Helen Brown Group

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Access and Enhance Data Without Leaving Your Spreadsheet

by: Kenny Tavares, Senior Consultant & Lead Data Analyst

 

Kenneth Tavares

Kenny Tavares

Microsoft Excel is undoubtedly one of the most adaptable tools I have used in my prospect research and data analysis work. To paraphrase an old commercial: “It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries!”

Seriously, its many applications have led me to always assume Excel can accomplish what I need and then find a way to make it happen. I love unlocking the formula or macro that makes arduous tasks effortless. Even as I delve deeper into coding for data transformation and analysis in other more sophisticated tools, my foundational understanding of data structure is rooted in using Excel. I’m sure many of you share this sentiment.

Fortunately, Excel is here to stay, with Microsoft continually enhancing its functionality to match our evolving workflows. However, as creatures of habit, we often overlook these new features; we stick to what we know.

I’d like to highlight the Data Types feature, which enhances data, making it more dynamic, thus making analysis more robust. It’s straightforward to use and can save you valuable time. You might be surprised at what you can do without running to your web browser!

There are three Data Types available: Stocks, Currencies and Geography.  We’ll explore Stocks in detail as a case example:

How It Works

Imagine you’re tracking a prospect’s portfolio that includes stocks in Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft. You enter their ticker symbols in a column, select those cells, go to the Data tab, and choose Stocks.

Excel will then turn these symbols into linked data fields. If you see an icon next to the stock name, it means it worked:

Clicking on the floating menu next to the cell will give you more than two dozen data points to choose from:

Let’s say you are interested in stock price simply select that option and the data will then be added in a new column — Voila!

Then, you can just multiply the stock price by the number of shares:

Even better, the next time you open the spreadsheet, the stock prices will update automatically. You can also manually update the data by choosing Refresh from the Data menu.

Other Use Cases

Stocks: Another great use for the Stocks type is business valuation. To assess the value of a privately-owned company, create a custom list of similar publicly-traded companies and use the floating menu to add useful info like employee counts, market cap, and price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Instead of copying and pasting from a web browsesr, you can gather all this info using Excel.

Furthermore, you can pair the Stocks information with the STOCKHISTORY formula to generate a list of historical prices for a selected date range without exporting from another website.

Geography: The Geography type is great for enriching a list of addresses. By applying it to a zip code, you can get city/town info like population, county, state, and coordinates.

With the Power Map add-in, you can map out your prospect’s locations. From the county data, you can access more info like the largest city. From state data, you can get Census info like median income and home values. In no time, your simple dataset can be transformed into something more insightful.

Currencies:  Using the Currencies type, you can get updated exchange rates by entering the abbreviations for the two currencies you want to check, for example, Hong Kong Dollar to US Dollar (HKD/USD). Excel will give the rate, which you can then use in your calculations. This makes it easier to evaluate an international prospects’ wealth, especially one with a lot of foreign holdings.

Summary

Excel’s continuous evolution and feature expansion ensures it remains an invaluable tool for prospect researchers and data analysts. Hopefully, the Data Types feature will make your workflow more efficient. By leveraging these innovative tools, you can unlock new possibilities and insights, making your data work for you more effectively. So, take the time to explore these features and see how they can transform your approach to data.

 

 

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Tis The Season for Giving!

Whether you are celebrating the 8 nights of Hanukkah, looking forward to the 12 days of Christmas, planning for the 7 days of Kwanza, or waiting for the New Year’s ball to drop, this time of year is typically a time for giving – and for countdowns.

Here at The Intelligent Edge, we thought we would join in the year-end holiday spirit by using this last post of 2023 to re-gift our most popular posts from the past year.

So, with no further preamble, here are the Top 5 Intelligent Edge posts* of 2023:

  1. In Factoring in Compensation, Tara McMullen-King shares her favorite resources for researching compensation and expert advice on how to interpret what you find.
  2. Any life-long learners out there? Kenny Tavares shares his tips and tricks for organizing your efforts in Lessons in Self-Learning.
  3. For Wearing Many Hats Including Research: Strategies for Success, Maura Baron shares her journey from having multiple responsibilities as a part-time research in small shops to becoming a full time prospect research consultant.
  4. Karla Davis’s thoughts on how to stay motivated when asked to research This Guy Again? seems to be resonating loudly and clearly with prospect researchers
  5. And, rounding out our Top 5, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Comprehensive Due Diligence Research focuses on Heather Willis’s vast experience with increasingly important topic of due diligence research.

With that, we wish you a festive season.  We’ll be back with fresh new content in early 2024!

*at least according to LinkedIn Analytics!

 

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Lessons in Self-Learning

Kenneth Tavares

HBG Senior Consultant Kenny Tavares

Like most of us in prospect development, Kenny Tavares is a life-long learner, but I’ve always thought that Kenny is more next-level than the next guy. I’m always interested to hear what he’s learning about, because I know it’s going to be something I should be paying attention to. This week, Kenny shares his journey of self-teaching and learning, and provides tips, tricks, and actual resources for anyone interested in following his path of discovery. ~Helen

When data science started to take off in our profession, I was one of many curious researchers who wanted to understand how we could optimize our work. I would attend conference sessions hoping that the facilitator would sprinkle their special magic on me, so I could go back ready to add these tools to my collection. However, I always found myself struggling to keep up with each idea and, eventually, the speaker’s voice would transform into the muted trombone we all remember from the Peanuts specials of our childhood.

It’s silly to think that one could master data science, a subject for which there are degree programs, over the course of a handful of sessions. However, we are all capable of learning it or any other subject. After all, we’re prospect researchers. We have arrived at this profession from a wide range of educational backgrounds. Still, the further we get from our college experience and the more entrenched we get into our day-to-day activities, the less able we feel to embrace self-learning. So, how do we take control of our own education, acquire new skills and knowledge, and adapt to change?

Design your learning environment

When I started learning about data science, I assumed nothing and started with the most introductory view possible. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric Siegel is great primer on how our lives are already affected by data science, while Predictive Analytics for Dummies by Dr. Anasse Bari, Mohamed Chaouchi and Tommy Jung delves further into techniques.

When I was ready to start coding, R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data by Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund provided a structured, hands-on overview of R programming, while Data Science for Fundraisers: Build Data-Driven Solutions Using R by Ashustosh Nandeshwar and Rodger Devine offered tutorials in the language of fundraising, an important bridge for applying the concepts I had learned.

I know what you’re thinking: Do I have time to read all these books? The answer depends on your preferences. Take stock of your past learning experience and create a personalized environment as you proceed. These preferences could include finding the right materials (books, videos, online courses), choosing an ideal time and location, or finding a supportive community (study group, online forums). Stack Overflow is a great online forum with knowledgeable coders. There’s a good chance that most of your coding questions have already been answered there. These strategies will help optimize the learning process and will reduce frustration.

Engage in active learning practices

The books R for Data Science and Data Science for Fundraisers were so important for me because of the endless number of examples included, which allowed me to practice transforming and analyzing data. Finding the right materials is fine, but instead of passively absorbing them, try to actively engage with the material. This could involve taking notes, asking yourself questions, or summarizing the material in your own words. More importantly, try to apply what you have learned to real-world situations. Breaking down projects into smaller tasks will make it easier to get started, especially at work, where time for learning is limited.

Focus on effort, not results

This idea, expressed by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. in the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, is essential to self-learning. There will be times when you feel discouraged. During these moments, it is important to challenge negative thoughts. Some concepts take more time to understand. Trust the process and keep trying. You are going to make mistakes. See them as an opportunity to improve, not as an assessment of your intelligence. In time, you’ll become more comfortable with the subject matter and your effort will be rewarded.

Self-learning is a journey. Always remember to be deliberate in your practice, actively engaged in the process, and, above all, kind to yourself. You may not reach your goal as quickly as you want, but the time it takes to improve yourself will be well-spent. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to learn something new and that you’ll share own tips for self-learning in the comments below. Surely, the next big topic in our profession is available to those willing to learn about it.

Maybe that person is you.

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Crypto, DAFs and Fundraising – Oh My!

We’ve talked a bit in recent months about both cryptocurrency and DAFs here on The Intelligent Edge, and this week my colleague, Kenny Tavares, pulls the two together in a thought-provoking piece. What do these two vehicles have in common, and how do they impact fundraising and prospect research? Read on…

Kenneth Tavares

                      Kenny Tavares

Let me start with a disclosure: I’m a skeptic. When the media starts to buzz about new investment approaches and how it might benefit nonprofits, I see red flags. So, you can imagine how I must feel these days with a drumbeat of favorable stories about cryptocurrency (crypto) and donor-advised funds (DAFs). It’s not that I don’t support new ideas. However, I do worry about the consequences of not being more thoughtful about these changes.

In July 2021, Paul Sullivan of The New York Times, in a story about nonprofits handling gifts of cryptocurrency, noted that Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, the largest donor-advised fund (DAF) in the United States, had already received $150 million in crypto this year, an increase of more than 435% so far. A number of other donor-advised funds, including those run at colleges and international institutions, have announced that they also accept crypto.

Blockchain technology, which cryptocurrencies run on, have made some transactions easier to track and more cost effective, providing more money for the nonprofit organization. But the skeptic in me wants to know why crypto gifts to donor-advised funds are surging. How will the growth of these two vehicles affect fundraisers and researchers? First, I think we should look at why each of these might be attractive to investors. [Read more…]

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Data insight made easy: using RFM scoring to find great prospects

This week’s article is from the keyboard of my colleague, Kenny Tavares, Senior Researcher and Data Insight Consultant. I asked Kenny to share his knowledge today on one of the most straightforward fundraising analytics projects we offer (which you can also do at home!) – RFM analysis. ~Helen

As fundraisers, when we think about data analysis today, we’re likely to drift into the world of complex modeling practices that predict what donors are most likely to give based on a wide variety of factors. Go to any conference and you’re bound to hear about the wonder of Big Data. But if you work in a smaller organization with fewer resources, you may have walked away feeling like none of this was for you. Let’s face it, just in terms of time spent, these projects seem inaccessible.

However, we all need to understand our donors better. The data we keep can unlock critical new insights for our organizations. Data analytics has benefits for all of us, so we all must find ways to sort through the information we have so we can make better decisions. But how to do it?  Let’s start by assessing our top donors using three important metrics: an RFM analysis.

What is RFM?

Created for the purpose of corporate direct marketing, RFM is an analytical method used to determine an organization’s best customers — or in our case, donors. It has been around for more than 40 years, but a popular method for performing RFM analysis is credited to Arthur Middleton Hughes in his 1994 book Strategic Database Marketing: The Masterplan for Starting and Managing a Profitable, Customer-based Marketing Program. In the book, Hughes describes the method of binning three attributes into five ranges, which I will briefly describe in a moment.  These attributes are:

  • Recency (R): In our case, how recently a donor has made a gift
  • Frequency (F): How often a donor makes a gift
  • Monetary value (M): How much a donor has given

For fundraisers, these three areas are important because of what we know about donor affinity:

  • Donors who have given recently are more engaged than lapsed donors
  • Donors who give regularly are more engaged than infrequent donors
  • Donors who make larger gifts on average are more engaged than donors who make smaller ones

Because it’s easier to retain donors than to acquire them, understanding who your best donors are is a no-brainer.  Having a better feel for your donor pool allows you the opportunity to solicit them is a more efficient, cost-effective manner.

At this time, when predictive analysis has become more and more accessible, you might be asking “Why should I perform an RFM analysis?

It’s simple

To perform an RFM analysis, all you need for each donor is a constituent ID, the number of gifts they have made, their lifetime giving and the date of their most recent gift.  Compared to more complex predictive modeling, the threshold for performing this task is much lower, making this project manageable for most organizations. However, if your giving records are inaccurate or incomplete, now would be a great time to address that issue.

Once you have your data, you’ll need to score your records based on the three categories.  For each category, divide your dataset into fifths, giving the best fifth a score of 5, with the subsequent fifths scored from 4 to 1.  For instance, if you sort the last gift date in descending order, your top fifth – the donors who have given most recently, would receive a score of 5. Repeat the process with the total number of gifts (frequency) and lifetime giving (monetary).  In the case of lifetime giving, you may prefer to divide that figure by the number of gifts and use the average gift for your scoring.  Once you’ve scored each variable, combine them to create your final score.  The easiest way to do this would be to adjoin the three numbers to create the final score (ex. 555, 444, 333, etc.).

Now that you’ve scored your records, sort them by their final score and check out the results.  Perhaps you’ll find some surprises.  It’s all good if it improves your understanding of your donor pool.

It’s strategic

RFM analysis operates on the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. For our purpose, it would suggest that 80% of our gifts come from 20% of our donors. Knowing your 20% is critical. Keeping this group happy will obviously have long term benefits for your organization, as long as you don’t give them too much attention. But don’t stop here; there are other donors to consider.

Now, you might be asking “What about the remaining 80%?” It’s a good question, because it doesn’t make sense to cast them aside. Take the time to become familiar with the other segments and develop strategies for these groups as well.  For instance, how can you motivate new donors to give again? How can you encourage loyal donors to increase their giving?  How can you re-engage lapsed donors? Knowing these subsets allows you to better target them based on their behavior. Ultimately, you can craft your message to these groups more efficiently.

It’s predictive

As I mentioned, our three variables, and what they tell us about the donor, make RFM analysis an exercise in predicting which group of people are most likely to give again. That said, it does lack the flair of a more sophisticated predictive model, which would entail the use of many more variables. However, the usefulness of your RFM analysis is ongoing. The more you learn about your top donors, the more adept you’ll become at identifying similar prospects. You may not be as quick as an algorithm, but your institutional knowledge is extremely valuable. Take the time to consider the following about your best donors:

  • How old are they?
  • What is their marital status?
  • Where do they live?
  • Where do they work?
  • In which industry do they work?
  • What are their job titles?
  • How large was their first gift?

I could go on, but you get the point. Exploring the data on your top givers will improve your ability to recognize and efficiently target promising new donors.

Conclusion

Your ability to analyze the information you have available is a critical component to retaining donors and discovering prospects. Regardless of resources, we all need a way to recognize what the data tells us. Applying RFM analysis is a great place to start; it might even whet your appetite for other data strategies. Once you start using analytics to discover insight in your data, you’ll find answers to questions you might not even have thought to ask!

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Exciting Announcement: HBG Data Insight!

I hope you had a safe and relaxing Fourth of July weekend! Our town cancelled its annual fireworks show this year, but various neighbors randomly filled the gap in their own way (ahem) so we still got to peep some here and there. Same with you?

The celebration here at HBG continues this week: We’ve been working on something very special over the past year, and today I have some exciting news to share – cue more fireworks!

As we all retool and strategize to be successful in this new normal, the project we’ve been developing could not have been ready at a better time. We are delighted to announce a new initiative here at The Helen Brown Group specifically designed to help nonprofits identify and get the information they need on their best donors.

We’ve formed a new unit called HBG Data Insight (DI).

While the unit is new, you’ll definitely recognize the DI team as long-time HBG talent. Tara McMullen-King is the new unit’s Lead Consultant, and senior staffers Kenny Tavares and David Hargadon are the DI Consultants filtering and transforming data into insight.

Why HBG Data Insight? Why now?

Over the years we’ve been frustrated seeing nonprofit colleagues unintentionally left stranded by talented specialists who provide analytics services…but then move on. The nonprofit pays a lot of money for the work and they may get a fantastic group of new prospects, but when the analytics consultant goes away to their next job, then what?

Circumstances change quickly – especially these days – and algorithms have a very limited shelf life.

And all of the AI and machine learning and data science and screenings in the world won’t tell you which living, breathing, human being amongst the list of hundreds is genuinely interested in your cause and has a personal connection to your nonprofit. Or which ones have family wealth. Or have made multiple philanthropic gifts through a DAF. Data insight and screenings alone just can’t do that.

We decided it was time for a practical, integrated, affordable, solution.

So over the past year, we partnered with a group of our dedicated consulting clients to beta-test a unique service: data insight married with prospect development:

Data insight plus research.

Data insight plus due diligence.

Data insight plus prospect management.

We found that most wanted all four woven together: insight, research, due diligence, and prospect management to take advantage of new opportunities and ideas as they arose.

We’ve helped our clients use their own data to answer these questions (and quite a few more):

  • Who are our most likely donors right now?
  • How should we prioritize our prospect pools?
  • How can we segment our wealth screening results to find top prospects faster?
  • Do we have the right people in the right portfolios?
  • Are we allocating our frontline fundraisers in the right way?
  • Can we better predict what our fundraising goals should be next year?
  • If we can’t do events now, what is our next-best option of engagement?
  • Where are our best planned giving prospects?

Our insight services range from descriptive analysis projects and RFMV analyses, up to and including predictive modeling. For some we have integrated wealth screening information that they had; for others we helped them get the most out of a new screening. We’ve even gathered a proprietary set of additional data to help us surface more prospects.

When you work in an integrated way, insight questions like the ones above can rotate and be added to continuously as new questions arise.

Marrying ongoing data insight with the rest of prospect development and the frontline team makes sure that you’re introducing the right – vetted – prospects into the pipeline continuously.

Don’t just take our word for it, here’s information from a survey of nonprofits done by IBM.

  • 78% of nonprofit leaders with analytic capabilities reported higher effectiveness in performing their missions.
  • Nonprofits using analytics had more efficient operations and increased staff productivity.
  • However, the survey found that 48% of non-profits indicated that technology was a primary barrier to advancing analytics, and 41% indicated that talent was their primary barrier.
  • Nearly three quarters said that budget was one of top three barriers to using analytics.

Honestly, that last bullet point just floors me. It doesn’t have to be that way.

What does partnering with HBG Data Insight look like?

As I mentioned, our goal is to help clients affordably make data-informed decisions. To do that, we primarily use an integrated, dedicated, prospect development approach, which is something we’ve specialized in since 2005.

We provide expert consultants for a contracted number of hours each month for at least three months. That commitment allows us to keep our price-point lower and bring clients real value. It also allows us – together – to customize what happens during those hours to exactly what you need.

Don’t need the whole burrito of data insight plus prospect research? No problem.

If you already have internal prospect research capacity, that’s great. Our data insight team can work with you on a project basis, too, and we’d be happy to partner with your researcher (or research team) to provide results they can build on.

Check out our website to see more detailed information on the services we’re offering. If you have an insight project in mind that isn’t listed there, we’d be happy to talk it through with you.

HBG Data Insight: Practical. Integrated. Affordable.

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Managing stress this holiday season

My colleague Kenny Tavares is our featured guest blogger to start off December, and his article is an important reminder that all-work-and-no-taking-care-of-yourself is a great way to mess up any time of year, but especially this one. End of year donations and asks, data entry and reconciliation, relatives visiting, shopping and gift wrapping, last-minute requests, managing expectations…it’s a lot all in a very short space of time. Here’s Kenny’s advice on how to make the season manageable and more merry – and a reminder to keep a caring eye on folks who may be vulnerable at this time of year. ~Helen

Happy Holidays!!!

For many people, this time of the year is joyous. It’s a great time to celebrate with friends and family and to be thankful for what we have. However, for some, this is not the most wonderful time of the year. Schedules compress, to-do lists grow and demands of the season are overwhelming. The mere mention of the holiday usually finds me rushing to a calendar and beginning the countdown.

We all have experience dealing with stress, but stress at the end of the year can be especially difficult and ultimately unhealthy. Chronic stress can lead to a number of physical disorders, including anxiety, depression, heart attacks and strokes, so when things feel out of control, it’s important to be mindful and take care of ourselves. Before things accelerate too quickly, let’s take a moment to review strategies for dealing with stress at work and at home. Hopefully, the following tips will keep you feeling positive and full of happiness this season. [Read more…]

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Creating a DIY wealth spreadsheet

“Sculpture at end of SW Coast Path in Minehead” by Nilfanion (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

My colleague Kenny Tavares frequently gets tasked with creating reference resources for the team to use. He’s the Excel Guru and the Macros Whisperer, and the staff meetings when he demonstrates his latest efficiency tech-bit are always highly anticipated by all of us. This week Kenny shares some of background data he sourced for one of his latest automated worksheets. Enjoy!  ~Helen

Oh Happy Day! You have been asked to assess the wealth of an individual and that person works for and sits on the boards of publicly-traded companies, has several real estate properties listed in their name, and a yacht-load of tangible assets. It couldn’t be easier and you display the calm of someone who has chosen an easy profession…and then you wake up. [Read more…]

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Time Management in Practice

This week we welcome HBG Senior Researcher and Efficiency Lead Kenny Tavares. Since he took on the new role of Efficiency Tsar this summer, Kenny has identified some off-the shelf tools and has also created some beauties on his own (yay macros!) to solve some long-simmering inefficiencies in our work. Getting from A to B can become much quicker when you take the time to sit back, identify the inefficiencies, and dream up the ideal solutions. In this week’s blog post, Kenny shares what he’s been learning about managing time. ~Helen

prague-clock

“Be More Productive,” “100 Time Management Tips” and “Increase Your Productivity” are some likely headlines you’ve seen in your LinkedIn or Twitter feeds. It seems there are an unending number of tips and tricks for improving your efficiency at work. However, for many of us, the idea of embracing even a few new ideas – never mind 20, 50 or 100 ideas – can seem like a daunting task. Some of these recommendations have been passed along so many times it’s hard to know where they came from or if they even make sense in the modern workplace. Do the authors of these articles even use these tips themselves? Reading all these lists can seem antithetical to being productive. [Read more…]

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How Dodd-Frank Affects Your Top Donors

This week we welcome back HBG Senior Researcher Kenny Tavares to the blog. Earlier this year, Kenny and fellow HBG senior researcher Elizabeth Roma shared their extensive research on family offices in a podcast. In this week’s article, Kenny shares more about the legislation affecting hedge funds and family offices, and how this could impact the philanthropic landscape.

Frankenstein-Poster

With Halloween approaching, the time is right for a scary topic! Pull up a chair and let me tell you about the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, aka Dodd-Frankenstein. Wait, no, sorry. I meant Dodd-Frank. [Read more…]

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