Helen Brown Group

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Stepping up with pride

My guess is that you fell into your fundraising career. Most of us have, including myself and my colleague Tara McMullen-King, this month’s Intelligent Edge author. What we make of that opportunity can be a combination of hard work, stepping out of our comfort zone, and the good fortune of meeting people that impact our lives and our careers. Tara shares her career trajectory and the choices she made along the way to her success in this #ResearchPride celebration. ~Helen

Happy #ResearchPride month everyone!

So – possibly like many of you – I graduated with a B.A. from a liberal arts college not really knowing exactly what path I wanted to embark on with my career. What did I want to be when I “grew up”? After starting out my studies with plans to major in Psychology, I then switched to English, and then finally settled on Studio Art in the first half of my junior year. Many days were spent happily painting and drawing and studying art history (while still taking classes in myriad different subjects – everything from Buddhist mythology to developmental psychology to Spanish literature to classes in anthropology… and the list goes on and on).

While I temporarily entertained aspirations of becoming a high school art teacher, I just wasn’t really 100% sure what I wanted to do with my life. The problem was that my interests were just so broad, and I fell passionately in love with pretty much anything and everything I studied. Once I graduated, I moved to the Boston area and had to quickly find a job – ANY job – to pay my rent (a whole $500 a month – those were the days!).

Soon after I moved, I managed to find an administrative position working for a small association management firm, where I helped process memberships, create newsletters, and register members for conferences and other educational programs we planned and executed for clients. Our firm’s two biggest clients happened to be the Massachusetts chapter of NSFRE (the National Society of Fund Raising Executives – now known as AFP) and NEDRA (the New England Development Research Association).

At the time, I knew nothing about fundraising, and even less about what development research was. However, through working closely with those two organizations, I was exposed to the wild and wonderful world of development – and I haven’t looked back since.

After about a year working for that company, I decided to take a chance and accept a position working in the development office at a college in Boston to explore my new-found interest in fundraising. This position required me to perform some basic research, such as event bios and some low-level information gathering and analysis on prospects.

The more I learned, the more I became enthralled by the world of prospect research, and realized that I was able to use all the diverse skill sets I had developed over the years– reading, writing, researching, analyzing, creating, communicating, and using critical thinking – to be successful in my work. I eventually accepted a full-time development research position at the college – but as a newbie to research, in a small shop, I had limited exposure to the field and few opportunities to meet other research colleagues. As a result, I sought out educational programs offered by NEDRA to help me gain more knowledge and find networking opportunities, and eventually became a volunteer for the organization. As I became more involved with NEDRA, I had the opportunity to meet a number of colleagues who became instrumental in my professional development, including my now-boss, Helen Brown, and the late Heather Reisz.

Back in those days, Helen and Heather were instrumental in creating the first NEDRA Boot Camps for researchers new to the field. Heather and I connected almost immediately upon meeting one another – she was vivacious, hilarious, and knowledgeable, and had a particular passion for “research newbies,” many of whom she took under her wing. As she and I became more friendly, she told me that she thought I would be a great board member for NEDRA, and that I would absolutely be a great Boot Camp instructor in the future. At the time, I sort of chuckled and didn’t take her ideas too seriously – I thought that she was just being kind. As someone who has suffered from imposter syndrome for most of my life, I was sort of convinced that I wasn’t “good enough” or smart enough for any of that, at all.

But then just a year later, I was nominated to join the NEDRA board of directors – to my shock – and decided to ignore my feelings of self-doubt and take that plunge. I was honored to spend six years on the NEDRA board, trying my best to give back to the organization that had not only provided me with integral support and education at a time when I needed it, but had quite literally exposed me to the field and piqued my interest in it in the first place. In a way, things had sort of come full circle.

When Heather unexpectedly passed away in 2013, the loss was profound for those of us who had been lucky enough to know her. A few years ago, NEDRA’s then-president, Amy Begg, echoed Heather’s previous sentiments and encouraged me to get involved as a bootcamp presenter for NEDRA. Even though years had passed since Heather had first floated the idea, I still wasn’t sure about it – and those nagging feelings of self-doubt crept up yet again.

However, this past January – despite my nerves– I finally agreed to co-present a NEDRA Boot Camp in Boston. And you know what? It was amazing. Meeting a batch of new professionals coming into the field, and being allowed the chance to help them and arm them with the tools and confidence they need to get started was one of the most professionally rewarding experiences I have had in my career. Again – it felt like things were coming full circle.

Writing this today, after having now spent seventeen years working in development research, I have come to realize many things. First and foremost – it is okay (and normal) to sometimes have those nagging moments of self-doubt. I consider myself to be a pretty humble person (compliments make me uncomfortable; praise often makes me bashful), and I still have those moments on occasion.

But what I have learned is that putting yourself out there – pushing those feelings down a bit and taking some risk – can lead to some truly rewarding personal and professional experiences. During this month of Research Pride, I can truthfully say that I am proud of myself for taking those risks in the past, and I am proud of the work that I do.

I feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with many amazing non-profit organizations to help them achieve their goals and further their missions. I am proud to work with Helen Brown – who has been a mentor to me over the past thirteen years – and to be a part of the Helen Brown Group, where I get to work with so many amazing and intelligent colleagues each and every day.

I am proud of the work that NEDRA has done – and continues to do – to provide education, assistance, and networking opportunities to so many of us. And I am truly grateful for the support that so many other researchers offered me as I navigated my way through those first years in the field.

It may have taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to do when I “grew up,” but now I can’t see myself doing anything else. And in my heart of hearts, I would like to think that Heather would be proud of me as well.

Are you new to prospect research or know someone who is? NEDRA’s got another Boot Camp coming up in May! Registration can be found here.

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Due diligence and prospect research – are they different?

Scales of Justice – Frankfurt Version. Photo by Michael Coghlan.

Three things about the media that are true: newspapers (and online journals) need to sell copies (or access) in order to stay in business. Headline writers are always eager for a scandal to feature prominently above the fold. There are responsible journalists out there whose job it is to uncover and shine light on unethical or illegal activities when they see them (and they should).

The Varsity Blues, Jeffrey Epstein, and Sackler sagas are just the latest in a regular series of public scandals that are like super-powerful magnets pulling dark clouds over the nonprofit sector. Before those, there were Lance Armstrong, the London School of Economics-Gaddafi Affair and the Catholic priest abuse scandals. They’re bad news, and it’s easy to lay blame on an eager press, but the truth is the warning signs were there for the nonprofits involved.

The good news is that every minute similar bad press is being averted in the background for nonprofits everywhere because of critical due diligence research.

For those of you who are fortunate enough to have a prospect research professional on staff (or you are one) you may be wondering, “If we’re doing prospect research, are we already doing due diligence on our donors?”

Well maybe. But maybe not.

One of the goals of prospect research is to find out if a person, company, or foundation has the financial means to make a major gift and if they have a past record of being philanthropic. Also, do they have a personal connection to your organization or cause? And do they have the personal interest or motivation to become involved as a donor and/or volunteer to your nonprofit?

These are simple-seeming questions (and a very simplistic breakdown of the scope of our work), but there are a lot of data points (and resources checked) behind the answers. They all come down to: does this person (or company or foundation) have enough money and care enough about our cause to donate?

The goal of due diligence is different.

Due diligence takes a different approach. It is not about the prospective donor, per se. It’s about risk. Protecting your organization – its values, its mission, and its reputation – from potential harm. Some organizations choose to do due diligence as a precursor to involving a new donor. Others perform due diligence prior to each major gift ask as part of their gift solicitation/gift acceptance policy.

Either way, if you decide to do due diligence internally, some of the resources you use may actually be the same that you use for prospect research, but you may use them differently or look at the data with a different lens.

Prospect Research vs Due Diligence

For example, when you do prospect research you will look to see if someone has made philanthropic gifts, especially major gifts, and to which nonprofits. This gives you an idea what level of gift they are capable of, what they’re interested in, and if they are philanthropic generally.

When you do due diligence research, you will also look to see if they have made major philanthropic gifts, but you will look at their giving patterns differently. For example, have they made multiple large donations in a new-to-them geographic area with no other affiliation to or involvement with the nonprofits they supported? That’s how Ponzi scheme operators build reputations quickly.

Prospect research rightfully asks the question can they give? Due diligence asks what does their giving say about them?

When you do prospect research, you’re looking at someone’s past career history to paint a picture of their track toward success. Have they moved up the career ladder? What might their salary trajectory be?

But doing that same work with a due diligence lens, we’re now looking at gaps or sudden changes in a prospective donor’s resume. Those holes require us to look for a newspaper article, or criminal or civil case explaining the reason for that gap. There may be a simple solution like a layoff or birth of a child, or a more complicated one like a bankruptcy or court-enforced “vacation.”

In the course of normal prospect research, we likely wouldn’t check a sex offender’s database. Or ask a prospect’s peers what their reputation for integrity is in business or in their community. Or find out if they are a politically-exposed person. Or if their company is on an international financial sanctions list, or has a failing grade from the Better Business Bureau. Those aren’t the questions we’re being asked to answer through prospect research, and it wouldn’t be appropriate (or time-efficient) to do that level of research on every single prospect. In certain cases, it also may not comply with privacy laws.

That said, anyone doing prospect research should always send up a red flag (and investigate further) if they see things that concern them!

These questions are increasingly important for us to ask because we are linking our organization’s reputation to a donor every time we ask them for a significant gift. It doesn’t even matter if the donor’s name is going on the side of a building anymore – stories about unethical or illegal activities by individuals, companies (and – unfortunately – nonprofits, too) are great fodder for selling papers. And the truth eventually comes out.

Due diligence and prospect research are increasingly important for the success and security of our nonprofit organizations. If you don’t do either type of research internally, think about outsourcing it at a level consistent with your budget and risk tolerance.

If you want to create your own due diligence policy, here’s a good place to start.

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A bigger boat

My brother-in-law’s voice had a huge smile in it when I picked up the phone. He might not even have bothered with a “hi.” Just: “You’re going to love this, Helen.”

As part of his and my sis-in-law’s kayak and outrigger tour business in Jaco, Costa Rica, Neil captains the Ashuma, a trimaran that guests book for day sails in Herradura Bay.

Neil’s also got a pretty good nose for prospect research, and every once in awhile he comes across a tip or resource he knows I’ll like, usually related to Central American sources or to yachts and/or the people who own them.

“I’m standing on Ashuma looking at the Hodor. Nice helicopter on the back. I’m going to send you a picture.” 10 seconds later, this pops up on What’s App:

Hodor. Photo by Neil Kahn

Now, Ashuma is not exactly a small sailboat – she’s 7.6 meters (25 feet) long, but Neil tells me she’s a dingy next to the Hodor, which I later learn is 66 meters long (216 feet).

As Neil is talking about what she looks like, I click the link to the article on the building of the Hodor on Super Yacht Times that he sent after the photo. It’s got lots of nice pictures which I start to scan through.

I see a helicopter, three or four boats on the deck, a winchy-crane-looking thing, three dune buggies, a gorgeous cabin and galley…

I’m skimming, skimming, mainly looking at the pictures, not really reading because he’s still on the phone…and that’s when I see it.

“Wait! Neil??!?”

Neil chuckles at the tone of my voice: “I was waiting for you to find that.” Simultaneously he and I both say, “SHE’S THE SUPPORT YACHT.”

My exhale turns into an almost-silent “holy cow.”

Lonian. Photo by Neil Kahn

Hodor is essentially a floating carriage house carrying the 20 support crew and toys that don’t fit on – or that they don’t want crowding up – the $125 million, 87 meter (285 foot) superyacht Lonian. Lonian is owned by 51-year-old Las Vegas billionaire, philanthropist, and art collector Lorenzo Fertitta and his wife, Theresa. The megayacht only has room for 12 guests, so you can imagine how big each stateroom is.

There are lots more resources

As we were about to hang up, I mentioned to Neil that two weeks ago my colleague Rick Snyder (no relation to this fine craft) wrote an article chock-full of resources that can help us think about (and estimate) the additional costs that a wealthy lifestyle entails. Nannies, housekeepers, family office managers – all of the people needed to keep the small village of everyday high net worth life running smoothly.

Neil’s call was another reminder to me (and to all of us) not to take things we see at face value, but to look behind the cost of the big yacht (or house, or island) to see if there’s an even bigger one to consider. Fortunately, there’s lots of information about these wealth indicators if you know where to look for them.

For example, if you ever happen to be walking down a wharf and see a yacht in a slip (or slipping down the waterway you’re walking by) you can check it out on the very handy MarineTraffic.com. The website/app doesn’t go into detail about a watercraft’s ownership, but you can get a lot of information for free about that ship sailing by.

Besides that and the other sources linked in this article, help yourself to lots more yacht (and art, and horse, and jet) resources which can be found in the “Wealth Indicators” section of the HBG Prospect Research Links (Americas page). Access is free; we just require your email address (which we don’t use to mail you) to register to access the pages.

If you have other favorites, don’t be shy – share them here with all of us, and I’ll add them to the links page for everyone to use.

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How to find a strong relationship

Chart by Jellomania at the English language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA]

This week may be all about relationships, but it’s something we have on our mind year-round in fundraising. Vu Le wrote a thought-provoking, motivating blog post earlier this week about being purposefully inclusive in the relationships we build on behalf of our communities and the places we work to support. I highly recommend you give it a read if you can.

On the information-building side of the fundraising house, we’re concerned about documenting the relationships of our constituents, and particularly our donors. We’re constantly trying to figure this stuff out.

  • How can we meet with that perfect prospect? Who do we know in the community that knows them?
  • Where (else) are our donors philanthropically involved? What issues matter to them?
  • Does our prospect have a connection to a philanthropic trust or foundation?
  • What are their family connections?

Thanks to some great resources, search-string ingenuity, elbow grease, and shoe leather, a good amount of this information is relatively straightforward to find with a combination of prospect research and in-person visits. Since we all know that getting the personal meeting can be the hardest part, my team and I wanted to share our favorite resources on the research side to help you get a leg up.

Most wealth screening vendors offer “Inner Circle” relationship mapping which can be useful for prospecting. They allow you to upload (or simply match from) the board members/important people from your institution and will flag anyone that comes back in screening data that is connected to them through a non-profit/corporate board. ~ David H

My first hint would be to make sure you’re noting *how many* connections a person has. I love when I find that people share nonprofit and corporate boards – and you can sometimes almost track the evolution of their relationship by when they served on what boards.

My second thought would be to use news alerts in a slightly different way from usual. If you are following news alerts on your prospect for long enough, you tend to see the same names popping up around them. That’s a long-game but can be very interesting to see who runs in which circles over time.

Finally, for your database, I think it’s helpful to have a company profile regardless of whether the company gives. That way, you can link everyone back to the company and when you need a quick look-up, you can just go to the company record to see who is/has been connected to the company. You could do the same for prominent NPOs in your area too. ~Angie S

For one client I start with Relationship Science as a first look to find connections to their board or major donors. I’ll run the individual name through “Path Finder” and then run all the names from that board list in RelSci, too. It’s often helpful to even do a simple Google or LinkedIn search for individual connections to an organization. I have turned up connections to staff that the client was not aware of by doing that. ~Heather H

LittleSis, which is a freebie, has been an interesting and useful resource. Search a name and the Relationship, Interlocks, or Data tabs can help with boards, co-workers, family members and other connections (his tennis buddy?). You can do the same with a company, too. Obviously you need to verify the connections, but I’ve found a lot of past boards I couldn’t find elsewhere. I like Prabook, too, for biography and relationship information. ~Angie H

I’ve found using board lists from ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer to find relationships and connections to be a great resource. ~ Josh

And of course, if we are talking about familial relationships (and family wealth) Ancestry and its media goldmine Newspapers.com are the best! ~ Kelly

The New York Times TimesMachine and archives searches should definitely be included on this list! They’re not free, but the cost isn’t prohibitive if you need an article. ~Kenny

NNDB.com is no longer active (they stopped gathering information in 2016) but it’s still available to search and has good business and family relationship information. ~Rick

When you are a long-time resident in one area you start to recognize a lot of the local prominent business-people and community volunteers when they turn up in articles, donor lists, or on boards. Something I do frequently for local prospects is look at all the members of the boards that they serve on in my area (or the organization board and their top execs if the prospect was a company/org) and eyeball it for connections to people we already know. ~ Grace

Here’s an old stand-by for finding and confirming family relationships: obituaries are a good compliment to sources like Lexis Nexis for this. ~ David B

Don’t forget Facebook! ~ Heather W

I’ve appreciated Boardex for relationship searching. It’s not an inexpensive resource, but if you can afford it, it can be valuable. I always cross-checked with both RelSci and Boardex because frequently one had a tip that the other one did not (or was more current than the other). Filtering down to the most direct connections was always the most accurate.

More recently, I’ve focused solely on first-degree connections, especially for large organizations because it is quite uncommon for them to know as many people as they do in a smaller organization. I also check the organization’s website to make sure that the individuals are still there and have the right title. ~ Jayme

So there you have it, my team’s favorite places to go to find strong relationship information. Are your favorites listed here? If not, please share them in the comments!

 

 

 

 

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At your service

This week we welcome HBG Senior Researcher Rick Snyder to the blog. One of the things I really appreciate about Rick is his ability and interest in looking beyond the obvious to see the hidden details of wealth that makes his research…well…richer. In today’s article, Rick shares some of those hidden details with all of us. ~Helen

Something that surprised me when I first started in research – and that I’ve continued to enjoy over the years – is the vast array of topics that I’ve had to educate myself on. Whether it’s estimating compensation for the owner of a civil engineering firm or determining the costs and profits of fast food franchises, I feel like I’m always learning something new. For me – and most likely for all of you – these learning opportunities go a long way toward keeping the job interesting and satisfying.

One learning moment I recall, although I remember few of the precise details, came while reading an article in Vanity Fair in the early 2000s. It was about some of the newer waterfront homes in Greenwich, CT, that owners were building on the sites of older, multi-million-dollar homes that had been razed to make room for something bigger and better. The article was interesting throughout, but it contained one piece of information in particular that gave me an aha moment – namely that in one of the homes mentioned the curtains in one room alone cost $50,000.

I found that figure to be staggering. I also felt somewhat foolish that such a thing had never occurred to me. Rather than missing the forest for the trees, I realized it was the trees that I should have been looking at. Up until that time I would ooh and aah and marvel over the spectacular homes that I’d come across, but I never thought beyond the overall value of the home to consider what it cost to decorate, furnish, maintain, and in some cases, staff the place (or places, since many wealthy people have multiple homes).

It set me off on a binge of researching the cost of numerous luxury items. And while I went down a rabbit hole in pursuit of $20,000 AGA stoves and $41,500 Meneghini La Cambusa refrigerators, one of the things that I never researched was cost of staffing a home. I recently decided to rectify that oversight.

I’ve always been intrigued by domestic staff. The popularity of shows like Downton Abbey tells me that I’m not alone in this. Who hasn’t dreamed of having someone to cook for you, do your laundry, or make your bed? Although having a butler at your beck and call may seem like a thing of the past, there are many wealthy families that employ personal assistants, nannies, drivers, and the like, and it seems that understanding more about it could come in handy in our work.

What I’ve recently learned is that this kind of work, dubbed “wealth work” by MIT economics professor David Autor, is one of the fastest growth sectors in the US economy. The Associated Press estimates that “there were 3.2 million wealth worker jobs in 2017, up from 2.8 million in 2010. They have grown faster than such traditional occupations as sales, education, manufacturing and office administrative work.” Although any employment is great news for some, these jobs don’t tend to come with the security or benefits they once held.

Today’s “servant economy”—as The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal has called it—is vastly superior to that of the late 19th century (to say nothing of the slave economy that preceded it). The nannies, house cleaners, and cooks of the past had little to no recourse, not even in name, to the protection of the law if their employers maltreated them. But their work was also less anonymous; the hired help tended to live with their employers, where they would cook, clean, and care for children. These workers were integrated into family life in a way that is unthinkable for the anonymous wealth workers of the modern world.” –The Atlantic

Unfortunately, it’s been very rare in my research to read anything about an individual employing domestic staff. Perhaps it’s a social faux pas to discuss your butler, yet we know they exist. A glance at a floor plan from some of the top buildings in New York reveals that many of them have rooms for staff, so we may presume that the owners employ help, but beyond that we’re left largely empty handed. This is where we need to employ our frontline staff as researchers. We need them to pepper their contact reports with details like what artwork was on the prospect’s walls, what sorts of rare collectibles they own, or the fact that they employ a personal chef and house manager. This is where we come along with a second wave of research to help determine what these wealth indicators are worth.

So, what does it cost to staff your home(s)? It should come as no surprise that the salaries cover a broad range. Not only does it vary by location, but the job duties differ considerably. Some job listings combine the duties of several people in a single position. One recent posting for a housekeeper/nanny in Raleigh, NC, listed the some of the following responsibilities:

  • Managing and providing full-time care of the family’s residence, hands on role, up your sleeves approach
  • Planning prep and oversight of dinner parties and other household events
  • Preparing and cooking meals as needed upon requests
  • Personal shopping, running errands, stock procurement and special requests, etc.
  • Heavy organization throughout the home including pantries, kitchen, closets, etc.
  • Ability to work in tandem with vendors, contractors, other domestic staff, etc.
  • Driving the principals as needed upon request

This position is live-out, requires caring for a 5-year-old, pays $60,000-$80,000 a year, has a 5-day schedule, includes 3-4 weeks of vacation, and entails spending 3-6 weeks in Maine each summer. That’s decent money and it could be quite interesting, but it also sounds like a lot of work.

Staffing agencies will often suggest that you hire more than one household staff member rather than combine so many responsibilities. As one said, “In many instances, a family will hire a housekeeper, but expect them to act as a nanny, personal chef and cleaner rolled into one. This can burn out a single person, and often involves tasks that don’t fall into their skill set anyway. This is why households need to consider hiring multiple domestic staff to handle the various roles they require.” [source: Colonial Domestics]

Hire Society, an agency owned by a former butler/estate manager, covers New York, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach. It provided the figures below to Business Insider. The salaries run considerably higher than those in other regions. Some of their current job openings can be found here.

POSITION                                      SALARY RANGE

  • Chief of staff                                 $200,000-$500,000
  • Estate manager                            $150,000-$300,000
  • Executive house manager            $100,000-$150,000
  • Assistant house manager             $90,000-$120,000
  • Office manager                            $100,000-$175,000
  • Butler                                            $85,000-$125,000
  • Executive assistant                       $90,000-$200,000
  • Junior executive assistant             $65,000-$90,000
  • Personal assistant                         $85,000-$150,000
  • Junior personal assistant              $65,000-$90,000
  • Head chef                                     $110,000-$225,000
  • Sous chef                                      $80,000-$100,000
  • Cook                                              $75,000-$90,000
  • Executive housekeeper                 $75,000-$100,000
  • Housekeeper                                 $65,000-$80,000
  • Ladies maid                                   $75,000-$85,000
  • Laundress                                      $75,000-$95,000
  • Baby nurse                                    $300-$1,000 per day
  • Nanny                                            $65,000-$185,000
  • Family assistant                            $65,000-$90,000
  • Governess                                     $100,000-$250,000
  • Driver                                            $80,000-$100,000
  • Executive protection                     $90,000-$125,000
  • Domestic couple                           $130,000-$300,000
  • Tutor                                             $100,000-$150,000
  • Houseman                                     $75,000-$125,000

For comparison, here are several others:

Knight Frank, publishers of several wealth research reports, recently released their biennial Estate Staff Salary Survey for the UK. My favorite position listed is that of ghillie: a person who acts as an attendant on a fishing, fly fishing, hunting, or deer stalking expedition. And when I looked that up, I discovered that in days past there used to be a ghillie-weetfit, a ghillie whose duty it was to carry his master over streams.

While there was no salary information in it, an article in Modern Luxury Palm Beach revealed that a polo playing couple employs a traveling veterinarian when they play in other parts of the world. I include it here as an indicator of the variety of positions some people employ.

This brief overview will help you get started on your own trip down the research rabbit hole. Before I go, I have a few other thoughts to share.

First, while I was doing my research for this post, I really wanted to be able to determine an inflection point at which people decide that they need to hire a personal assistant or a property manager. I wasn’t able to, but it’s something I’ll continue to look at. We’re always on the lookout at HBG for things that signal a particular level of wealth in an attempt to find a more formulaic method for determining assets and capacity.

One of the figures we often use to estimate wealth comes from the CapGemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report, which states that real estate comprises approximately 15 percent of high net worth individuals’ total assets. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do the same with other wealth indicators like the employment of domestic staff? For example, if Joan Prospect employs a chef and personal assistant, then she must have X amount of wealth. If you’ve got any thoughts along these lines, please share them in the comments. And if I uncover anything more in my research I’ll be sure to update this post.

Second, and perhaps a bit contrarian: what good is any of this information to us? Does knowing that the prospect employs an estate manager mean that he or she will make a gift to your organization? No, of course not. What it tells you is that the person has a certain level of wealth. It also suggests a certain ease with spending money. If they can spend $100,000 a year on their nanny, it might not be a stretch to make a $100,000 gift for the scholarship that your gift officer is presenting to them.

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Creating Your Due Diligence Policy

I’m working with one of my very favorite people right now to help her craft a new due diligence policy for her nonprofit. A lot of executive directors and chief fundraising officers are understandably antsy in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein and Sackler scandals, and my client wants to avoid future issues (to the highest degree possible) and create a protocol for her nonprofit to follow, as well as a checklist of sources for her research team to use. It’s been an interesting and fun exercise posing questions, doing our own research, and helping her figure out the right strategy for them.

Some of the questions that have come up in this process that I thought you might be interested in are:

  • What are the trigger points that indicate due diligence research must happen? Is it a gift/solicitation level? Involvement level?
  • What specific resources are available, and which will we use to do this research?
  • What should our budget be?
  • Will we outsource this work? Do some in-house and outsource some?
  • What are other research shops doing?
  • What priority will due diligence research have compared to other forms of research?
  • What format should our due diligence research be presented in? Should there be an executive summary? Color-coded or numbered warning levels?
  • Based on our organization type, are there some donors from whom we will never accept money based on their primary source of income? (alcohol, tobacco, pornography or firearms, for example)
  • Should we create a review committee that meets monthly (or more often?) to review the due diligence research and make determinations about cultivation or gift solicitations that can go forward (or not)?
  • Who has ultimate veto power if the due diligence indicates issues with a prospect but the fundraiser wants to go forward?

Gathering information

Together, my client and I are amassing a list of useful resources. Some of them are guidelines or overviews that others have created, such as the (UK) Charity Commission’s “Guidance on carrying out due diligence checks on donors, beneficiaries and local partners” and the (UK) National Audit Office’s “Due diligence processes for potential donations” The latter publication is more geared toward art museums but it has valuable information for any nonprofit.

We’re also putting together a list of resources that can be used as a research checklist each time due diligence research is done. Using a research checklist is always a great way to stay organized, but for due diligence research it’s particularly important so you can be sure you’ve quite literally ticked off all the boxes.

Its format hasn’t yet been determined, but at the moment we’re leaning toward a spreadsheet so that any information found by the researcher can be captured directly on the form.

Are there guides to follow?

Our UK prospect research colleagues have been doing due diligence research for quite a bit longer than we have here in the States and we have a lot to learn from them, even if the specific resources we use might be slightly different. It’s pretty easy to just swap out their resource of 192.com for portions of our version of Lexis Nexis when you figure out what they’re using 192 for. In other cases, the resources will be the same, for example Interpol’s ‘most wanted’ database called “Red Notices.”

As you decide to create your own due diligence research policy and create your checklist, you will be happy to know that some organizations have published theirs online.

Amongst the several available online, the University of Edinburgh has published “Procedures for the Due Diligence Review of Donations” as a helpful example. Also online are policies from the London School of Economics as well as the Universities of East Anglia, Leicester, Kent, and more, so you have plenty of great guides (and some checklists) to choose from if you want to do a search to find others.

If you’ve found others, or if you have published one of your own, please let all of us know in the comments!

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Prospect research resolutions for a new year and a new decade

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions in our personal life, but what about our professional life? Doesn’t it deserve some resolve and fresh perspective? Today’s article by my colleague Mandi Matz helps us all kick off the new year – and the new decade – with some great ideas to inspire us. ~Helen

Happy 2020 to one and all!

I’ve always loved the new year. I find it a good time to reflect about the year – and in this case, the decade – ahead. Just for fun, I did a quick Google search to find the most popular new year’s resolutions. According to Time.com, among the top 10 resolutions are:

  • Lose weight and get fit
  • Learn something new
  • Spend more time with family

These are all great resolutions for our personal lives, but I began to wonder if we could apply them to our professional lives. Here are a few ideas, some of which may help you or inspire you to develop professional new year’s resolutions of your own.

Lose Weight and Get Fit

Before I joined HBG, I worked at a college. One of the many nice things about working at an academic institution is the long winter break, which could sometimes be almost two weeks. I always found that after the frantic pace of year-end fundraising, the break was a great time to exhale, and I would come back to work in the new year with renewed energy.

But in order to get into the right mindset as I went into the break, I had to get my space “fit.” In other words, I always spent the last day before the break cleaning my desk – sorting though the piles on top of it, cleaning out my files and then filing or pitching anything remaining. I did some electronic fitness too – clearing the cache and organizing the desktop of my computer, updating my passwords and labeling, filing and answering my email. Once this was done, I would start planning the weeks and months ahead by putting assignments, deadlines and tasks in my calendar.

I know this sounds simple and obvious, but I always found that after shedding the excess weight of some clutter and putting everything in order, I felt lighter and psychologically ready for the new year. Now that I work from home, I’ve found that keeping my physical space “fit” is even more important. Is there a way you can get your physical space in shape for the new year?

Learn Something New

One of the things that I love about being a prospect researcher it is that almost on daily basis I learn something new. In that spirit, I’d like to share three favorite resources that, if they aren’t on your radar already, may help you.

  • Databases available through your public library: Given that I’m a former librarian, I always encourage new researchers to get a card from their local public library if they don’t already have one. For the cost of the card – free! – a world of resources is available, which can be invaluable if you work for an organization that doesn’t have the budget for subscription resources (as I once did). Most libraries subscribe to some version of Lexis, as well as at least one national newspaper that can provide basic biographical information. I particularly like the newspapers for obituaries and wedding announcements, which can be great sources of family relationships and wealth information.
  • Investopedia: When I stated in prospect research more than a decade ago, figuring out a prospect’s stock holdings really intimidated me. Investopedia was the lifeline that helped me figure out the different SEC forms and how to understand what I was reading in them. I still use it often. It’s a highly searchable and user-friendly source of information about all things finance. I also appreciate this site’s transparency regarding its writers and its editorial, ethics and advertising policies.
  • The acknowledgements of books: In my spare time, I’m a big reader, especially of nonfiction and memoirs. It’s a cliché, but I do read books from cover to cover. Over my years as a researcher, I’ve found that you can find information about a prospect almost anywhere, sometimes where you least expect it. I once read the memoir of an Oscar-winning actress whose performances I like. I didn’t give it a second thought until I got to the acknowledgements. In them, the actress revealed that her child was treated at the hospital where I worked at the time, and she and her husband (who wasn’t an actor and had a different last name) were very grateful to a certain doctor. A look in our database revealed that our organization hadn’t made the connection between the patient and her famous mother. She and her husband were unassigned and had made minimal gifts to the hospital. Using what I found from this unexpected source, I made sure this couple was assigned to a gift officer and from there, a more appropriate solicitation strategy was developed for them.

Spend More Time with Family

Most of us probably spent a lot of time with our families during the holiday season just passed. This got me thinking: Is there a way for us as professionals to spend more time with our work “family”?

Here’s one idea – and I must give credit for it where credit is most certainly due. I started my prospect research career working for a large cancer hospital in Southern California. The development office was in downtown Los Angeles, while the medical center was in a city about 20 miles away. While I loved my job, I didn’t feel a part of the hospital or its mission. Even among my development colleagues, it was hard to feel connected — we were 200+ employees spread over two floors. But I was lucky to work for James Rygg, a wonderful boss who had a surprisingly simple and effective way of bringing us together: he started a “lunch club.”

Every month, James invited five or six people from different departments within the development office to have lunch. The idea was to bring together people who may not interact much during the normal course of our work. I’m sure there was a method to James’ madness of putting the lunch guests together, but I never quite knew what it was.  I must admit though, it worked. The times I was invited to lunch club, I ate with people I knew only by name or had seen in passing in the elevator or parking garage.

I always looked forward to lunch club. First, it was a kick to receive the email that I was next up in the rotation and finding out who my “mystery” dining companions were. Second, I would inevitably leave lunch thinking: “Wow! I wish I had talked with that person much sooner.” As busy development professionals, I think we can sometimes get so caught up in our work we forget that we have colleagues who can enrich our lives both professionally and  personally and that it is important to stay connected to them in a meaningful, face-to-face way.

If you work in an office that is large enough, can you to start a lunch club? If you work at home, as I do now, can you make a conscious effort to remain connected to colleagues by getting together a little more often?

I hope this post gives you some useful ideas and questions to ponder to help make your professional year ahead fulfilling and successful.

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‘Tis The Season – for Philanthropic Giving!

Since it’s the season of giving, you may be interested to know that there are lots of places to look if you want to find new prospective donors to your organization. The lovely trails that philanthropy leaves behind can be a good indicator towards people, companies, and foundations that may share an interest in your nonprofit’s cause.

One of the best ways to find that shared interest is to look at supporters to organizations with a similar (or allied) mission to your nonprofit.

That effort can be a labor of love, actually, but some of the philanthropic data aggregators (including Donorsearch, iWave, and Noza) make the job much easier if you have the budget to subscribe to one or more of them. Search by region and/or interest area, and a good list will quickly come together for you so thankfully you won’t have to burn the midnight oil for 8 days and nights!

If you don’t have the do-re-mi to afford one of these resources, there are still good ways of finding philanthropic giving, it just takes a bit more work. I polled my team this week, and here are some of the ideas we came up with for you…

Make a list, check it twice

First, create a list of other nonprofits in your area that have similar or related missions.

Start specific and then pull out to a wider circle to find allied nonprofits. So for example, if you work for a red-nosed reindeer rescue organization, your specific group would be wildlife rescue groups in, say, a 50-mile radius (or 100 miles, or state-wide, or whatever you want your limit to be). The larger circle might include environmental organizations, animal shelters, conservation, botanical gardens, etc. within that same radius.

Enlist the brainstorming help of others in your office to build this list. The added benefit of compiling this – beyond helping you develop a list of prospects now – is that it will give you a much better idea of the landscape in which your nonprofit is operating as you go forward.

This will be a list that you may want to add to over time, because – depending on what data you collect – it can help you see that landscape more clearly. For example, what programs that you offer differentiate you from peer organizations? Do they (also?) have a developed major gifts program? Could they be a resource or collaborating partner for certain efforts or programs?

Next, gather annual reports

Okay, so now that you have the list of nonprofits, it’s time to apply some elbow grease, but don’t worry, after a few minutes you’ll be speeding down the track faster than the Polar Express.

Not all nonprofits publish their annual list of donors, but many do, sometimes as part of their year-end report. These are as fascinating to look at for prospect researchers like me as a donor list on a museum wall. You’ll not only find the names of individuals, but companies and foundations (including donor advised funds!) that may share an interest in your nonprofit’s mission.

What you’ll have is a strong and growing list of names. What you won’t have is their contact information, of course, but more often than not major donors to nonprofits tend to be active business people and volunteers in their communities, so hopefully finding that business connection should be relatively easy.

Newsletters are great, too

 This time of year you may be looking forward to a good friend’s holiday newsletter that fills you in on the activities of people you know (as well as some you’ve probably never heard of before). Nonprofit newsletters are the exact same source of delight – you may see reports of some people you know and be treated to details of the wonderful life of another you’ve never heard of before.

While you’re on the website of each nonprofit looking for donor lists in their annual report, check and see if the nonprofit publishes a newsletter. Frequently an organization will spotlight one or more of their significant supporters, and these pieces can give you an idea if the donor may also be interested in your cause as well. 

Look for the elves

Every great endeavor requires helpers to assist in the management and oversight of its programs. Nonprofit board members and foundation board members are these helpers (and quite frequently instigators) that sustain and propel organizations forward.

Candid and ProPublica’s terrific Nonprofit Explorer are two great places to find nonprofit and charitable foundation board members in the United States. For England and Wales, visit the UK government’s Charity Commission website. In Scotland, check out the site for the OCSR, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.

Specialty media

Here at HBG, we find publications like the Boston Business Journal invaluable for the profiles of executives who frequently talk quite animatedly about their philanthropic interests in the interview. Check out the Business Journals website here.

Look for interviews in your local city or town’s publication. Here in Boston we have Boston magazine of course, but even my local Watertown TAB profiles local citizens each week who (more often than not) talk about their philanthropic involvements.

And finally, search engines

It’s definitely a hit-or-miss strategy, but go to the search engines of your choice such as Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing (we recommend that you use at least two different search engines for all searches) and try a string like:

(~donation OR ~gift OR ~donor OR ~trustee)(~environment OR ~conservation OR ~wildlife)

Limit the date range to the past year or two so that you get the most current donation news.

These are just a few of our favorite things – what tactics do you use to find philanthropic gifts?

Happy holidays! Sincere wishes from all of us at HBG to you and yours for a New Year of health and joy.

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Chapters in the Story: Going Beyond Ancestry for Genealogical Research

This article by my colleague Jayme Klein truly is a gift appropriate for the festive season. December is a month when lots of folks gather with family to celebrate the holidays, and so it’s a great time for Jayme to remind us that many times researching a prospect well requires finding out more about their family and forbears. ~Helen

As most of us know, research on a prospect isn’t really just about them. Wealth capacity can involve a spouse, parents, a child. When we’re tasked with telling someone’s story, sometimes we have to go back a few chapters.

Genealogical research is popular, and, as I can attest, addictive. But it can also add another angle to your prospect research by providing basic information such as birth dates and past addresses, giving context to family gifts, finding the background of a person named in a gift and establishing reasons for multi-generational wealth.

Due to their success and marketing, Ancestry is synonymous with genealogical material. However, it can be cost-prohibitive for small nonprofits unless you are accessing it from your local library. Luckily, there are plenty of free resources that can help you along the journey of your prospect’s family.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch is the main competitor to Ancestry. Users must create a profile, but access is free. The site offers both national and international records, from vitals (birth, death, marriage) to military records, probate/estate records and naturalization forms. I regularly cross-check records on Ancestry with those on FamilySearch, since dates and transcription standards differ from site to site.

Information that Ancestry didn’t think was necessary to transcribe can show up on FamilySearch, such as parents’ or spouse’s names on a birth or death record.

Geni

If you aren’t sure that you have the right person, double-checking on another site is a quick way to confirm you have your match. Another site, geni.com, requires a paid subscription, but many members make their family trees public. It can be a good start before confirming the facts.

Find a Grave

If you are trying to confirm a prospect’s ancestors, cemetery records are another way to answer questions about dates as well as familial relationships. Find a Grave is a volunteer-run site that populates photos and transcriptions of cemeteries worldwide.

Depending on how lax the rules are, or how friendly the office is, calling a cemetery can often confirm the names of other family members buried in a plot or who is financially responsible for their care.

Location, location, location

Steve Morse, a retired computer engineer, created an essential guide to census, passenger, translation and religious records. It is an easy way to significantly reduce the time it takes to search records that may not have been transcribed on the main genealogy sites. It offers search tools for records in Canada, Europe and the United States.

Want more international content? Try Google’s newspaper archive.

Researching in a specific region? The Ancestor Hunt makes it much easier to find what is available within Canada and individual areas within the United States. It is updated regularly and highlights any new items added (a big help to those of us that look at the same sites often).

If you are Facebook-oriented, there are hundreds of genealogy groups, many that are public, that break down research by location, country of origin and ethnic background.

Regardless of your prospect’s heritage, if they are from New York, the Italian Genealogical Group has created a fantastic index of what might be available.

New York courts also have marriage and divorce records. While it can be confusing, every state, county and town offer different information at different price points (some are free). A region’s historical society or regional religious organization can help break down brick walls.

More library magic

Don’t put away your library card just yet. Another tool for those trying to figure out the world of genealogy is a searchable archive of genealogical books.

Many libraries have genealogy-specific subscriptions that don’t require any payment the user. GenealogyBank is a tremendous newspaper archive (11,000 individual titles) from across the United States.

Town and academic libraries have a wealth of local information, including newspaper archives, naturalization records, even Sanborn maps – fire insurance surveys that specify businesses along city streets.

Many libraries will do lookups for free or for a small fee, if you know what you’re looking for, even if you don’t live in the area that your prospect’s family originated. County clerk offices often have naturalization and other vital records available – some that are digitized, depending on the location, others available for a small fee (often a few cents per page for a copy).

A little elbow grease can help, too

If you really need to dig, your State Archives have millions of records not yet digitized and ready for you to practice (or refresh) your microfiche skills.

It can be frustrating to find out that what you need is not indexed, digitized or even available, but there is a noble group trying to make them public. Reclaim the Records works through freedom of information laws (FOIA) to cut through red tape and bureaucracy to make records available to the public and digitize them for future use. A 501c3 made of volunteer researchers, historians, genealogists and open government advocates, they make sure that everything they uncover is put online for free for the public good. Their website is worth a look to see what they have achieved and are currently working on. If there’s information you need that is tied up, let them know!

What genealogical resources do you use to write your prospect’s story?

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Ode to the Checklist

This week we welcome my colleague Kristina Gropper to the blog. Kristina’s got a ton of terrific resource tips this week – and a handy reminder to make sure that you never forget to check those resources as you work. ~Helen

A few months ago, I sent a short profile update on a high net worth individual to a dedicated research client. (Dedicated clients are people and nonprofits that we work with one-on-one on a retainer basis as their outsourced research shop). Shortly after, I received an email from my client. The profile was great, but it did not include an apartment purchase from the previous year that they knew about. I apologized and sent a revised profile right away. It was a slip, and I was determined to understand why it happened. I had gotten in the habit of checking a handful of real estate sources, none of which listed the newly purchased property. I then thought of ways to check real estate more methodically moving forward. I recalled one of my most-liked podcasts has an episode that delves into checklists (Hidden Brain, “Check Yourself”, aired October 30, 2017).

In the podcast Shankar Vedantam explores the value of checklists in a variety of professions, including surgeons and pilots. My favorite excerpt was from a 1943 military training film:

 In the cockpit, you learn to follow the checklist because it helps you to keep your mind on your work. Detail’s important when you’re learning to fly a big bomber, and using the checklist means you don’t overlook a thing.”

While research and flying bombers don’t initially sound similar, they do have one thing in common: detail is important. Could a checklist be a valuable tool for a prospect researcher as well?

As an exercise, I created the following real estate checklist, personalized to my client:

Throughout the research process, I make sure to check my prospect against each resource while also staying on the lookout for any LLCs affiliated with the donor or family members, where they may be holding additional assets.

Expanding my list, I also checked in with a few of my HBG colleagues who are very knowledgeable about real estate. For New York City in particular, I reached out to Kelly Labrecque – our in-house New York City real estate guru – who suggested that I add the New York City Assessor, where you can search by address (https://a836-pts-access.nyc.gov/care/search/commonsearch.aspx?mode=address) or by Borough Block Lot (BBL) (http://nycprop.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp). Kelly also recommended RealtyHop (http://www.realtyhop.com/) and Real Direct (www.realdirect.com) as an alternative to ACRIS.

For prospects in larger cities where renting is common, Josh Ostroski noted that mortgage calculators may be helpful to understand what an equivalent mortgage payment would be compared to rent, but making sure to take into account taxes, fees, and down payment. He recommends Bankrate (https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/new-house-calculator.aspx), Zillow or StreetEasy.

In my day-to-day work, I now focus more time on real estate transactions, including recently sold real estate, since I know they are important to my clients. It is time well-spent, as real estate is a key indicator of future giving. According to DonorSearch findings from 2015:

  • Donors that own $2+ million in real estate, which account for 1.4% of records analyzed, make up 25% of total monetary donations and are 17 times more likely to give philanthropically than the average person.
  • Donors that own $1-2 million in real estate, which account for 3.2% of records analyzed, make up 13.2% of total monetary donations and are 4 times more likely to give philanthropically than the average person.

My checklist was building momentum. I found I really enjoyed having the list to hold me accountable to each of our available resources, so I decided to expand it to include essential websites for foundations, philanthropic gifts and stocks. For foundations, I included:

When it comes to checking for individual philanthropic gifts, NOZA (https://www.nozasearch.com/), iWave or ResearchPoint are my go-to resources. A colleague also taught me a few creative ways to search for gifts that don’t show up in these well-loved resources by using quotations and an asterix. To search for Sam and Estee Palmer’s gifts, for example, do a Google search for “Sam * Palmer” site:.org or “Sam and Estee Palmer” site:.org.

To top it off, I added a few sites for stocks, including iWave, Nexis Mosaic (https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis-securities-mosaic.page) and J3 (http://www.j3sg.com/) to my checklist.

Creating a checklist was a simple, yet empowering step in ensuring I’m providing the best possible service to my clients. This process also opened up communication with my dedicated client. As Helen Brown discusses in a blog post from last year, a two-way flow of communication helps to avoid missing out on information.

In case you would like to craft your own checklist, HBG has an extensive library of prospect research resources online to inspire you. These links can be customized to create a list specific to your own organization and the preferences of your colleagues.

Do you also find checklists helpful in your research? If so, which sources do you always check out?

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