Helen Brown Group

By Leave a Comment

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!

By Leave a Comment

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.

By Leave a Comment

‘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.

By Leave a Comment

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?

By Leave a Comment

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?

By Leave a Comment

How GIS mapping can improve your real estate searching

This week I’m delighted to welcome Senior Researcher Josh Ostroski back to The Intelligent Edge. If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll know that Josh is our go-to guy on real estate research here at HBG, and this week he has a great article to share on a very clever way to find property information. Take it away, Josh! ~Helen

I had planned to write a blog post about some of the things I’ve learned in my 15 years as a Prospect Researcher since all I ever seem to write about is real estate. However, I’ve been noticing a new trend while researching properties that I think would be helpful for everyone – Assessor GIS Mapping – so I decided to go for a real estate theme for a blog post again.

Geographic Information System, or GIS mapping for short, is not necessarily a new technology, but I’ve noticed that it has popped up on most of the assessor sites now. I’ve found it so helpful that I wanted to share it so that more in the prospect development world are aware of it.

What is GIS Mapping?

GIS Mapping allows you to search for a property by address or by location and you will be able to see the property lines and, in most cases at least, who owns it and basic information about the property. Like all assessor sites, not all counties in the country share the same information and some are more robust than others.

Each site has its unique features and allows you to see different information, so be patient and play with each county (or sometimes state) sites. Even if it doesn’t give you all the information you need, you can at least have a visual of what the property looks like. Then you can use what you know and other resources to find out more specific information about the property. Often times the traditional assessor site will have more robust information on its site about the property.

Here is an example of what the map looks like. Each separate lot is outlined and you can simply click on the lot (be aware that some GIS Maps require you click on a tool in order for the assessor information to pop up), and the information will come up.

How is GIS Mapping Helpful?

I always use this feature when I’m looking at a property that has multiple lots; that way I can see what the property actually looks like. I’ve also found it helpful when someone may have multiple lots, but they are owned by different LLC’s or by family members.

Another way it is useful is when a mailing address and a property address don’t match. Sometimes that could be because the property is split between different streets or the owners bought an adjacent lot at a later date and use that mailing address.

Below is a screenshot from the San Miguel County, Colorado, GIS Mapping site. The property in question was located at 115 Francisco, Telluride, CO, which is Tom Cruise’s estate. It has been on the market for $59M.

What this shows us is that the property is owned by Client 2177 Living Trust, which if you run the property report shows an address in Los Angeles, CA, that is home to Chapman Bird Grey & Tessler, a Hollywood business management firm that Tom Cruise has been associated with. The other thing it shows is the properties adjacent to the main home that are owned by the same entity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this example, the adjacent properties are owned by the same name, but I have often found the names can be different but have the same mailing address. One example I came across just the other day was a home in New Jersey that consisted of six separate lots; each lot owned by a different limited liability company (LLC) (ex: 123 Briar Lane Acquisiton LLC, 129 Briar Lane Acquisiton LLC).

I always use a satellite view when using the GIS Mapping tool (I actually always use satellite view in life); that way you can really see what the home and property look like. You can also sometimes tell if a home was recently renovated or differs from what the assessment records indicate, which could be due to a delay in new information being uploaded.

Another example of how this has been very useful was a request from a gift officer after a meeting with a prospect. The prospect had mentioned in passing that he was selling some land he had accumulated over the years to a developer. It turned out he owned dozens of separate lots, all under different LLC’s and many with different mailing addresses. By using the GIS Map, I was able to click on all the lots in the area and determine if they were his or not.

He was indeed selling them off and to a developer that was building a new golf course community. We were also able to tell which lots he had recently sold and for how much. With traditional resources, it would have taken me much much longer to do and I don’t think it would have been as accurate.

How to Find GIS Mapping Tools

NETROnline.com is a great resource for individual assessor sites, including listing GIS Mapping links. The assessor sites are under the Public Records Online tab.

You can also do a search for “[County Name] Assessor GIS Map” and you will probably have luck. I’ve rarely found a county that does not have this capability. There are some outliers: Massachusetts, for example, does not do it by county, but the entire state has one map you can search.

Let me know what you think of GIS mapping tools, and what other interesting tools you use to find real estate information.

By Leave a Comment

Quantifying Crowdfunding: Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress

A few weeks ago, I received a request from a blog reader:

“I would be interested in an article on the topic of social media fundraising and prospect research. For example, a prospect giving to a Facebook birthday fundraiser for Save the Whales. My understanding is that donations to something like that won’t appear on iWave under the donor’s name because the donations are grouped together. Any ideas on how to quantify donations you may see on someone’s social media account?”

I know that this is a topic that has interested Brent Grinna of EverTrue for a long time, so I asked Brent if he’d be willing to tackle this question. I’m delighted that he said yes! Thanks, Brent, for sharing your thoughts here! ~Helen

$24,000 to monitor the health of honeybees. $10,000 to bring water filters to a girls’ school in Bangladesh. $250,000 to build an educational therapy center for special needs children in a remote area of India.

Each crowdfunding success story is completely unique. What they all have in common is their reliance on a large number of donors giving small amounts…and spreading the word organically.

Crowdfunding has changed the face of philanthropy in recent years and left many traditional fundraising institutions wondering how best to harness its power and mitigate its risks. Nonprofits around the world have successfully launched crowdfunding campaigns to send student groups on mission-driven trips abroad, support a specific research project, or cover a unique, one-off initiative. Many institutions have embraced this uncertain fundraising approach and reaped significant benefits, both for donor engagement and for major gift pipeline.

The authentic, actionable, impactful nature of crowdfunding campaigns is what makes them so compelling. Friends, coworkers, and family are the donor base, and we are intrinsically driven by a sense of community and a desire to join the crowd. Especially if the crowd shares a common commitment to make the world a better place.

At EverTrue, we’ve been especially proud of many of our advancement friends for holding their noses and jumping into the crowdfunding game. In some ways, it has been a counter-cultural move, but so many organizations now have a myriad of success stories on smaller projects and programs that would not have been possible without crowdfunding, with donors that would have otherwise been disengaged (take the University of Oregon, for example).

Now that many nonprofits have embraced crowdfunding and are currently coordinating and managing a number of campaigns, we’re collectively faced with the question of how to identify, quantify, and steward donors to crowdfunding campaigns?

We struggle right alongside our fundraising partners to answer this question. Part of the struggle is due to the fact that many crowdfunding donors choose to be anonymous or donate under a pseudonym. And if the campaign is not managed by an advancement employee who has established a direct link between the crowdfunding software and the school’s CRM, identifying donors is even more elusive.

We may never arrive at the moment where we can identify every person who has donated to a crowdfunding campaign. But, think about this: perhaps we don’t actually need or even want to.

Donors who give to crowdfunding campaigns are exploring a new means of supporting their favorite nonprofit or cause. If they’ve chosen to give anonymously to a small-scale cause they care about, it wouldn’t be donor-centric to move that individual through the traditional donor pipeline by mailing them letters of thanks, adding them to telefund lists, and listing them on the printed donor roster.

Rather than give in to the “Quick! Quantify!” urge, remember first and foremost that these donors are engaging authentically and organically with a cause that resonates with them.

Before jumping to examine crowdfunding campaigns through traditional fundraising lens, fight that impulse. And instead, remain curious. What about these crowdfunding campaigns is working, and what isn’t? How are previously disengaged donors reacting? How many anonymous donors are there? Does the crowdfunding campaign have a defined purpose and impact statement? And, how can these insights inform the more traditional fundraising approaches of our development offices?

The suggestion to remain curious isn’t a decree to sit back and let it all unfold. There are ways to identify engaged donors and begin understanding the crowdfunding donor profile. Start by taking lessons from these campaigns and replicating them in the more familiar and comfortable annual/regular giving space (all with the vision to build your major gift pipeline). Here are some suggestions for that:

  • Ensure that crowdfunding campaigns are shared on your school’s professionally managed social media sites. Track likes, reactions, shares and comments on campaign posts. Use this valuable data to build insights on crowdfunding donors, and route them to annual fund or major gift portfolios, as appropriate.
  • Take note of the powerful effect of peer-to-peer fundraising, especially on social media. Who are your social media champions? Which of your alumni, members, friends, patients, etc. are highly engaged on your nonprofit’s social media accounts? How can you earn the respect and trust of these champions so that they can help to spread the word about your nonprofit’s longer-term fundraising priorities by sharing relevant content across their social networks? (Look to Oklahoma State for insights on how they increased donations to the marching band by 40%.)
  • Do not miss the opportunity to learn about the programs that are being supported by successful crowdfunding campaigns. These are causes, however small, that your constituents genuinely care about. Do your research; meet with campus partners; discover whether there is a program or project that needs longer-term, more sustainable support.
  • Bring the crowdfunding model to a larger scale. Work with your Development Communications team to create inspiring, relevant content on that program area. Share it across your organization’s social media platforms. Track results. And take action on every engaged constituent. (Does this sound like a larger scale crowdfunding campaign? It should!)

We understand that the fact that we can’t pin down and call every donor to a crowdfunding campaign feels inherently like a missed opportunity. But rather than try to make crowdfunding fit into the traditional fundraising model at your organization, think of it as an incredibly useful pilot program that you can learn so much from. Remember: change is the only constant in life!

We are EverTrue are working closely with Facebook to explore the back-end capabilities of Facebook Fundraiser for gathering useful donor data and insights. There is more to come, but suffice it to say that we look forward to sharing what we learn with all of you!

In the meantime, don’t miss the opportunity to track engagement with crowdfunding campaigns on your nonprofit’s social media pages. But by the same token, don’t spend frustrated hours trying to identify and quantify every donor that made it possible for your school’s a cappella group to travel overseas for a competition. Instead, learn what made this mini-campaign so successful, and replicate it on a larger scale using the well-established resources of an advancement shop. (UVA took this approach and funded two $3M professorships.)

All the while, keep in mind that tapping in donor interests and acquiring donors via targeted campaigns is the first step towards building long-term philanthropic relationship.

Curiosity will build a bridge between the old and the new. Good luck (to all of us)!

Brent Grinna founded EverTrue in 2010. He is CEO of the company, which has 50 employees and is based in the beautiful seaport area of Boston, MA. Brent is on Twitter at @BrentGrinna.

By Leave a Comment

A hole in the water

I recently became the owner of the rear half of a tandem kayak, and what I very quickly learned is that the adage “a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into” is no joke. After paddles, roof racks, waterproof bags, storage racks, water shoes, skirts, and other must-have sundries (and this is a KAYAK, mind you) I’m beginning to get an idea of what yacht owners have to go through.

Well, okay, what yacht owners’ employees have to go through. The ones who oversee the dingy in the 15th storage hold. But still. I get it. There’s a lot of stuff beyond just the boat that you have to account for. Some more than others.

One thing I don’t have to do (that yacht owners do) is register the boat/yacht. That noise you heard last week was a team cheer that went up in our company chat room when our colleague, Kelly, discovered that Lexis Nexis is now featuring Watercraft as a searchable field.

LexisNexis says:

  [t]he Watercraft file contains Boat Registrations and Titles for 38 states (25 updating and 13 historical (including US Coast Guard Merchant Vessels)).

Updating coverage includes 25 states:

AK, AL, AR, AZ, CT, FL, GA, IA, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MS, MO, NE, NM, ND, OH, OR, TX, VA, WA, WI, and WY.

Historical coverage includes 13 states + U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Vessels:

CO, IL, MD, MN, MT, NV, NH, NY, NC, SC, TN, UT, WV, and US Coast Guard Merchant Vessels.”

So that’s exciting, eh? Even more exciting is that the records include (among other things) the owner’s name and mailing address; hull number; description (year, make, model and length); registration number, issue date, expiration date and status; title number; title status, title issue date and title type; and vessel make, use, year, type and length.

Most of those fields are searchable as well as some additional ones, like company name.

I know! Awesome, right?

But wait, there’s more

For due diligence research, you can search the US Coast Guard Maritime Information Exchange database to learn if there has been any contact between the Coast Guard and the vessel you’re researching – and what the nature of that contact was. It’s not a detailed report by any means, but I did learn that in 2015 a 38-foot pleasure craft called the ‘Monkey Business’ ran afoul of the Coast Guard in Washington, DC for being a pollution source. (That’s what dump stations are for, mateys).

Interested to learn more about a particular Super Yacht? Check out the database at SuperYachts. You can search by name of the craft or just browse through the entire database. In addition to the general specifications of the yacht, including the designer, builder, and dimensions, there are usually photos of the ship, information about the number of crew on board, and the name of the owner (if known).

What It Really Costs

Owning a superyacht takes a lot more than the couple of hundred bucks I plowed into peripherals for my kayak. I found these articles about the affiliated costs of yacht ownership to be a useful guide to understand that asset in context.

Lightening Round – useful boat-related sites

These five resources (and many more) can be found on the HBG Research Links pages, accessible through the free-with-registration portal on our website.

  • The folks at BoatInfoWorld have compiled a database of over 400,000 vessels, sortable, downloadable, and ranked by county, if you like. King County, WA wins the prize for most boats registered, in case you were wondering. It’s $20/month to access detailed information and use advanced search strategies, but if you search for boats a lot it might be worth it.
  • If you want to race a yacht, you have to register for the race. Check out Yachtscoring.com, where you can select a race, see which yachts are racing in it (“Current Entry List”), the name of each boat’s owner(s), home yacht club/home port, size of the yacht, and more.

What other resources do you find useful when researching yacht owners? Share them here in the comments for everyone to use.

By Leave a Comment

Alert and Prepared

Not long ago, a client confided to me that she was worried that her major gifts team was missing information about their top prospects. She fretted about a recent instance where information had come to light – six months too late – about a dear donor/volunteer that had sold their company to another for a significant amount of money.

Which, from a fundraising standpoint, we all know isn’t great. You’d rather know about these things in real time, or at the very least within the month.

What was worse was that the client felt like they’d missed the opportunity to celebrate with the donor. Selling their company was an event that the donor had mentioned with delight and anticipation – a new chapter was opening in their life. My client felt like the fundraising team had unwittingly blown it. Congratulating the donor half a year later felt lame and tainted with opportunism, which wasn’t the message they wanted to give. [Read more…]

By Leave a Comment

How to stand out in your next job search

“Red Leaves” Photo (c) Julie Kahn

Over the years I’ve been part of countless job searches. In fact, my first day at my first development job I helped the office manager conduct a search for a new major gifts officer at my alma mater, a state university.

Because it was a state job there were lots of legal hoops to keep track of, and I’ve always been grateful for that excruciatingly-detailed foundational experience. Since then I’ve helped numerous clients find great candidates and, more recently, had to engage in multiple searches myself as my company has grown.

I wanted to share some of the most important things I’ve learned as someone who has looked at lots of resumes and interviewed lots of candidates. There are definitely things you can do – and things you should avoid – to help you stand out in any job search. [Read more…]

ABOUT HBG

The Helen Brown Group was formed in 2002 with a goal to be different.

Allow me to explain my personal philosophy to you.

Latest Intelligent Edge Articles

Privacy Quick Links