This week I’m in England talking with our colleagues at The Factary in Bristol. Their offices are open-plan and I’m impressed at how collaborative they are, with each other and with their clients. I met with nearly everyone on the team to learn more about the kinds of projects they’re working on, what they each do to meet their clients’ needs and how they work together as a team. It’s really interesting to see the ways we’re the same and the ways we do things differently.
Imagine that it’s 10 am on a Thursday morning and you have just discovered a new seven-figure prospect for your organization.
This prospect is an active volunteer and a recent donor.
She’s expressed a firm endorsement of your organization’s mission in the press, and she has undisputedly significant wealth.
You’re going to run down the corridor and tell everyone, right?
The gift that led to the billionaire
A friend and colleague of mine (who is one smart cookie) was researching a newly-identified prospect in his 30s. Although relatively young, Mr. Jones seemed to be on a steep upward trajectory in his career, and he had volunteered for the organization where she works on a number of recent occasions. She wanted frontline fundraisers to get to know him. When she started to write up the profile and filled in the section about his philanthropic gifts to her organization, Cookie noticed a tribute gift that was even higher than their “Hmm, look at that!” category. (That’s a stray gift in whatever amount that makes you do a double take when you see it). The tribute gift was given to her nonprofit on the occasion of Mr. Jones’s wedding by a Mr. Smith. “Now why would Mr. Smith give such a large amount in honor of Mr. Jones’s wedding? That seems overly generous,” she thought. As an experienced researcher, it didn’t take long before Cookie discovered that Mr. Smith was the head of a large, very recognizable family-owned company, and he had given the gift on the occasion of his daughter’s marriage to young Mr. Jones. Possibilities immediately opened up for both family and corporate sponsorship opportunities at the 7-figure level. Wow!
In my last post, I talked about four ways to speed up the flow of information from researcher to fundraiser, and I gave examples of the average amount of time it takes for research reports to be done.
The post prompted a reader to ask “How many pages is your average in-depth profile? What categories does your in-depth profile include?” It was a great question that deserves a more thorough answer than just a quick reply in a comment. [Read more…]
Are you hearing a lot of talk lately that fundraising is becoming more data-driven? That we need to show the return on investment of donor dollars? We’re all hearing this train coming down the track and it’s fueled by top volunteers who are used to seeing that kind of business intelligence in their company board meetings. In the past few years they’ve come to expect to see it when they sit at the nonprofit board table as well.
It’s good business, and it makes sense
We all want to cultivate prospects that have the highest likelihood to become donors. And we need to be careful with our most valuable resources – time and money. So it makes sense that business intelligence methods are edging into fundraising work as well. Ten years ago, we didn’t hear much about analytics in fundraising, but in the past five years more and more shops are hiring fundraising analysts – internally or outsourcing the activity to companies like mine.
Earlier this month, Forbes magazine published an article called “Does Your Organization Need a Chief Analytics Officer?” (link here). The article describes two very interesting case studies highlighting how Caesars Entertainment and KeyBank are using analytics to create stronger relationships with their customers and creating more revenue.
Ruben Sigala, the new CAO of Caesars:
“The data we collect is a treasure trove that enables us to treat every guest well, but treat every guest differently,” says Sigala. “And centralizing the function has enabled us to get a lot more creative about how to reward customers across properties and functions, and how to drive more revenue for Caesars.”
By substituting a few words, it’s easy to see how that could translate to fundraising, isn’t it?
At Cleveland-based KeyBank, one of the top 20 largest banks in the country, they’ve done something really interesting: the marketing team and the analytics team both report to the Chief Analytics Officer. What would that look like translated to fundraising? Major gifts officers would report to the Director of Strategic Information.
Will that happen in your shop? I’m sure the marketing folks at KeyBank wouldn’t have thought it possible 10 years ago.
Regardless, the big takeaway here is that fundraising analytics is here to stay. These tools are incredibly nimble and powerful and are having a tremendous impact on the organizations – large and small, for-profit and nonprofit – that are using it. And if you are unfamiliar with the terms or how data analytics can help you, stay tuned to this space.
Over the next few blog posts, HBG’s chief analytics consultant Marianne Pelletier and I will go over, in English, what analytics are and what these tools can do for you and your organization. If you have any questions at all, or are interested to see how we can help, don’t hesitate to be in touch.
First in the series, this Thursday we’ll discuss Data Mining.
I think it’s easy to get frustrated with assumptions that some front-line fundraisers have about prospect research. On the one hand, we researchers want people to see us as a resource. Indispensable. That we have (or can get) all the answers. Fast.
As a personality type, we tend to be diligent and dogged sorts of people – we generally can’t rest until we find the answer. We learn Boolean logic. We use databases that give us reliable answers. We get faster at it and we’re proud of our agility and reliability.
But that can foster an assumption that research profiles just appear (poof!) with the push of a button. Or that full profiles only take a couple of hours to do.
As a colleague at the APRA conference said two weeks ago, “Research profiles take two hours to do just like a major gift takes 18 months to get.”
They have no idea what we do all day…
A few months ago I did a training session – an introduction to prospect research – for a development team at a mid-sized nonprofit that had no researcher. I asked them to give me the name of one of their donors that they’d recently researched using the big search engine. They were feeling pretty confident that it had turned up everything there was to find about their Mr. Smith.
So first I used that search engine (and taught them about a couple of others) and we went through the results. Then I pulled out my research magic wand.
I admit, I just love the ooohs and the aaahs that always generates. Then I showed them a few other fee-based resources we use. Deep web, pay-wall, give-me-the-serious-411 kinds of resources.
“Wow, that’s a lot of information. It must take you forever to visit all these sites and pull together a profile on someone” said the director of major gifts.
…and we have no idea what they do.
But before we researchers start feeling too smug here, let me just say that we make a lot of assumptions, too, about what fundraisers do all day. The good ones make it look easy – but it’s a lot of hard work and it takes longer than we think.
So here’s my proposal: The next time your development office does a brown bag lunch together, show each other what you do. Just a half-hour each. Talk about how much time each thing that you do takes and what your greatest joys and frustrations are.
Honestly, it’ll just be…magic!
“The true test of research is whether people use it – for reference, for influence, and most importantly, for change.” *
We all want our work to mean something, don’t we? It just kills us when research (or screenings, or any information, really) just sits on a shelf unread. Unused. All that work – all that potential – just…going nowhere.
In order for it to be a force for change, our research has to grab hold of people and inspire them to take action with it. How do you do that?
Is your research being used?
How do you know for sure? Have you talked with your end users in the past 6 months? Are reports being delivered in a format that is helpful or would a different deliverable be better (fit for iPad, or in a podcast?). Do they contain the right amount of information? The right information? If so, have you shared your success stories with peers in the profession? What’s business-as-usual for one could be innovation to another.
Is your research creating change?
How do you know for sure? Are you measuring its impact? Maybe it’s making more of a difference than you think. Or maybe by tweaking your resources, your training, or your delivery methods a little bit you can deliver significant improvement. What metrics can you use to track and discover your success and gaps?
Your research and the critical information it delivers can create change.
How do you want to be part of that change?
*DFID website, several months ago. Sadly the quote is no longer there but they’ve got other great ones, as well as really interesting research studies.
Look at what arrived by special delivery today!
It’s an advance copy, meaning that for all of you who pre-ordered (and thank you for that, by the way!), yours will be arriving very soon.
If you haven’t already ordered it, now’s the time to get your very own copy hot off the presses! Just click that little book cover over there on the right to buy it at a discount (!). It will be on your doorstep in no time. This book has got everything anyone working in fundraising needs to know about prospect research. You’re going to love it.
Thank you to everyone who was involved: those who agreed to be interviewed, who were the subjects of case studies, who provided quotes and who read (and re-read!) drafts and offered sage advice and suggestions. And the biggest thank you to my co-author, the awesome Jen Filla.
I hear a lot of comments from fundraisers at small shops that they simply can’t afford prospect research. I participated in a terrific Twitter chat for fundraisers earlier this week on the topic of prospect research where a few folks underscored this refrain: “We’re small, we have no money, and prospect research is just too darned expensive.”
But isn’t that like saying “That Maserati is one sweet ride, but it’s too fast and expensive so I’m going to walk instead”?
Not all prospect research costs like a Masarati. Some of it does, but most of it doesn’t. If you work in a small organization, you probably don’t need the Masarati research anyway. But it’s hard to know what to purchase if you don’t know what you need. And there are a lot of tools available in prospect research that can help, from prospect identification to profiles to relationship management to data mining and more. Lots more!
Knowing what kind of research you need and using it smartly and efficiently will get you to success a lot faster. And by success, I mean that you’ll be able to draw a direct line from research well used to increased dollars and pounds in the door.
So here’s one solution: If you’re a fundraiser who isn’t sure what prospect research can do for you, or if you think that the only thing it has to offer is expensive profiles or databases that cost a lot, then you really need to read this book. If you don’t find that it gives you solutions that help you increase donations, let me know and I’ll refund the money you spent on it.
Prospect research is useful for all sizes of organization, from teeny tiny Mini startups to super huge land yachts, like Harvard. Read the book and network with researchers to help draw up a plan to include prospect research in your budget.
As the new year builds up a good head of steam moving toward February, now is a good time to take stock of your prospect research department, whether it is you, or someone else, or (lucky you!) a department you supervise.
Today I was thinking about what makes for greatness in a prospect research department. Here are the components I’ve noticed from the organizations I’ve worked with, learned from and mentored over the years.
They know what their research is for
Great research departments understand the nuances between what is needed for identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship research. They work closely with fundraisers to target how much time to spend on a request, and they stay focused on exactly what is needed.
They know the priorities for today, 6 months from now, a year away, and 5 years out.
Great research departments work closely with peers and managers to develop an operating plan that helps them stay on task – geared to what the divisional priorities are. They use metrics to communicate their impact on the bottom line, and to make sure their work remains relevant and aligned.
They embrace innovation
Whether it’s creating new report formats or ways of delivering information, learning new research methods or investigating a new trend, great research managers embrace change and innovation. They go beyond reading trade journals to read books like Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon, the Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, or Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh of Zappos to see how innovation and ideas from allied fields can elevate their department’s quality, productivity and visibility.
They stay current on resources, trends and skills
The best research teams regularly attend continuing education conferences and web seminars, benchmark with peers and take advantage of free learning by following people on Twitter, blogs and other social media. Some of these smart and generous folks include bloggers like the collective at APRA Mid-South, Chris Cannon, Chris Carnie, Mark Egge, Jen Filla, Kevin MacDonell and Liz Rejman, just to name a few. You can find these folks on Twitter, as well as others well worth following – visit this list to see the prospect research tweeting superstars. (If you’re a blogging or tweeting prospect researcher and you’re not on this list, please let me know!)
They believe in the mission
Great teams consist of people who get paid for the privilege of working somewhere they would care about even if they weren’t on staff. There are over 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and life is too short to be unhappy at work. Great researchers find a mission to believe in and give it their heart and soul. They also believe in the mission of prospect research as a profession, and are proud to be “out” in the community representing what we do best: helping nourish, protect, educate and grow our communities and our world.
What other key features of great prospect research departments do you think are important?
