Helen Brown Group

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Taking Care: Using Equitable and Inclusive Language in Research Profiles and Beyond

By: Anne Melton, Consultant

Anne Melton

Anne Melton

Have you ever received a piece of mail where your name has been misspelled, your salutation incorrect, or it includes typos resulting from a careless mail merge? My reactions to such communications range from laughter to annoyance to downright displeasure. Being called Mrs. makes me cringe, or worse for me – because my spouse and I have different surnames – being called Mrs. Spouse Last Name. I also find it irritating when our household is referred to as the Spouse Last Name Family [insert eye roll here]. My frustration stems from the assumptions that are made about who our family is, and those assumptions typically default to old conventions that are woefully out of date (and sometimes downright offensive and sexist). You can probably guess that I toss those mailings straight into the recycle bin without a second thought.

These same outdated and potentially harmful practices are everywhere, not only in mass mailings. (Think of how commonly “hey guys!” is said to an audience that doesn’t just include men.) As prospect researchers, one way we can work to be more equitable and confront intrinsic biases is when writing profiles. Enter inclusive language…

What makes language inclusive?

Inclusive language is “language that acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities…[these guidelines] avoid pitfalls or habits that may unintentionally lead to marginalization, offense, misrepresentation, or the perpetuation of stereotypes.”1 Inclusive language means that we recognize our words have power, and that we must take care in using those words by trying our best to ensure no one is hurt, excluded, or misrepresented in the ways we share information. Doing so helps us communicate more clearly and accurately and promotes a culture of belonging and respect.

How researchers can promote inclusive language

As researchers, we are constantly conveying information about funders, donors, and constituents, and we can advocate for inclusivity through our usual channels like profiles, event briefings, memos, and even emails and conversations. Language that is not inclusive can fall into the categories of racist, sexist, gendered, coded, ageist, ableist, homophobic, and violent. It behooves us to be aware of and avoid using these types of harmful language. Here are just a few examples on how to reframe how we convey information in a profile:

Instead of:

Mr. and Mrs. Donor gave $100 million to build a new athletics center. Mrs. Donor is a former Olympic athlete.

Use:

Jamie Donor and Taylor Donor gave $100 million to build a new athletics center. Jamie is a former Olympic athlete.

 

Instead of:

The couple have two sons, Robin and Lee. The boys attend Birchwood Academy.

Use:

The couple have two children, Robin and Lee. They are students at Birchwood Academy.

 

Instead of:

Sandy is chairman of the board of a nonprofit that provides job training to ex-prisoners.

Use:

Sandy is chair of the board of a nonprofit that provides job training to individuals who have been impacted by the justice system.

Beyond the profile

Inclusive language can also mean doing away with phrases or words that are unclear or don’t accurately represent what we are trying to say. Often those phrases and words have roots in the non-inclusive language categories named above. A few that come to mind are:

Instead of:

Let’s pull the trigger on deciding which vendor to use.

Use:

Let’s decide by the end of the day which vendor to use.

 

Instead of:

This week, we are welcoming freshmen students to campus.

Try:

This week, we are welcoming first-year students to campus.

 

Instead of:

We are applying for a grant to build housing for the homeless.

Use:

We are applying for a grant to build housing for people experiencing homelessness.

 

Instead of:

Isn’t it crazy that we exceeded our fundraising goal at the gala?

Use:

Isn’t it wonderful/amazing/wild that we exceeded our fundraising goal at the gala?

Beyond our written and spoken communications, there are other steps we can all take to foster a culture of inclusiveness and belonging in our workplaces, and with our clients and donors:

  • Create an inclusive language style guide. Just as your organization might have a style guide or in-house writing conventions, consider creating an inclusive language guide that streamlines your writing organization-wide for you and your colleagues. Make a point to keep it a living document and review and vet it regularly.
  • Educate yourself. Once you start to notice how ingrained non-inclusive language is in our society, it may surprise you at how prevalent it is. Learn about other examples and work to exclude those words, phrases, and colloquialisms from your vernacular in other aspects of your life. See the resources below as a few starting points, but there are many more out there!

Mistakes and missteps happen, and that’s okay. Make amends, correct, and move on. Just as our profession and our skills sets are always evolving, so too is language and our profession’s best practices.

Sources, references, and further reading:

[1] Linguistic Society of America. (n.d). Guidelines for Inclusive Language. https://www.lsadc.org/resources_list.asp?c=10&i=22

Olsen, Erin. (2025, May 1-3). Inclusive and Equitable Language in Prospect Research [Conference presentation]. NEDRA 2025, Portland, ME, United States.

https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/2022/09/inclusive-language

https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines

https://counseling.northwestern.edu/blog/inclusive-language-guide/

https://www.csueastbay.edu/universitycommunications/inclusive-language-guide.html

https://www.culturemonkey.io/employee-engagement/language-inclusive/

https://devar.ucdavis.edu/using-inclusive-language

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/careers/all-employees/working-with-others/words-matter.pdf

https://pros.educ.queensu.ca/blog/inclusivelanguage#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Linguistic%20Society,%2C%20and%20promotes%20equal%20opportunities.%E2%80%9D

https://www.washington.edu/brand/guides/equitable-language-guide/#explore-the-guide-2

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How to Research In A Chaotic World

By: Jayme Klein, Senior Consultant

Jayme Klein

No matter which industry you prospect for, all nonprofits are feeling affected these days. Leadership and fundraising offices at national and international organizations alike are worried, rightly so, and trying to make contingency plans to make sure the important work they are doing continues to be funded to maximize their impact.

What can prospect development do in the face of massive cuts to the nonprofit sector? How can we help our colleagues and communities amidst so much uncertainty? It feels daunting and impossible, but there are steps that we can take in our everyday roles to help sustain the causes that we work for and care about.

Look for the helpers: The National Council of Nonprofits has taken on the herculean task of filing lawsuits against these cuts, advocating for nonprofits, and providing excellent resources on risk assessment, workforce development, budgets, and other issues. Though outside of the prospect development sphere, their work affects all of us who hold nonprofits dear.

The Council on Foundations recently released a public statement fighting back against potential infringements on free speech and cuts to nonprofits. They encouraged all charitable organizations to sign on to the statement, which is searchable. While not all of them are increasing their grant output, they are still allies.

Think creatively: As researchers, we’re all trying to find the donors who will help push our causes forward. When all of us are revisiting our budgets and thinking twice about our spending, how can we identify donors who are able to give right now? Are you struggling to populate your fundraisers’ prospect pools? Keeping your database clean is a good place to start. Are addresses up to date? Can you identify phone and email information? Do you have constituents’ birth date information for planned giving solicitations? This post has a lot of helpful tips for cleaning your database.

On the other hand, are you overwhelmed by the sheer number of donors in your database? One of my clients here at HBG runs a regular report of anyone who donates above a certain threshold. This automatically populated prospect list makes it easy for me to assign a preliminary rating and bring them to fundraisers’ attention. Another useful tool through their CRM is assigning constituents to “campaigns,” which groups them easily for reporting. If I’ve found a donor is a high rated prospect, they get added to that campaign, which creates a great prospecting/research list.

How is your employment data? Are any of your donors employed by (or a retiree of) major corporations? Are they taking advantage of a gift match? This search tool is an amazing resource to cross-check your database against. Most donors don’t know that their employers match their gifts, which leaves money sitting on the table. Prospecting off of matching gift-eligible prospects could be a boon for fundraisers. Another resource is Double the Donation. Although they offer paid services, their resources page offers a helpful list of top matching gift companies if you need a quick guide.

The same goes for donor advised funds. In a recent Freewill webinar, co-chief executive officer Patrick Schmitt made an excellent point about identifying DAF holders in your database. Whatever these donors have invested in their funds is already allocated towards charitable giving and cannot be used for any other purpose. Have you identified those donors in your database? Here at the Helen Brown Group, we’ve spent the past few years populating DAFinitive® for this very purpose.

Gather your resources: Professional development and extra resources might be hard to come by right now. A great way to stretch that budget is to look for free offerings in the nonprofit sector right now. Lots of generous companies and people are providing networking opportunities, resources, workshops and webinars that could spark the next good idea. If your organization uses Kindsight, they have a new training video hub on a number of topics, including prospecting, modeling and other ways that you can use their product. If you’re a Blackbaud user, some of the trainings are available at no additional cost.

Take a breath: These are unprecedented times for our field, and for the world at large. Remember that what you do matters, and that the smallest actions in your research can yield large results! All of us are working to protect the causes that we care about right now in any way that we know how. As Helen said for Research Pride/Prospect Development Month, “We make a significant impact on a nonprofit’s fiscal success by keeping the focus on the best potential sources of funding. That description “best” may change from moment to moment, and it’s our job to figure out (or participate in the process of knowing) what “best” means at any time.”

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Research Matters

A circular waterfall at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Water cascades from a round skylight in a ceiling. It is lit up from beneath. On the wall behind is a quote from Sam Cooke: "A change is gonna come."Every March we celebrate Research Pride/Prospect Development Month, a time to reflect on and celebrate our profession’s growth and importance in the Third Sector.

It’s a perfect time to advocate for our profession by demonstrating that our work, done well, significantly impacts our organization’s bottom line and operational efficiency. Here are just a few ways we do this:

  1. We make a significant impact on a nonprofit’s fiscal success by keeping the focus on the best potential sources of funding. That description “best” may change from moment to moment, and it’s our job to figure out (or participate in the process of knowing) what “best” means at any time. It may mean the funders for a particular stage in a campaign, or yearly cycle, or specific portfolio. It may mean that we focus on parents, or board nominees, or most recent donors, or donors that have given consistently for many years. We may concentrate on local companies or national foundations or donor advised fund advisors. Our job is to be able to see what our nonprofit needs now and in the future through a wide-angle lens and be skilled on delivering the details that will help make that happen.
  2. We help frontline fundraisers build relationships. We do this by finding commonalities of interest between volunteers, staff, and potential donors. Or someone who has demonstrated a determination to fix a particular problem that we solve. Or by finding partnerships, friendships, and family relationships that can help us be introduced to someone who will mutually benefit from hitching their wagon to our star.
  3. We help build a pipeline of new sources of funding. We do this by paying attention to people raising their hands quietly – by increasing their giving annually, or posting their appreciation for our nonprofit on social media, volunteering to help out, or by making an unexpected donation at a “whoa” level without being asked. We may use analytical tools to uncover patterns, or services from an external vendor to build the framework of great lists. Our creativity capitalizes on multiple possibilities to strengthen and diversity our funding streams.
  4. We help protect our nonprofits from bad actors, bad relationships, and bad deals. Nobody wants to be the subject of a New York Times exposé on a nonprofit that didn’t do their homework vetting a gift from an individual or company. Prospect researchers develop a spidey sense in this line of work based on facts, half-facts, and no facts they find on prospective donors. Due diligence is a reputation-saver to avoid bad alliances, and it’s imperative for organizations that work with protected groups like children or where conflicts of interest would repel potential funders.
  5. We help our nonprofits stay legally compliant. Ten years ago, no one had heard of GDPR, and now organizations that have any kind of international constituency are fluent in its requirements. Who brought these to the attention of nonprofits? Prospect researchers did. We and our colleagues in Data and Records also stay up on compliance for HIPAA, FERPA, CCPA and all the rest of the data-protection alphabet soup of requirements.
  6. We keep the systems that support efficient fundraising well-oiled and functioning. Our goal is to make sure that frontline fundraisers have the right portfolios for each moment, and that those portfolios are constantly and dynamically changing, updating, and improving. It’s not an easy job, and it’s a lot like Tetris: pieces falling in quick succession that need to be put in place, and moved frequently so that there are no overlooked pieces or ill-fitting areas.

I know that there must be more ways that I’m just not thinking of at the moment, and if you’ve gotten to this article via LinkedIn, I hope you’ll go back there and add points in the comments that I’ve missed.

Research Pride Month is also a good time to recommit personally and as a profession to excellence in performance of our work; to passing down the best practices of the current time to our peers and the next generation of professionals; to advocating for ourselves and our profession to leadership; and to volunteering in service to our profession as chapter board members, conference speakers and track volunteers, and mentors.

Happy Pride Month!

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Make Time to Make a Difference: Finding Time to Be More Proactive

By: Viola Henning, Senior Consultant

Viola Henning

Viola Henning

Many research shops, especially small shops or those with a sole researcher wearing many hats, strive to be more proactive.

However, despite the size of a research shop there seems to often be a common struggle to find the time to do more prospect identification and other proactive research. So how do you get there?

Here are some of the best tips I’ve come across for balancing proactive and reactive research and how to find time to be more proactive as an individual and as an organization:

 

Reducing the time it takes to do reactive prospect research:

  • Communicate: Be sure to communicate clearly with the person requesting research to ensure you understand their needs. Doing this will prevent you from doing unnecessary work and will allow time for proactive tasks or projects. (See “Building Research Systems That Work” / “The one thing every research profile must do” / “Getting Through: 3 Easy Tips to Avoid Communication Death Traps”)
  • Prioritize: Try to match the amount of time that’s spent on requests to the prospect’s stage in the cultivation cycle. This stage-based research practice will ensure that less time is spent on research requests for prospects in identification/qualification that might not be ready or even receptive to meetings or further engagement. Prioritizing the stage will allow you to spend more time on research requests in preparation for an ask for prospects nearing the solicitation stage and well into stewardship. (See “Building blocks for a solid prospect management system”)
  • Automate: Use templates (See “The 4 key elements of every strategic profile”) and/or canned reports that can be generated by your database to make your research expeditious. This can be incredibly effective and time efficient for event bio reports. See this post, “The Secret to Great Event Briefings”, for what can be included. You’ll notice most, if not all of this information could probably be pulled right from your database. You can really cut down on time by just focusing on filling in the blanks – e.g., missing employment info – and doing quick checks for updates, rather than reformatting what’s already known.

 

Other ways to find more time:

  • Cut back on and/or be more purposeful about meetings. (See “5 tips for dealing with meeting overload”)
  • Think about what’s on your plate that can be delegated to someone else on your team that may have more bandwidth. This can include certain aspects of projects and responsibilities that aren’t specific to a unit or client that you solely support where only you have database/folder/etc. access.
  • Utilize work study students/interns/volunteers to help with prospect identification. They can do things like searching your organization’s database for names of people on rich lists or identifying names that live in wealthy zip codes.
  • Brainstorm/search other ways to increase your efficiency. ( See “Time Management in Practice”)

 

So now that you have more time to be proactive, what are you going to do with it?

Check out:

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Professional Development on a Budget (or Free!)

By: Jessica Woodbridge, Senior Consultant

Jessica Woodbridge

               Jessica Woodbridge

Are you someone who has a desire to learn a new skill? Perhaps you’d like to hone in on a skillset you already have to be able to do it even better?

“For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.”

― Benjamin Franklin

Professional development can look like building leadership skills. It can be learning new tools of your trade, such as how to read and understand an SEC filing, or to more efficiently work with data. It can involve just yourself or working with others. There are so many ways to continue your professional education, and the first step is asking yourself what it is you want to learn first.

It can feel hard sometimes to find the time to build new skills or further develop ones you already have. In the end, it is worthwhile both to you on your professional development journey, as well as to the organization where you work. Keep in mind that there are ways to do this that don’t necessarily require paying a fee. There are many resources that may be free or low cost/cost-effective. Signing up for emails or alerts might be a low-key way to begin fostering these skills. Inviting a colleague for a coffee chat to learn more about what they do may be another way. As you continue your journey, you may begin to zoom in on topics that are of particular interest to you or that you feel best suit you and your interests. It can be at this point that you may dig further into resources that best match these topics.

For me, I have always been interested in data. How to mine it, analyze it, and use it to make informed decisions. Last year, I decided to take it a step further by signing up to be a co-presenter at the 2024 NEDRA Conference. Our topic was on data compliance, and from the minute I signed up I immersed myself (when time was available) in all things to do with data privacy, compliance, security, etc. I signed up for Google Alerts on those topics, added myself to newsletter email lists from law firms, and sought to become a data compliance “expert”. By taking something I was already interested in, I further developed my knowledge of this topic and was then able to share my knowledge with others.

Now I’m not saying you must sign up to be a presenter at a conference, but there are other ways to develop your skills. You can sign up for webinars, which in some cases may be free (I will be giving some examples at the end). Other options are reading white papers, signing up for newsletters, or joining a listserv like PRSPCT-L. If your organization uses any vendors, they may have resources you can tap into as well. Memberships to professional organizations usually come with a fee, but if it is feasible to sign up, it will open more doors on your path to professional development.

Professional Development Resources for Nonprofit Professionals:

*Membership or an account is required

 

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The Wilhelm Scream

I can guarantee you’ve heard it many times, even if you don’t know that you have. The Wilhelm Scream has been used in over 200 movies and tv shows, including every single Star Wars and Indiana Jones movie. Once you’re aware of it, you’ll start to recognize it everywhere.

Here are a bunch of fun movie-clip examples from movies and tv shows where it was used again and again over the years.

The Wilhelm Scream is a long-running Hollywood in-joke, like Hidden Mickeys and Easter Eggs in films, tv shows, computer games, and websites. Some movie and tv series wouldn’t dream of not including it – it’s a cheeky and gleeful exercise for the cast, crew, and post-production teams and a joyful treasure hunt for true fans to find. “It’s become like a ‘Where’s Waldo’ thing” that’s still used to say “hello” to other sound editors who are paying attention,” says Hollywood Sound Museum founder (and sound editor) Steve Lee.

A friend mentioned The Wilhelm Scream to me a few days ago, and it led me to thinking about our work (not the screaming part. Necessarily). We have lots of things in fundraising that are “inside baseball,” like acronyms (GDPR, LYBUNT, HIPAA), report templates, and even simple words like ‘prospect’ and ‘development’ and ‘advancement’. No one outside of fundraising would understand them unless we explained them. They’re terms that both include and exclude. Comfort and confuse. But when we hear them away from work, we recognize fellow travelers.

How can we use a Wilhelm Scream-style nugget in our work?

When we think about bits that we can insert into profiles, process documents, manuals, or even the dreaded event briefing, what do (or could) we add to them that would bring delight and commonality in the end-user’s discovering?

What might those things be? Take a second now, if you would, to just think about that for yourself. I’ll wait.

We all want our work to be read, and used, and useful. And the one thing we dread is doing a whole lot of work, only for it to sit on a shelf, unread. (That silent sound you hear from an unread profile is definitely a scream, but not the (in) kind I’ve been talking about).

Maybe you want to create a new section in a briefing, specifically designed to hold the best bits. It might not even be the same thing every time, depending on the entity you’re researching or the information you’re presenting, or the end-user you’re delivering to. Different people might be thrilled with different things.

Maybe you add connection points.

Or life-changing moments that impacted the donor’s philanthropic priorities.

Or shared values or backgrounds that resonate both with a fundraiser and donor.

Consider, for this new year: what is something you could design specifically to delight an end user…that would also bring you a cheeky joy to create and deliver?

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Great Expectations: Setting Goals That Stick

By: Melissa Bank Stepno, President & CEO

As I write this, it’s January, and many of us are focused on New Year’s resolutions. We enthusiastically set Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs), feeling optimistic—or even excited—about what we can achieve. We might take those first few steps forward…

And then, inevitably, we stop.

We slip back into the routine of life, much like it was just a few weeks ago, adopting that familiar “last year” mindset. Even though the calendar has turned, we are, in many ways, still the same people we were before.

This is why research consistently shows that between 75% and 90% of New Year’s resolutions fail. By extension, this means that only 10% to 25% of resolutions actually succeed.

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions years ago for this very reason—there’s too much pressure tied to a somewhat arbitrary timeframe. But that doesn’t mean I’m not goal-oriented. It simply means that I prefer to set goals based on timelines that are meaningful for the specific project or what it motivating me at a particular time, not just the calendar year.

And when I do set goals, I don’t take a haphazard approach. I try to carefully set myself up for success—especially when my goals are Big, Hairy, and Audacious.

So, whether you’re reading this in January or at another time of year when you’re reflecting on your goals, I want to share some tips to help be a goal achiever.  After all, why set yourself up for failure?

The Power of SMART Goals

Many of us are familiar with the SMART framework for goal setting. It’s a proven approach that ensures your goals are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

SMART goals are a solid foundation, but I’ve found that adding a few additional considerations can significantly increase your chances of success. These ideas complement SMART, but take a slightly different angle on how to approach your goals.

Introducing SMART + BRAGS

Here are a few powerful additions to help you stick to your goals and make real progress:

  1. Baseline Setting
    Before you dive into your goals, it’s essential to understand where you’re starting from. What is your current situation? Gathering data and assessing your starting point will help you set more realistic and achievable targets. Understanding your baseline gives you a clearer picture of how much progress you can realistically make.
  2. Rationale
    This is, in my opinion, the most important element—the Why. You need to understand the underlying reason for your goal. Why is this goal meaningful to you? A clear rationale gives your goal purpose and helps you push through when things get tough. It becomes your motivation when challenges arise, reminding you of the bigger picture.
  3. Accountability
    Share your goals with others—whether it’s your team, leaders, friends, or family. Their encouragement can help keep you on track, and they can hold you accountable. Not only does this create external motivation, but it also provides a valuable “gut check” to ensure your goal aligns with the SMART framework. In professional settings, involving others also ensures buy-in from the people who are, or will be, affected by your goal.
  4. Good Communication
    Communication is key to almost any initiative, but especially so when it comes to goal setting.  It ensures that everyone involved understands the goal, its purpose, the timeline, and the expected outcomes. This clarity helps everyone stay aligned and ensures that you have the support you need to succeed.
  5. Sustainability
    If your goal is focused on long-term success or change, it’s crucial to consider sustainability. Are the actions you’re taking repeatable? Will you be able to adapt if you encounter obstacles? Thinking ahead about how to handle roadblocks can help you stay on course, even when challenges arise.

A Prospect Research Example

  • Goal: Within the next 6 months, identify 100 new major gift prospects at the $100K+ level to seed the portfolio of the new MGO we will be hiring later this year.
  • S – Specific: The goal is clear, you know exactly what you are aiming (major gift prospects at the $100K+ level), the quantity (100), and the timeline (6 months)
  • M – Measurable: Track progress through a weekly or monthly report that detail the number of prospects identified and their associated capacity level.
  • A – Achievable: Assess historical data, such as the number of prospects your team identified in the previous 6 months, to determine if the volume seems achievable (also see Baseline Setting below). It might also be helpful to set a smaller monthly target (e.g., 8-10 prospects per month) to ensure the overall goal is achievable
  • R – Relevant: This goal directly aligns with the organization’s decision to hire a new MGO and supports the major gift program’s growth. Identifying these prospects will ensure that the new MGO has a well-prepared portfolio when they begin, accelerating their ability to meet fundraising goals.
  • T – Time-bound: The timeline is clear – you have 6 months to identify 100 prospect. Breaking the timeline into monthly targets (e.g., 8-10 prospects per month) will help maintain focus and ensure steady progress.
  • B – Baseline Setting Assess historical data, such as the number of prospects your team identified in the previous 6 months, and at what capacity levels, to determine if the volume seems achievable. Also consider your other priorities over the past six months to determine whether you think you will have more or less time to work toward this goal.
  • R – Rationale: The rationale, or the “why,” behind this goal is straightforward: the organization is investing in a new MGO who will need a well-qualified portfolio to begin their work. This effort will lay the foundation for successful major gift cultivation and ensure that the MGO has a strong starting point.
  • A – Accountability: Hold yourself accountable by providing regular updates to your manager and the Director of Major Gifts. Set up regular check-ins to assess progress, troubleshoot any challenges, and adjust other priorities if necessary.
  • G – Good Communication: Keep stakeholders informed throughout the process. In addition to your manager and the Director of Major Gifts (see Accountability above), ensure your  peers and any other colleagues who might request work from you informed as well so that everyone understands what your priorities are and why.
  • S – Sustainable: Ensure the prospect identification tactics you use are sustainable and replicable in the future. Consider leveraging wealth screening tools, past donor lists, modeling scores and other tools at your disposal. Create a process so that you can assess if the tactics you use for this goal can be adapted for future projects and/or if adjustments might be needed to maintain this level of effort in the future.

 

Summary

By incorporating these SMART + BRAGS strategies into your goal-setting process, you’ll increase your chances of being in the successful.  And, if it is your New Year’s resolution, let’s make sure you are one of the 10%-25% who actually achieve their resolutions.

And who knows? Maybe you can then be someone who brags about meeting your goals. (See what I did there? Corny, I know!)

Happy goal-setting!

 

*Image Credit: File:Dickens Great Expectations in Half Leather Binding.jpg” by Jameslwoodward is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

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Meet the parents

Although the holiday season is a little way off (wait, no, Thanksgiving is only three weeks away!!) it’s never too early for those of you in academic institutions to start thinking about Early Decision/Early Admission students and the parents that come with them. In April, parent research kicks off in earnest in every academic prospect research department, and having a plan (and a budget) now will be something your future self will thank you for. This week’s article by my colleague, Mandi Matz, captures lots to think about – and prepare for – in your parent research.  ~Helen

Mandi Matz

     Mandi Matz

With the holidays on the horizon and many of us thinking about our families near and far, I thought it might be a nice time to talk about parents. Specifically ideas for researching them if you work at a school, college or university or other organization where parents are or could be donors.

I’ve spent several years of my career working at and with educational institutions where parents are a key, and often untapped – or certainly untapped to their full potential – constituency.  Although researching parents can be overwhelming and time consuming, it also can be one of the most valuable projects you complete for your institution.

Here are some tips and tricks for researching parents that I’ve learned along the way. Obviously, many of them apply to prospect research in general.  But if you’re responsible for researching parents at your organization, I hope they will be helpful to you specifically.

Wealth screening

The way you conduct your parent research will depend on the time and resources you have available. If you’re a solo researcher in a small shop, a wealth screening from an outside vendor may be the perfect solution as it can give you a quick way to determine the parents at the top of your pool. There is no lack of vendors to choose from – Kindsight, Donorspace, Donorsearch and ResearchPoint to name a few.  While I’m not advocating for any of these products in particular, you may already have access to at least one of them, so use what’s at your disposal.

As a corollary, do your best to understand the screening product you’re using so that you can verify the results most effectively and efficiently, which is especially critical if you have limited time. Recently, we at HBG met with a representative from one of the products we use to have a refresher course on some of its features. Although I’ve used this product nearly every day of my professional life for years, it was eye opening to me how much I learned from the session. It was a good reminder that resources have features you may not be using, and they are always coming out with enhancements. If you don’t have time for a meeting with a product representative, many resources have online tutorials and trainings about their latest and greatest features. Fully understanding your screening tool can also help you understand the results and interpret them for your gift officers.

If you use an outside vendor to screen your parents and you don’t have a lot of – or any – time to verify the results, don’t worry. You’re giving your gift officers new prospects, which likely makes them happy, and anything you can provide is better than nothing. Your colleagues can always ask for more research later if they need it. In many cases, you just need to give them enough to get them started. Most vendors will provide a summary of the screening that may be fine to start with if you’re short on time. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Before I worked with the Helen Brown Group, I managed the research department at a small liberal arts college. Our main project every year was to screen the parents of the incoming class, which we began in earnest in May and finished in July.  I had one researcher dedicated to this project full time, and they did the research manually.  In this scenario, we provided medium-depth research into the new parents’ education, career, real estate, giving to other organizations (especially educational institutions), affiliations and wealth indicators.

Planning, planning, planning

While this project made for a busy time for my team during the long, hot summer, one of the most important things I learned from it is the importance of planning. I recommend that to the extent you can, work with the stakeholders involved in the project – including your Admissions office, your vice president and your gift officers – to map out the project as much as you can before it begins.

Of course, your ability to do this will depend, again, on the time and resources you have available, as well as your organizational culture. But if you can take the initiative and plan ahead, it can make an overwhelming project a little less so. At the liberal arts college, I made a point to arrange a meeting with Admissions soon after the winter break to discuss the timelines for the project, when my team could anticipate getting data and what that data would look like. Those timelines didn’t always hold, but having an open line of communication and a general plan was always helpful.

After I met with Admissions, I arranged a meeting with my vice president, gift officers and our events department to discuss their timeline and expectations and how the results my team found would be used. The college hosted an annual parent dinner that coincided with new students moving in.  Thus, the point of the project was to determine which parents should be invited to that event. Knowing from our events team when invitations needed to be mailed helped us determine our ultimate deadline.

But parent research need not revolve around an event. At your institution, the point of the project may be just to get parents assigned into portfolios so that your gift officers can begin trying to engage them.  Either way, this information is important to know so you can adjust the project’s timelines and deliverables accordingly.

Researching – and advising – with strategy

Not every parent will be unknown to you as you may find some who have a second or even third child coming to your institution. In that case, don’t forget to look in your database, where you may find valuable information – including information that can help you provide context and, sometimes, a reality check – about certain parents.

 

For example, at the liberal arts college we had a father who was a member of a famous band.  The band was long broken up, but this parent was still on the radar.  With a second student coming to our institution, interest in him was renewed. In our research, we made sure to include that although he certainly was a top parent in terms of wealth and capacity, he was not someone we recommended spending time pursuing. He had never given, never responded to any outreach and never attended any events. Remember, your gift officers and other colleagues rely on you not just for information, but also for the analysis and expertise you can provide.

Finally, think about the big picture.  Whether you screened your parents through a vendor or manually, did you notice any trends or patterns in the results?

  • Are the families from particular states or geographic areas? If so – and your institution is such that your gift officers are assigned to certain regions – should that regional alignment be re-evaluated?
  • Is there a commonality in the parents’ careers? If so, is there a further screening you can do based on occupations or companies where your parents work?
  • Who are the parents whom, while they may not be major gift prospects, could be ideal for your annual fund?
  • Based on the results of your screening, are there other segments of your constituency that you want to examine further? For one client I worked with at HBG, the result of their new parent screening led them to then do additional screenings of legacy families and grandparents. Those constituencies were later targeted with specific mailings that resulted in some new and nice gifts.

When I worked at the liberal arts college, the new parent project, although it was a lot of work for my team and me, was my favorite project of the year. I always thought of it as Christmas in July because at the end of the project, we were giving our gift officers the “gift” of new prospects. What could be better as prospect researchers? Let the holiday season begin!

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What scares me in fundraising and prospect research

So it’s Halloween! What would today be without a blog post that somehow appropriates a spooky theme!? If you came here hoping for cute and fluffy, here you go, but after this cutie I’m getting serious.

That said, there’s enough going on in the world right now that truly is scary, so don’t expect to run away gasping from this article. The scary stuff I’m going to talk about is all fixable.

Donor Attrition

The last two years have been really tough on our sector as we watch the numbers falling in terms of individual donors supporting nonprofits. According to data from the AFP-led Fundraising Effectiveness Project, donor retention hovers around 40%,  which sounds kind of okay until you realize that means that donor attrition is around 60%. Yikes.

That said, giving continues to increase (see Giving USA). Not as much as inflation, unfortunately, but $557.16 billion is still record giving.

What we see going up is donations to donor advised funds. Yes, we talk about DAFs a lot around here, but that’s because they’re just super important for everyone in nonprofits to understand and just a huge source of funding that is going overlooked.

Okay, so how do we deal with the attrition/retention problem?

First, if there’s a donor you want to keep, find out why they love your organization. Research them, survey them, talk to them. Then do something creative with that information that helps retain them.

Second, if you want to retain mid-level regular donors, consider this: 10% of all giving right now is going into donor advised funds, and that’s a figure that’s growing yearly by leaps and bounds.

Also, and maybe more importantly: The 2024 DAF Research Collaborative National Study on Donor Advised Funds reported that “DAFs are a mid-range philanthropic vehicle, accommodating contributions larger than typical household donations yet smaller than those establishing private foundations.

  • 38% of contributions fell within the $10,000 to $49,999 range.
  • 15% of contributions were in the $50,000 to $99,999 range.
  • 19% of contributions were within the $100,000 to $499,999 range.”

That’s nothing to sneeze at. And as we’re looking to retain and upgrade mid-level donors, that group is worth paying special attention to. But more than that:

DAFs are created specifically to give away money to nonprofits. Don’t make it hard for people to give to your nonprofit with their DAF! There are low-cost apps and widgets you can add to your website and fundraising emails that not only make it easy for donors to give but also provide you with all-important specific donor data so you can personally thank and research them.

Ignoring ASK ME signals from donors

When was the last time you checked donation acceleration?

What does that mean? For example, let’s say someone gives $25 in year one, $50 in year two, $75 in year three, etc. Maybe they’re increasing their giving because you asked them to, or maybe they’re just doing it on their own. Either way, these people are jumping up and down telling you they love your mission and want to support it. A simple data science project can help identify these awesome prospects for volunteer opportunities or increased giving.

And how about volunteers? Are you also asking them to give? There’s an organization that I love and volunteer for that Will. Not. Ask. Me. for a donation. I have no idea why (and I do give even though they don’t ask) but organizations should seriously ask people who love them for financial support in addition to sweat equity. You might get an upgrade…

Under supporting/under-utilizing prospect development

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of talking with hundreds of fundraising managers who are concerned that their prospect development team is under-performing. One of the things that scares me is when I hear, “Our research department doesn’t give us what we need.” “They’re not proactive.” “It takes forever to get anything back from Research,” or – scariest of all – “the information I get isn’t relevant/helpful.”

Yikes.

When I hear that, I like to dig down a little more.

Tell me, what’s the frontline fundraiser to research staff ratio?

What are the expectations (and budget) for continuing professional education?

What’s the budget for fee-based research and training on using the resources?

How often does Research attend development/major gifts planning/strategy meetings?

How often do you update research report templates?

How often do the researchers hear about the results of their work?

If I learn that there’s one researcher for every three fundraisers, an expectation that the researcher(s) will attend a professional conference at least every other year, and a research budget that includes a variety of fee-based resources, and/or a general disinterest from Research in strategic planning, then we start talking about remedial actions for the research team.

But (and let’s hope that I’m exaggerating here), if we’re talking about one researcher trying to meet the information needs of 7 fundraisers, 2 board volunteers, and the executive director with access only to free webinars and Google as their primary resource, then it’s time for The Talk with that fundraising manager.

Maybe this sounds like your nonprofit (or maybe just parts of it do). If you’re a fundraising leader, don’t be afraid to dig down a little further to find out if under-resourcing your prospect development team is hampering your ability to get the best information possible. Maybe it’s the people, or the systems in place, or the resourcing that needs to be fixed. Don’t be afraid to look into the issues when problems arise so they don’t get harder to deal with.

Fundraising intelligence is a critical system, like your database, your relationships with donors, and the services you provide to end users. If it’s running well, it’s going to be a whirlwind for you to keep up with, and I mean that in a good way.

AI

Okay, I saved the scariest for last. Artificial Intelligence.

I get scared when I read about reference librarians wasting hours trying to locate articles and books for patrons, or (worse?) journal articles for medical students, only to discover from the requestor that they got the recommendation from ChatGPT for a source that doesn’t exist.

Recently on a subreddit for librarians, two contributors had this to say:

We just had a student bring an entire list of books and articles that her professor recommended for her research, and not a single title on the list exists. We reached out to the professor and yep. She got the list from ChatGPT.”

I’m an academic librarian at a medical school and I get sent a fake article to find like once a week. It’s terrible. It’s not just the students either, I also cover the residents at the local hospital since the hospital got rid of their medical library and they are even worse about it.”

(yikes, if that’s not something that scares you, I don’t know what will)

Duke University librarians Hannah Rozear and Sarah Park had something to say about ChatGPT in their excellent article ChatGPT and Fake Citations, including: “Be wary of asking ChatGPT to summarize a particular source…” That’s important advice because summarizing is a big thing we’ve been encouraged to use these tools for.

If a tool you use to help you save time adds in fake information, well, that’s not adding value. It detracts from prospect research’s perceived value, which we as a profession have spent decades trying to build up.

Issues like this, at least at this point, certainly makes me and the HBG team think twice about the reliability of the resources we use, and the trust that frontline fundraisers put in the information that we provide.

Increasingly search engines are providing short-cut information that has been generated, inferred, interpreted, or just plain imagined by large learning models (LLMs). In some cases, we’re being fed data that has less reliability than a chocolate teapot, and it’s harder to spot what’s real and what’s not. I hope that the reliability will be increased, but right now that’s just not the case.

Last November Melissa Bank Stepno wrote a thought-providing article on alternative interpretations of AI in prospect research. As you consider the reliability of your sources and how to navigate using AI in your work, take a look at her advice again as an informed guide.

So those are the things that are scaring me right now in fundraising and prospect research. All fixable, with opportunities for positive change.

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“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

Ah Summertime! It’s a great time to take time to recharge your batteries. But it’s also a great time to to recharge your prospect research activities as well – getting ready for the year ahead. Whether you’re gearing up for a campaign or just a busy fall ahead, Grace Chandonnet has some wonderful suggestions of projects to tackle now to help your future self. Happy summer! ~Helen

Grace Chandonnet

         Grace Chandonnet

As a kid, summer was the most anticipated season – sleeping in a bit, staying up a little later, lightened responsibilities, and more time for fun. It’s a bit different as a working adult, but even so, the pace of life – and work – does slow down a bit during the summer for many of us.

So why not take advantage of fewer deadlines, a lighter workload, and clients, colleagues and bosses taking some time off, by tackling those “someday” projects and tasks that you never have time for the rest of the year. In addition to switching up what your work is like for a little while, you just might set yourself up for success when the busy season inevitably starts in September.

In our profession, there are lots of ways we can use this time to help out our future selves while also having a sense of real time satisfaction. I surveyed my colleagues at HBG for some of their/their clients’ wish list items and I’ve included a couple of my own.

Database Hygiene – We all run across things (or the lack of things) in our databases that we wish were “cleaner” but often just move on to what is pressing in the moment thinking we will get back to cleaning things up at some amorphous future date. Why not dive into your database and tackle tasks like deduping records, being sure that all assigned prospects have capacity ratings, batch updating addresses, and adding phone numbers and email addresses to skimpy records? A clean database makes for a happy prospect intelligence professional, because we all know that if it isn’t in there, or if it is in there incorrectly, it doesn’t exist.

Research Refresh – One forward-looking client is interested in having full profiles completed for their top prospects now, in anticipation of being ready to go when the organization’s president’s calendar starts filling up with meetings in the fall. All that will be required will be a quick refresh when the meeting is imminent. If a pile of full profiles to complete seems too ambitious for one summer season, you could always review recent philanthropy and new board appointments for your trustees, top donors, and other partners, and brief the relevant fundraiser on anything especially interesting that you find. And while you’re in those database records, take the extra few minutes to update information as outlined above!

Proactive is the Name of the Game – Now might be a good time to undertake some proactive work.

  • Do you have a sense as to what priorities your organization will be turning toward this autumn?
  • Can you undertake some prospecting to identify a few new potential donors to those priorities?
  • Can you start a process for screening new donors (of an amount that makes sense for your organization), to quickly assess their capacity, their potential inclination to become closer to your org, and how to engage them?
  • Do you have some screening credits with any of your vendors that you could use to screen some subset of your database, and then use some of your time to validate the results?
  • How about checking out those folks who are checking out your organization on social media?

Prospect Management – Setting your fundraisers up for success is tantamount to setting yourself up for success. Maybe you could spend some time working with fundraisers, whose workload might also be lighter this season, on optimizing their portfolios. Having the right prospects and the right number of prospects in a portfolio is an effective way to eliminate frustration for fundraisers, and to ensure that time is being spent on the people who are going to move your organization forward.

Professional Development – With your supervisor’s blessing, this could be a suitable time to enroll in a course or workshop that you’ve been wanting to tackle. If the subject matter contributes to the advancement of your career, all the better. You might also consider joining a board or otherwise volunteering for your favorite cause to take advantage of the longer days and (hopefully) your increased energy because of a little less stress at work this season.

The Feel Good Stuff – Okay, it is summer, and some part of that should be about things that make you happy right now, and that you might neglect during the busiest times. Presumably, everyone is breathing a little easier at the moment – why not ask a colleague or two if they’d like to take a lunchtime walk on a pretty summer day and get to know them a little better? Or invite a few colleagues for a Thursday evening happy hour? Focus on people who have a different job description than you do, like a frontline fundraiser or the IT person who drops everything to write the query you need. I have found that working with people whom I know and like makes my days better and happier, and everyone has something interesting to say. Your colleagues will be glad you invited them.

And don’t forget to take that vacation or staycation and recharge your batteries! As author and journalist Charles Bowden wrote: “Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

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