By: Rick Snyder, Senior Consultant
Rick Snyder
The best research I’ve ever done was useless until a gift officer did something with it. I can spend a week on a profile, but if it lands in someone’s inbox and never gets opened, it might as well not exist.
Over the years I’ve worked with gift officers who treated research like a vending machine: put in a name, get out a profile. I’ve also worked with many who treated me like a teammate. The latter most likely raised more money and certainly provided greater personal satisfaction.
This is my take on how to build the second kind of relationship. Most of it comes down to curiosity, developing personal connection, and showing up consistently.
Get to know them as people, not just fundraisers
When a new gift officer joins, ask to meet as soon as possible. Ask where they’ve worked, what kinds of donors they love talking to, and what research looked like at their last shop. That last question is key. Some people come from places with a deep research team. Others have never had a researcher at all and don’t quite know what to do with you. Either way, you learn what expectations you’re walking into.
A few things to figure out early:
- How they like to receive information. Some want a one-page brief they can skim in the car. Others want every detail.
- What their portfolio looks like. Major gifts, planned giving, C&F, a region, a program area? This shapes the work you send them.
- What drives them a little crazy. It’s better to hear “I hate when profiles bury the giving history” in week two than in month ten.
This is also the time to provide them some education:
- Tell them what you can and cannot find. Someone unfamiliar with prospect research may not know what information is available, like a former colleague of mine who was certain we could access people’s tax records and was annoyed that we refused to provide them.
- Talk about the different levels of research and appropriate requests. We’re happy to provide whatever is needed, but please use our time wisely. One of my gift officers was in the habit of asking for full profiles on prospects who had never been contacted. I quickly nipped this in the bud and when discussing it found out that the officer loved reading what we could find and was just curious.
- Discuss realistic deadlines. Let your gift officers know that although you want them to feel like they are the #1 priority, you support several others who feel the same way. If they need something tomorrow, you can do your best to provide it but can’t promise.
Provide what they’ll actually use
Although many of us love getting into the weeds to find every possible detail on a prospect, a longer profile is not necessarily a better profile. Early in my career I was proud of 12-page reports packed with every board seat and property record I could find. Then I watched a gift officer flip through the pages just looking for the capacity rating and skipping all of the details I’d provided. Even more disheartening was when we had a change of leadership at our organization and went from having a president who regularly praised the in-depth research we provided to one who asked us to condense it to the size of no more than two index cards that could be read in a few moments before a prospect meeting. There’s no sense in spending hours on something if most of it is going to be ignored, so knowing the purpose is key.
Every organization has its own system for submitting requests, which hopefully includes what the research will be used for. If not, seek clarification so you aren’t producing a profile when all that was needed is a phone number or email address.
A request that says, “Can you look up Jane Smith?” could mean ten different things. Is she a new prospect? A longtime donor who just mentioned a big life change? Someone the president met at a dinner party? The answer changes where you look and how deep you go. Before getting started, ask a few questions:
- What’s coming up with this person, and when?
- What do you already know or suspect?
- What decision are you trying to make? (Qualify, set an ask amount, pick a project to pitch?)
- How much detail do you need, and by when?
Preferably these prompts exist in your research request for, when in doubt, ask. One side effect to this follow up is that gift officers will start answering these questions before you ask. Their requests get sharper, and your turnaround gets faster.
Show up regularly
The partnerships that work best have consistency. With some officers it’s a standing portfolio review every month or quarter. With others it’s a quick check-in every Monday. Those regular touchpoints are usually where the good stuff happens. A gift officer mentions a donor offhand, and you remember you just saw news about that family’s company. Or you notice three people in their portfolio haven’t had contact in a year and ask if they should reprioritize.
Also try to send things they didn’t ask for, but sparingly and only when it matters. A quick “Saw that your prospect was just named board chair at the hospital, thought you’d want to know” most likely builds more goodwill than any profile you’ve ever written. It tells them you’re paying attention to their donors, not just your queue.
Close the loop
It’s frustrating when you send off a profile and never hear what happened. Did the meeting go well? Was your capacity rating in the right ballpark? Did the donor light up about the scholarship fund, or was that a total miss? Getting that feedback feeds our curiosity and helps us to hone our work. It’s also enormously satisfying when you hear that some piece of information you provided helped secure a gift. It boosts morale and it’s also useful evidence if your team’s value comes up at budget time.
Contact reports are the other half of this. Read them and let your gift officers know you read them. When officers realize their reports feed right back into better research, they tend to write better reports.
Be a partner, not a profile factory
Profiles are only one piece of what you can offer. Some of the most valuable things you can do don’t involve writing a profile at all:
- Portfolio reviews. Helping an officer figure out who to drop, who to move up, and who’s been sitting untouched too long.
- Prospect identification. Running a screening or a quick database query to surface people they didn’t know were there.
- Ask strategy. Sitting in on the planning conversation and pressure-testing the ask amount against what you know.
- Relationship mapping. Figuring out who on your board or in your volunteer base knows a prospect and could open a door.
Gift officers don’t always know to ask for these things. That’s on us to explain. Offering one concrete example works better than a list of services. “Want me to look at your top 50 and flag the five I think are under-rated?” gets a yes far more often than “Let me know if you need anything.”
The goal is to be in the room when strategy gets made, not just handed the leftovers after.
Handle the bumpy parts with grace
The “I need this in an hour” request. It happens. Sometimes it’s a genuine surprise, like a donor calling to say they’re in town. Of course you’ll help but need to scale the work to the time available. You can tell them, “I have one hour available and I’ll give you as much as I can within that amount of time”. A quick summary of giving history and a few key facts is better than nothing. If last-minute requests become a pattern, bring it up in your next one-on-one rather than in the moment.
Competing priorities. When several officers all need something urgently, you don’t have to decide alone who goes first. Loop in their manager or your shared leadership if necessary. It keeps you out of the middle and makes priorities clear for everyone.
Being treated as “just support.” Although this is hopefully rare, it happens. The fastest fix is to do excellent, useful work and talk about it in fundraising terms: pipeline, qualification, gifts closed.
What good looks like
You’ll know a partnership is working when a gift officer calls you before they’ve decided on a strategy, not after. When they say “let’s ask research” in a team meeting without anyone prompting them. When they forward you a donor’s thank-you note because they know you’ll be happy to see it. Some officers will click with you right away, some will take a year, and occasionally some won’t fully engage at all. That’s fine.
It comes down to this: be curious about the people you support, give them what they’ll actually use, and keep showing up.
