prospect research Archives - Helen Brown Group

March 22, 2018 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

GDPR and you

This week’s article comes in the form of a podcast that I just recorded with two of the most knowledgeable and generous GDPR-whisperers that I know in the fundraising community, Adrian Beney of More Partnership and Nicola Williams of The Factary.

Click image to access the podcast

Both Adrian and Nicola have been researching and consulting with other experts to understand the law for months, and they’ve written many articles, have been speaking at loads of professional conferences, and have provided useful resource lists for all of us to find guidance on the General Data Protection Regulation that comes into effect on May 25^th. If the rest of us are not up on the new regulation, it’s not through any lack on their part to get the word out.

But because of that, they’re very busy people, so I was especially excited when they both said yes to a podcast interview. I know that you’re going to find the conversation we had to be well worth your time. I’m sincerely grateful to them for their generosity to our community, and for their willingness to be a resource to help nonprofits in the US figure all of this out.

GDPR Generally

As I’ve mentioned before, this is a European-based piece of legislation, but every company and nonprofit in the world will have to comply with it if they have EU-based constituents in their database. The GDPR regulates (amongst many other things) WHAT data you’re allowed to hold, HOW LONG you may hold it, and the WAYS you must communicate to your constituency their rights regarding that data. There are certain pieces of information you CANNOT hold in your database (without explicit consent), and many of them are demographic data we here in the US take for granted as being relatively harmless.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and fines for noncompliance will be steep: up to €20 million ($25 million) or 4% of an organization’s total revenue, whichever is greater.

If you’re unsure what GDPR is and how you should be ready, log in* to our learning media area to listen to this informative podcast with Adrian and Nicola. We’ve also included a number of useful resources with the podcast for further information.

*Registration to the Resource Library is free. It gives you access to a number of useful resources including podcasts, presentations, wealth lists, research resources, and our weekly newsletter. You will be asked for your name and email address. You may unsubscribe at any time and your information will not be retained.

March 8, 2018 By Helen Brown 2 Comments

March On: Celebrating Research Pride Month

What are some of the things you like best about fundraising and our professional community? One of the ways we are as successful as we are is because of the colleagues that help and teach us. This week in honor of Research Pride month, HBG’s Kristina Gropper shares some of her favorite things about fundraising intelligence and shows her gratitude to colleagues who have helped her along the way. Do you have Research Pride stories to share? Let us know if you post an article or blog and we’ll share it at the end of this article! ~Helen

March is prospect research pride month! 31 days dedicated to creating awareness and celebrating our efforts as prospect researchers. The month also marks my first anniversary at the Helen Brown Group, and it has been an amazing twelve months.

There is a wonderful closeness and comradery that I share with my fellow HBGers, which is truly ironic since most of us work remotely. I have gained so much knowledge and insight in my first year here. In the spirit of prospect research pride month, I wanted to share some key takeaways from my first year:

Ask your brain trust: At HBG, there’s a friendly, helpful, incredible team of researchers. I’ve relied on colleagues to help with everything from ranches in California (thanks, Heather Willis) to co-ops in New York (thanks, Kelly Labrecque and Kenny Tavares). It’s been great getting input from others helps to craft a stronger profile. Do you have a brain trust? What do you rely on them for?

Start or join a work book club: So far, the HBG Book Club has read David Callahan’s The Givers and Brooke Harrington’s Capital Without Borders. We are in the midst of Jake Bernstein’s Secrecy World. Having a weekly call to discuss these relevant tomes is a workout for my brain. The information gleaned from these discussions has already been applied to our profiles, and there’s palpable excitement when we read an interesting chapter (like Bernstein’s chapter on freeports).

Tweet and share: At HBG we are encouraged to participate in social media and contribute to the prospect research community online. I was shy at first, but then Rachel Dakarian hosted a training on Twitter, which made it less intimidating. By tweeting (and retweeting) and sharing articles and blog posts on LinkedIn, I’m contributing to the prospect research community instead of being a wallflower.

Get out there and do it: Rachel and I are presenting at Apra of Greater New York’s ProspectCon on March 16 (there are still spots available for the afternoon session, by the way). We’re both passionate about our topic: profiling ultra-high-net-worth individuals and wealth managers.

Wishing you all a month filled with pride and collaboration. We are a uniquely supportive profession, and this month is a great time to celebrate our accomplishments and teamwork!

Research Pride articles

Marianne Pelletier of Staupell Analytics shares her pride as the middle generation of a multi-generational family of researchers – three different professions, one super-sleuth trait – in My Bourne Legacy.

Crystal Leochko’s article, #ResearchPride for Life, is a celebration of her path to prospect research, the mentors who helped her build a career, and the great resources new researchers can use to strengthen their skills.

February 22, 2018 By Helen Brown 7 Comments

Worth a Listen

Except for the few of us who work at our main office in Watertown, most everybody at HBG works from home. One of the (many) nice things about that is that you can listen to podcasts without bothering anyone else in the office (except maybe your furry 4-legged office-mates). [Read more…]

February 15, 2018 By Helen Brown 2 Comments

Freeports: The Purgatory for Art

As the HBG Book Club group read about tax-free zones called freeports last week in Jake Bernstein’s page-turner, Secrecy World, it was a perfectly-timed coincidence that this fascinating Planet Money podcast came out on that very topic. [Read more…]

January 11, 2018 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Mass Millions 2017; The year in major gift philanthropy

By Alexrk2 (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Back in the early 2000s my team and I started a database of gifts of $1 million or more by individuals or family foundations to nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts.

A million-dollar donation was still fairly noteworthy 15 years ago, but in recent years the figure to hit for exceptional giving (and website PR announcements) has crept up to $10 or even $20 million for medium-to-large organizations. [Read more…]

January 4, 2018 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Innovation in Philanthropy

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

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

December 14, 2017 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Rock Solid

This past year has been enough to make anybody’s head spin. What would have been the normal amount of news in one of 52 average pre-2017 weeks has been crammed into 341 news cycles of increasingly elevated astonishment. Nearly every day feels to me like watching a piranha feeding frenzy in the Amazon.

Will we end up losing our capacity to relax? Or to believe that we aren’t just missing something in our newsfeed if we don’t immediately see evidence that something shocking has happened overnight? [Read more…]

November 9, 2017 By Helen Brown 2 Comments

Trouble in Paradise

Over a year ago, an anonymous “John Doe” sent an encrypted message to a newspaper in Germany called Süddeutsche Zeitung. The conversation unfolded like this:

That 2014 cache of data, the equivalent to about 38,000 average-sized books, make up what became known as the Panama Papers.

It’s a trove of documents obtained from the files of a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca, which helped create shell companies and other complex financial instruments in order to assist companies and individuals to evade paying tax in their home countries.

Journalists from nearly 100 news outlets around the world in a collaboration called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) worked together nonstop for months under tight security and complete secrecy. [Read more…]

November 2, 2017 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Creating a DIY wealth spreadsheet

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

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

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