo, a vacation home at Los Sueños in Costa Rica and a primary residence in Boston’s Back Bay. They’re consistent donors and lifelong volunteers to the college. There’s no question that the planned giving officer needs to know about them.

And in this case, it’s not only the real estate that’s interesting, but also what it tells us about these special people. Here is an active, outdoorsy couple who possibly enjoy golf, tennis and skiing. A pair that enjoys regular seasonal travel, but whose lifestyle may require extra cultivation time because they are probably not in town very often. What decisions do you need to make about how to engage them?

Look at all the information that just knowing about real estate gives us!

ONE LAST THING

In case you’re wondering, here at HBG we do include primary residence in our total visible wealth calculations on profiles.

We believe it’s a real asset. I think you should, too.

 

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Effective searching, Prospect Development 101, Ratings, Researching Individuals Tagged With: prospect research, real estate

September 7, 2017 By Helen Brown 5 Comments

POISEd for Success

This week HBG team member Angie Herrington shares some great tips to make sure you don’t lose track of an under-the-radar, future group of supporters to your nonprofit. She’s not totally convinced that she’s got the perfect acronym yet, but IMO she’s on the right track! ~Helen

Fundraising is no different than any other profession with our acronyms and jargon. Some are expedient (DO, MGO, 990, CRM, ‘soft credit’) and some make me think too hard and wonder if we’re making it up (LYBUNT, SYBUNT, and CRUT).

Some of our legacy terms can also be polarizing. Ever dropped the word “suspect” on PRSPCT-L over the past 20 years? If you’re feeling sassy, try that one and let me know how it works out for you. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Prospect Development 101, Prospect identification, Relationship management, Research Department Success, Strategic planning Tagged With: Angie Herrington, prospect management, prospect research, relationship management

November 17, 2016 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Why wealth screenings – and prospect researchers – are so reliant on real estate

life-saver-ring

Here’s the complaint I hear frequently about wealth screenings, prospect research, and real estate: Knowing what our prospect holds in real estate is useless! She’s never going to give any of those houses to our organization!(*)

That’s absolutely right. She’s probably not. But that completely misses the point of why real estate is key.

Here’s why:

Imagine with me that you’re on a lovely sailboat. You’re out for the day with friends in the Caribbean enjoying the sun and the breeze. You’re moving along at a pretty fast clip with the wind, but all of a sudden an unexpected gust causes the boom to flip from one side of the boat to the other, and somehow you’re overboard.

The water’s warm but it’s going to take a few minutes for your friends to turn the boat around and get you. That thin orange ring they tossed you is by no means reliably holding up your weight, but it’ll help keep you up while you tread water until the boat comes back. That orange ring may be crummy, but it’s the most solid thing you’ve got right now. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Most popular, Prospect identification, Ratings, Researching Individuals, Wealth screenings Tagged With: Capgemini, prospect research, ratings, real estate, wealth screenings, World Wealth Report

September 3, 2015 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Relationship Management Rules!

Relationship managementWhat makes a successful relationship management program? What are the traits that great managers  overseeing the process must have?

You may remember that two weeks ago, I interviewed Janna Holm, Director of Relationship Management at Johns Hopkins University to get her insight on these questions. We learned from her that it’s an alchemy of art and science that helps build a great RM system. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Relationship management Tagged With: Janna Holm, Lisa Howley, prospect research, relationship management

August 20, 2015 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

The alchemy behind fundraising success

genieLampHeartIt’s no secret that the most important thing about major gift fundraising is relationship building. No matter whether you’re talking about raising money from individuals, companies, or foundations, the key is building honest, authentic relationships to bring about positive change. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Relationship management Tagged With: capital campaign success, Janna Holm, Johns Hopkins, moves management, prospect management, prospect research, relationship management, Rising To The Challenge

May 28, 2015 By Helen Brown 7 Comments

Going beyond capacity ratings

love signIn case you missed it (and click here if you did), last week on this blog Melissa Bank Stepno shared her knowledge and some wise words from her colleague, David Lamb, on capacity ratings.

Capacity ratings are an important factor in every major gift effort. They will not be perfect, (let me repeat that – they will never be perfect) and capacity rating are just one of several data points we use, but they are an important tool to help us rank our very top prospects.

One of the common misconceptions of capacity codes is that some folks new to the profession might think that capacity means “How much will they give us?” It doesn’t.

A capacity rating says, “what is this person’s total ‘wallet’ for philanthropic giving in a year to every organization they support?” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Ratings, Relationship management Tagged With: capacity code, capacity ratings, David Lamb, Melissa Bank Stepno, prospect management, prospect research, readiness code, relationship management

May 21, 2015 By Helen Brown 5 Comments

The Artful Science of Capacity Ratings

It is a great pleasure to welcome Melissa Bank Stepno as this week’s guest writer on The Intelligent Edge. I’ve long admired Melissa’s gift in seeing the big picture in prospect development and her ability to eloquently communicate and train on its finer details. So when she and I were chatting between sessions at the recent NEDRA conference, I grabbed the opportunity to ask her to share her thoughts here on capacity ratings, which has been a hot topic lately on the prospect research discussion forum, prspct-l.

Monet haystacks detail

How much can they give? What should we ask for? How rich is she? What’s his net worth?

Such short questions. Such common questions. Such important questions. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Most popular, Ratings, Relationship management, Research Department Success Tagged With: Blackbaud, capacity ratings, Melissa Bank Stepno, prospect research, Target Analytics

December 11, 2014 By Helen Brown 5 Comments

Capacity Ratings, 747s, and Volvos

When Volvos dream

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…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Most popular, Ratings, Researching Individuals Tagged With: capacity ratings, Mark Egge, Mark Noll, prospect research

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