Helen Brown Group

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Prospect Research for the Here and Now

In the midst of any crisis, after the first moments of stopping and taking stock of what is happening around us, the next thing people normally do is jump into action to help. This week my colleague Grace Chandonnet shares her perspective on practical ways that we in prospect research can jump into action to be helpful to our organizations. Be well. ~Helen

We’re a few weeks into the new (for now) normal and lucky to be in an industry that lends itself well to remote work. It seems like a good time to be strategizing around ways to get through an economic downturn with our organizations intact, and also a good time to look ahead and prepare for the future.

I’ve been thinking about things that we fundraising intelligence pros can do to make the present moment more productive and satisfying that will also help prepare us to move ahead through – and past – turbulent times. Here are some practical things that we can do now.

Projects and Planning

This might be a good time to consider all those things on your to-do list that you never seem to have time to fit in. What can you be doing to look to the future and be ready to hit the ground running when we emerge? For example:

  • In-person events are off the table right now, but can you work on prospecting projects for future event attendees?
  • Now is a great time to plan and implement analytics projects to find the hidden gems in your own databases. Consider appending free or inexpensive data to make your data insight projects even more robust.
  • Research and draw relationship maps to identify strong prospects who might know your organization’s friends and family and want to be engaged?
  • If you’re working at a school or university, now is a good time to re-imagine your parents research programs as we’re heading into summer.

Supporting the Front Line

Now is a great time to be looking for additional ways to support our frontline fundraisers. Our extroverted colleagues may be really struggling in a time of enforced social distancing. The logistics of business as usual – building relationships with donors and prospects – has been suddenly altered drastically.  If you’re a prospect development pro, take the opportunity of having more planning time with frontline colleagues and discuss their priorities and concerns to strengthen your relationships with them.

  • Work with fundraisers to help them re-balance their portfolios to set them up for future success. This could include re-assessing capacity with an eye toward the industries that are recession-proof vs. those that might not be – we can lead these discussions and also touch on the overarching economic outlook.
  • Use the aforementioned analytics and prospecting projects to target the prospects that will help fundraisers meet their visit and solicitation goals.
  • Set up some interactive trainings or presentations geared toward frontline fundraisers – perhaps a quick training on basic research – to give them tools for things that they can do themselves to get ready for a meeting or phone call when there is no time for formal research.
  • It might also be a good time to focus on process-oriented training, such as short sessions on entering research requests, prospect management moves, and/or contact reports into your organization’s CRM.
  • Now might also be a great time to host a few virtual coffee breaks – that have no set agenda – with small groups of fundraisers and you or your team of researchers just to get to know each other a little better.

Take advantage of trainings and webinars

We can also be focusing on our own professional development. Apra and many of its chapters  as well as  familiar vendors like iWave and DonorSearch offer ongoing, as well as timely and relevant virtual trainings and webinars on a variety of topics relevant to our industry and ways we can weather the pandemic. Is there something that you’ve been wanting to know more about? Wishing to take a deeper dive into certain industries, or know more about the hands-on intricacies of data analytics? With fewer research requests in the queue, it could be a good time to set aside some time for some of these free training opportunities.

Breathe

“Self-care” is an oft-used expression that means different things to different people, but there is no doubt that most of us are experiencing an increase in stress and anxiety, and a little self-care couldn’t hurt. It’s more important than ever to take a few minutes during your day to stand up and stretch, step outside and maybe take a walk around the block (as weather and social distancing guidelines allow), try out a meditation app, or to just sit quietly and breathe for a few minutes.

I do believe that our industry will weather this. We are a resourceful bunch (literally!) and we’ve been through troubled waters before. Let’s have each other’s backs and we and our organizations can emerge stronger than before.

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Read the Footnotes!

Reading SEC documents can be a tricky business. There’s the up-front information, and then there’s the hidden information that you have to know to look for. In this week’s article, first published by (and reprinted with kind permission from) our esteemed colleagues at Apra-Louisiana, HBG Senior Researcher Grace Chandonnet reminds us of the importance of reading the small print. ~Helen

Read the footnotes!  It’s not new advice, but it is important and bears repeating. When evaluating the stock holdings of an individual, it is so important to read the footnotes in a proxy statement underneath the beneficial ownership section.

I know, it’s tempting to just take the number in the “total amount of beneficial ownership” column (let’s call it the ABO column), price the stock, and call it a day.  But sometimes there is important information in the footnotes that will value that person’s stake very differently. [Read more…]

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Innovation in Philanthropy

Creativity abounds everywhere in the Third Sector, from service providers in the field, to fundraising offices managing more on a shoestring, to a new breed of funders (and well-established funders, too) thinking up new ways to engage with, spur forward, and support their philanthropic priorities. In this week’s article, HBG Senior Researcher Grace Chandonnet shares some of the interesting and creative ways funders are having an impact in the world today. ~Helen

Lately I’ve been thinking about the innovative ways that young entrepreneurs are actively engaging in philanthropy. As my colleague Elizabeth Roma writes, the philanthropy landscape is ever evolving and innovating and appears to be picking up the pace of change exponentially in recent years in what is being referred to as the New Gilded Age. Elizabeth touches on innovative philanthropic vehicles such as the Emerson Collective and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, as well as B-Corps and impact investing. [Read more…]

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Come Together. Right Now.

This week my colleague Grace Chandonnet points us to great research on the benefits of collaboration and shares some of the methods we use (and you can, too) to take advantage of deep knowledge and resources around you.
collaboration

Collaboration ©opensource.com via Flickr CC BY-SA

The events of the recent past have inspired divisiveness and mistrust amongst the citizens of the United States and even the world. For the sake of my own wellbeing, I’ve been trying to focus on the things in my life that make me feel connected to something positive. Fortunately for me, not only am I connected to work that makes a real difference in the world, but I have an amazing group of colleagues who are always ready and willing to collaborate.

COLLABORATION’S MULTIPLE BENEFITS

According to Murali Krishna, HR Service Administrator at IBM, “Collaboration not only equals a happier workforce, it represents an educated one. This is because it naturally inspires a sense of community within an organization, meaning that employees feel almost like they are a part of a family. Additionally, collaboration allows employees to learn from each other and the bosses.” [Read more…]

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Not Dead Yet

Mark Twain

This month I’m delighted to highlight an article by HBG team member Grace Chandonnet, who shares some inside information about the prospect profile. Grace works with our clients from her home office in New Orleans, a town that Mark Twain would have been very familiar with from his Life on the Mississippi.

To shamelessly paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the death of the prospect profile has been greatly exaggerated.

It seems as though that during my entire 12 years as a development researcher, I’ve been hearing that the narrative prospect profile is “going away.” It’s been argued that it isn’t useful, it takes too much time to prepare and to read, that a gift officer doesn’t need all that information to cultivate and solicit their prospect. [Read more…]

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Take Your Seat at the Table

Today I’m delighted to share an article with you written by guest blogger and HBG team member Grace Chandonnet. As you’ll see, Grace is an eloquent advocate and guide for those of us planning a move toward the strategy table in our fundraising operations.

Businesspeople in Meeting

As a prospect researcher, you have access to some eye-opening tidbits of information, which makes you exceptionally valuable to the fundraising team. The trick is to get others to see it—and to give yourself a seat at the table.

Recently, I started a new working relationship with a gift officer. In our initial meeting, she came right out and asked me to include my observations and opinions in the research that I provide to her. This was a gratifying milestone in my 13-year research career. As researchers, we often talk about how it can be difficult for research to get a seat at the strategy table and here was a frontline fundraiser asking me, unsolicited, with the implicit idea that my opinions were welcomed and valued. This gift officer gets it! [Read more…]

ABOUT HBG

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