Helen Brown Group

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Looking Back with Pride, Moving Forward with Purpose

By: Rick Snyder, Senior Consultant

Rick Snyder

Rick Snyder

In my last post, I wrote about how I landed in research, why I stuck around, and the pride and fulfillment I’ve felt in my career. Now, two years later, I’m back to say that nothing has changed. I still think I have one of the coolest jobs in the world and I continue to get satisfaction from helping some wonderful organizations do great work. I still enjoy it and (usually) don’t mind going to work each day.

When I wrote that love letter to research, I was feeling particularly introspective and nostalgic about my career. I’ve continued to jot down my thoughts and reminiscences since then, knowing that I’d be back here again someday. These musings about my experience as a researcher all have contributed in some way to my overall feeling of job satisfaction and pride in my work.

Long, long ago…

When I fell into this job 30 years ago prospect research was still a rather new profession, having started maybe a decade earlier. It was a very different job then in a number of ways, particularly in terms of the resources we have. We take for granted the ease with which we can do our jobs today. The tools we accept as the norm now didn’t exist and were hardly imaginable. When I started in research, Google had yet to be founded. Take a moment and think about how you would do your job without something as basic as a search engine. Today’s indispensable resources and websites will eventually be quaint artifacts and tomorrow’s haven’t even been thought of yet.

Most of the research we did early on came from print media. If we didn’t have it on the office shelf we went to the library. We relied on sources like the Directory of Corporate Affiliations, Who’s Who, The Blue Book, and The Social Register. The biggest horror, at least for an introvert like me, was having to call assessors’ offices to get property values. They weren’t available online yet and there wasn’t even a hint of something like Zillow. Even though property information is supposed to be public, imagine calling an office in a small, rural town where everyone knows everyone else and having the clerk get testy and grill you on why you’re asking.

Ask any of us old-timers about using a service called DIALOG and watch us grimace. It was one of the earliest online databases of news and reference resources, available primarily in academic libraries. It was clunky to navigate and had an arcane structure. Each resource had a different cost to access, and it wasn’t always clear what that cost was. It was not at all unusual to poke around trying to find something, often coming up empty-handed, then discovering that your five-minute search literally cost hundreds of dollars. It still makes me shudder.

A week or so ago I saw an article that made me stop and think – a list of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. Rather unremarkable, right? What gave me pause wasn’t the content, but recalling how much excitement a list like this generated back when I started out. It was one of the key tools we used in prospecting. I can probably still name the top 20 towns off the top of my head. It may still have some utility, but we have better, more powerful tools at our disposal now. A vivid reminder was provided recently when a vendor did a product demo for us and with a few mouse clicks was able to deliver information that would take hours to do manually. Imagine you’ve been building a house using a handsaw and you’re suddenly given a power saw to use. The end result would be the same with either tool, but one helps you get there a heck of a lot easier.

While online resources and services have made our work far easier, we’ve also been fretting for just as long about them making our jobs irrelevant. The reason it hasn’t happened yet is that human input and intervention still add value to what we do. Even though database screening and data analysis have evolved and improved dramatically over the years, it still requires our skill to work with the results. Imagine handing over raw screening results to your frontline staff. Hilarity will ensue. What about AI? How will that impact our work? Is it going to be another resource in our toolbox or is it going to make our jobs redundant? Are we fighting a losing battle against the machines? I want to believe not. My hope is that no matter how good it gets, we are still going to be indispensable. It’s incumbent on us to prove that we are. A vital part of our job is providing context and analysis. Keep that front and center.

And now…

What do these reflections on the good old days have to do with Research Pride, you ask? Each of these things has added to my collective, accumulated experience. Whenever I look back at it, I’m reminded how much I’ve always loved what I do. If I’d spent 30 years in a static environment, I doubt I’d be writing this now. But this profession has evolved repeatedly over the years, keeping it fresh and interesting. Helen wrote in a recent post that the work we do is an integral part of a solid development operation and we should take pride in our contributions to that. The methods we use have changed, but what we provide – actionable intelligence – has remained as essential as ever. I’m proud of the skill set I’ve developed and that I’ve been able to use it to help numerous organizations do great work. I’ve been learning constantly from the first day until now. As a curious person, there’s great satisfaction found in coming across new things. This job delivers that nearly every day.

And finally, two years ago I wrote that I’d been feeling introspective due to seeing my retirement coming in the not-too-distant future. Well, that future has crept even closer. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I will be taking some form of retirement – partial, full or something else – this fall. I’ll mark my 20th anniversary with the Helen Brown Group in October and it seems like a fitting time for me to transition into something different. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my career – where I am and how I got here – and I can gladly say that I’ve enjoyed and have been proud of the journey. I hope that all of you are able to find similar satisfaction in your careers.

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Research Matters

A circular waterfall at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Water cascades from a round skylight in a ceiling. It is lit up from beneath. On the wall behind is a quote from Sam Cooke: "A change is gonna come."Every March we celebrate Research Pride/Prospect Development Month, a time to reflect on and celebrate our profession’s growth and importance in the Third Sector.

It’s a perfect time to advocate for our profession by demonstrating that our work, done well, significantly impacts our organization’s bottom line and operational efficiency. Here are just a few ways we do this:

  1. We make a significant impact on a nonprofit’s fiscal success by keeping the focus on the best potential sources of funding. That description “best” may change from moment to moment, and it’s our job to figure out (or participate in the process of knowing) what “best” means at any time. It may mean the funders for a particular stage in a campaign, or yearly cycle, or specific portfolio. It may mean that we focus on parents, or board nominees, or most recent donors, or donors that have given consistently for many years. We may concentrate on local companies or national foundations or donor advised fund advisors. Our job is to be able to see what our nonprofit needs now and in the future through a wide-angle lens and be skilled on delivering the details that will help make that happen.
  2. We help frontline fundraisers build relationships. We do this by finding commonalities of interest between volunteers, staff, and potential donors. Or someone who has demonstrated a determination to fix a particular problem that we solve. Or by finding partnerships, friendships, and family relationships that can help us be introduced to someone who will mutually benefit from hitching their wagon to our star.
  3. We help build a pipeline of new sources of funding. We do this by paying attention to people raising their hands quietly – by increasing their giving annually, or posting their appreciation for our nonprofit on social media, volunteering to help out, or by making an unexpected donation at a “whoa” level without being asked. We may use analytical tools to uncover patterns, or services from an external vendor to build the framework of great lists. Our creativity capitalizes on multiple possibilities to strengthen and diversity our funding streams.
  4. We help protect our nonprofits from bad actors, bad relationships, and bad deals. Nobody wants to be the subject of a New York Times exposé on a nonprofit that didn’t do their homework vetting a gift from an individual or company. Prospect researchers develop a spidey sense in this line of work based on facts, half-facts, and no facts they find on prospective donors. Due diligence is a reputation-saver to avoid bad alliances, and it’s imperative for organizations that work with protected groups like children or where conflicts of interest would repel potential funders.
  5. We help our nonprofits stay legally compliant. Ten years ago, no one had heard of GDPR, and now organizations that have any kind of international constituency are fluent in its requirements. Who brought these to the attention of nonprofits? Prospect researchers did. We and our colleagues in Data and Records also stay up on compliance for HIPAA, FERPA, CCPA and all the rest of the data-protection alphabet soup of requirements.
  6. We keep the systems that support efficient fundraising well-oiled and functioning. Our goal is to make sure that frontline fundraisers have the right portfolios for each moment, and that those portfolios are constantly and dynamically changing, updating, and improving. It’s not an easy job, and it’s a lot like Tetris: pieces falling in quick succession that need to be put in place, and moved frequently so that there are no overlooked pieces or ill-fitting areas.

I know that there must be more ways that I’m just not thinking of at the moment, and if you’ve gotten to this article via LinkedIn, I hope you’ll go back there and add points in the comments that I’ve missed.

Research Pride Month is also a good time to recommit personally and as a profession to excellence in performance of our work; to passing down the best practices of the current time to our peers and the next generation of professionals; to advocating for ourselves and our profession to leadership; and to volunteering in service to our profession as chapter board members, conference speakers and track volunteers, and mentors.

Happy Pride Month!

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The Wilhelm Scream

I can guarantee you’ve heard it many times, even if you don’t know that you have. The Wilhelm Scream has been used in over 200 movies and tv shows, including every single Star Wars and Indiana Jones movie. Once you’re aware of it, you’ll start to recognize it everywhere.

Here are a bunch of fun movie-clip examples from movies and tv shows where it was used again and again over the years.

The Wilhelm Scream is a long-running Hollywood in-joke, like Hidden Mickeys and Easter Eggs in films, tv shows, computer games, and websites. Some movie and tv series wouldn’t dream of not including it – it’s a cheeky and gleeful exercise for the cast, crew, and post-production teams and a joyful treasure hunt for true fans to find. “It’s become like a ‘Where’s Waldo’ thing” that’s still used to say “hello” to other sound editors who are paying attention,” says Hollywood Sound Museum founder (and sound editor) Steve Lee.

A friend mentioned The Wilhelm Scream to me a few days ago, and it led me to thinking about our work (not the screaming part. Necessarily). We have lots of things in fundraising that are “inside baseball,” like acronyms (GDPR, LYBUNT, HIPAA), report templates, and even simple words like ‘prospect’ and ‘development’ and ‘advancement’. No one outside of fundraising would understand them unless we explained them. They’re terms that both include and exclude. Comfort and confuse. But when we hear them away from work, we recognize fellow travelers.

How can we use a Wilhelm Scream-style nugget in our work?

When we think about bits that we can insert into profiles, process documents, manuals, or even the dreaded event briefing, what do (or could) we add to them that would bring delight and commonality in the end-user’s discovering?

What might those things be? Take a second now, if you would, to just think about that for yourself. I’ll wait.

We all want our work to be read, and used, and useful. And the one thing we dread is doing a whole lot of work, only for it to sit on a shelf, unread. (That silent sound you hear from an unread profile is definitely a scream, but not the (in) kind I’ve been talking about).

Maybe you want to create a new section in a briefing, specifically designed to hold the best bits. It might not even be the same thing every time, depending on the entity you’re researching or the information you’re presenting, or the end-user you’re delivering to. Different people might be thrilled with different things.

Maybe you add connection points.

Or life-changing moments that impacted the donor’s philanthropic priorities.

Or shared values or backgrounds that resonate both with a fundraiser and donor.

Consider, for this new year: what is something you could design specifically to delight an end user…that would also bring you a cheeky joy to create and deliver?

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A Field Guide to Prospecting Within Your Database

By: Jennifer Turner, Senior Consultant

      Jennifer Turner

Over the years, I’ve written several blog posts about prospecting. The focus of these posts has always been identifying new prospects when you don’t have an existing database to rely on. You might think that if you have a database, your job is done for you. For example, do you need to assign a new gift officer a portfolio? No problem – just pull some names from your database! But wait – the database contains thousands of names!

So how do we ensure that we are finding the best names possible? Furthermore, how do we make sure there aren’t any hidden gems slipping through the cracks?

Here are some steps you can take to make sure you are identifying the top names from the thousands of possibilities:

  1. Constantly check to see who is making new gifts. This can be done daily or weekly. Pay special attention to first time givers. Spend a few minutes quickly assessing how much they can give, even if their first gift is only a small amount. Sure, it may be easy to overlook a prospect who gives your organization only $100 to start, but maybe they are starting out small as a “test” to see how your organization handles stewardship. They may, in fact, be sitting on piles of wealth, but don’t want to invest in your organization too quickly. Added bonus: It’s nice being one step ahead of your gift officer by making them aware of the donor’s potential before they even have a chance to acknowledge the new gift.
  2. One of my clients adds new batches of names to their database every couple of weeks (in batches ranging from 50-100 names). Part of my job is to scroll through these names to see if any standout as high net worth individuals. Don’t wait for these new prospects to (maybe) make a gift – flag them early on so your gift officer can start grooming them to make a gift later.
  3. Look for patterns in giving. Here’s where it helps to have a good relationship with your report pulling gurus. Perhaps this is something you can do on your own, but if not, ask your database team to pull some reports that seek to highlight giving trends. This could be something as simple as a list of prospects who have made gifts over the past five consecutive years. Don’t worry about the size of these gifts. In this case, we are looking at consistency as a means of demonstrating inclination and devotion to your organization. Maybe that prospect is only capable of making small gifts right now, but who knows what lies in their future? Maybe their company is about to go public. Maybe they come from a wealthy family and sit on the board of directors for the family’s personal foundation (which, with any bit of luck, will eventually be turned over to them). Either way, they’ve already proven their inclination to give to your organization and deserve taking a closer look at.
  4. Back to those database friends – how about creating a report that focuses on job titles? Ask for a list of anyone in the database with the title “CEO”, “President”, or “Owner.” Job title alone can be an indicator of wealth, thereby giving you a quick method of finding potential new prospects right at your fingertips.
  5. Sometimes I get asked to find new prospects in a specific geographic region based on a development officer’s travel itinerary. This can be a great opportunity to find additional high net worth individuals that may have been overlooked in the past. I continue to be amazed by the new names of wealthy prospects that surface using this method.

Not every researcher has access to a database which they can constantly use to find new prospects. However, those that are fortunate enough to have one (such organizations with alumni and grateful patients), cannot be complacent. It is still important to use as much thought and strategy when looking for new names within the database as you would if you were building a database of prospects from scratch. Think of it as looking for a needle in a haystack, only you have these strategies as threads to guide you!

 

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What scares me in fundraising and prospect research

So it’s Halloween! What would today be without a blog post that somehow appropriates a spooky theme!? If you came here hoping for cute and fluffy, here you go, but after this cutie I’m getting serious.

That said, there’s enough going on in the world right now that truly is scary, so don’t expect to run away gasping from this article. The scary stuff I’m going to talk about is all fixable.

Donor Attrition

The last two years have been really tough on our sector as we watch the numbers falling in terms of individual donors supporting nonprofits. According to data from the AFP-led Fundraising Effectiveness Project, donor retention hovers around 40%,  which sounds kind of okay until you realize that means that donor attrition is around 60%. Yikes.

That said, giving continues to increase (see Giving USA). Not as much as inflation, unfortunately, but $557.16 billion is still record giving.

What we see going up is donations to donor advised funds. Yes, we talk about DAFs a lot around here, but that’s because they’re just super important for everyone in nonprofits to understand and just a huge source of funding that is going overlooked.

Okay, so how do we deal with the attrition/retention problem?

First, if there’s a donor you want to keep, find out why they love your organization. Research them, survey them, talk to them. Then do something creative with that information that helps retain them.

Second, if you want to retain mid-level regular donors, consider this: 10% of all giving right now is going into donor advised funds, and that’s a figure that’s growing yearly by leaps and bounds.

Also, and maybe more importantly: The 2024 DAF Research Collaborative National Study on Donor Advised Funds reported that “DAFs are a mid-range philanthropic vehicle, accommodating contributions larger than typical household donations yet smaller than those establishing private foundations.

  • 38% of contributions fell within the $10,000 to $49,999 range.
  • 15% of contributions were in the $50,000 to $99,999 range.
  • 19% of contributions were within the $100,000 to $499,999 range.”

That’s nothing to sneeze at. And as we’re looking to retain and upgrade mid-level donors, that group is worth paying special attention to. But more than that:

DAFs are created specifically to give away money to nonprofits. Don’t make it hard for people to give to your nonprofit with their DAF! There are low-cost apps and widgets you can add to your website and fundraising emails that not only make it easy for donors to give but also provide you with all-important specific donor data so you can personally thank and research them.

Ignoring ASK ME signals from donors

When was the last time you checked donation acceleration?

What does that mean? For example, let’s say someone gives $25 in year one, $50 in year two, $75 in year three, etc. Maybe they’re increasing their giving because you asked them to, or maybe they’re just doing it on their own. Either way, these people are jumping up and down telling you they love your mission and want to support it. A simple data science project can help identify these awesome prospects for volunteer opportunities or increased giving.

And how about volunteers? Are you also asking them to give? There’s an organization that I love and volunteer for that Will. Not. Ask. Me. for a donation. I have no idea why (and I do give even though they don’t ask) but organizations should seriously ask people who love them for financial support in addition to sweat equity. You might get an upgrade…

Under supporting/under-utilizing prospect development

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of talking with hundreds of fundraising managers who are concerned that their prospect development team is under-performing. One of the things that scares me is when I hear, “Our research department doesn’t give us what we need.” “They’re not proactive.” “It takes forever to get anything back from Research,” or – scariest of all – “the information I get isn’t relevant/helpful.”

Yikes.

When I hear that, I like to dig down a little more.

Tell me, what’s the frontline fundraiser to research staff ratio?

What are the expectations (and budget) for continuing professional education?

What’s the budget for fee-based research and training on using the resources?

How often does Research attend development/major gifts planning/strategy meetings?

How often do you update research report templates?

How often do the researchers hear about the results of their work?

If I learn that there’s one researcher for every three fundraisers, an expectation that the researcher(s) will attend a professional conference at least every other year, and a research budget that includes a variety of fee-based resources, and/or a general disinterest from Research in strategic planning, then we start talking about remedial actions for the research team.

But (and let’s hope that I’m exaggerating here), if we’re talking about one researcher trying to meet the information needs of 7 fundraisers, 2 board volunteers, and the executive director with access only to free webinars and Google as their primary resource, then it’s time for The Talk with that fundraising manager.

Maybe this sounds like your nonprofit (or maybe just parts of it do). If you’re a fundraising leader, don’t be afraid to dig down a little further to find out if under-resourcing your prospect development team is hampering your ability to get the best information possible. Maybe it’s the people, or the systems in place, or the resourcing that needs to be fixed. Don’t be afraid to look into the issues when problems arise so they don’t get harder to deal with.

Fundraising intelligence is a critical system, like your database, your relationships with donors, and the services you provide to end users. If it’s running well, it’s going to be a whirlwind for you to keep up with, and I mean that in a good way.

AI

Okay, I saved the scariest for last. Artificial Intelligence.

I get scared when I read about reference librarians wasting hours trying to locate articles and books for patrons, or (worse?) journal articles for medical students, only to discover from the requestor that they got the recommendation from ChatGPT for a source that doesn’t exist.

Recently on a subreddit for librarians, two contributors had this to say:

We just had a student bring an entire list of books and articles that her professor recommended for her research, and not a single title on the list exists. We reached out to the professor and yep. She got the list from ChatGPT.”

I’m an academic librarian at a medical school and I get sent a fake article to find like once a week. It’s terrible. It’s not just the students either, I also cover the residents at the local hospital since the hospital got rid of their medical library and they are even worse about it.”

(yikes, if that’s not something that scares you, I don’t know what will)

Duke University librarians Hannah Rozear and Sarah Park had something to say about ChatGPT in their excellent article ChatGPT and Fake Citations, including: “Be wary of asking ChatGPT to summarize a particular source…” That’s important advice because summarizing is a big thing we’ve been encouraged to use these tools for.

If a tool you use to help you save time adds in fake information, well, that’s not adding value. It detracts from prospect research’s perceived value, which we as a profession have spent decades trying to build up.

Issues like this, at least at this point, certainly makes me and the HBG team think twice about the reliability of the resources we use, and the trust that frontline fundraisers put in the information that we provide.

Increasingly search engines are providing short-cut information that has been generated, inferred, interpreted, or just plain imagined by large learning models (LLMs). In some cases, we’re being fed data that has less reliability than a chocolate teapot, and it’s harder to spot what’s real and what’s not. I hope that the reliability will be increased, but right now that’s just not the case.

Last November Melissa Bank Stepno wrote a thought-providing article on alternative interpretations of AI in prospect research. As you consider the reliability of your sources and how to navigate using AI in your work, take a look at her advice again as an informed guide.

So those are the things that are scaring me right now in fundraising and prospect research. All fixable, with opportunities for positive change.

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Crafting a Meaningful Donor Profile: Connect with the Donor Behind the Dollars

by: Susan Barclay, Consultant

Susan Barclay

Profiles are the bread and butter of the prospect research world. We write them day in and day out. But, have you ever thought about what makes a good profile go from good to, well, great?

Say you’re like my colleague Karla Davis and you’ve been asked to research someone like This Guy. Your fundraiser has already had the initial visit with This Guy and is anxious to learn more, counting the moments until your profile is in their hands (or inbox). A good profile includes all the usual information, but what else can make it great?

A great prospect profile goes beyond the numbers; it delves into the prospect’s interests and values and presents a picture of the donor behind the dollars. It answers questions.

Let’s take a look at those different categories, shall we?

 

What’s in a Name?

First things first: always include the essential details. This includes the donor’s name, contact info, and affiliations.

But don’t stop there!

Make it a point to understand who they are beyond these basics:

  • What’s their background?
  • Who are their family members?
  • What led them to philanthropy?
  • What compels them to give?

By grounding your profile in personal details, you set the stage for a deeper connection.

Hint: Two of my favorite sources are LinkedIn (be sure to follow your organization’s social media policy) and Lexis Nexis for Development Professionals.

 

Uncover Their Philanthropic Interests

Let’s dig into what truly drives your donor. Research their giving history to spot patterns—this is where you can find insights that aren’t just about the size of their gifts but also about their values and priorities.

  • What causes are they passionate about?
  • Do you see a consistent history of giving to particular organizations, or are they one-time givers?
  • What are their most significant gifts?
  • Do you see any endowments, major gifts, multi-year gifts, or scholarships?
  • Are they involved with any organizations as a member of a board or as a trustee?
  • Do they serve as a volunteer in other capacities?
  • Do they support those organizations?
  • Have you run across any articles mentioning their involvement with non-profit organizations?

Hint: One of the first sites I always go to when looking for board involvement is ProPublica.

 

Analyze Their Giving Capacity

Look for wealth indicators—like properties or business ownership—but also consider their lifestyle.

  • Do they have an art collection, watercraft, horses, car collection?
  • What about public company securities?
  • Are there any assets held under their spouse/partner’s name or under an LLC?
  • Do you see evidence of a DAF, family foundation, or a family office?

Hint: DAFinitive® is a great tool to help you search for DAFs. It contains over 90,000 funds from over 700 DAF sponsors, with more being added every week!

 

Personal Insights Matter

This is where you really start to connect with the person behind the donations.

  • Can you find any personal anecdotes?
  • How about information on their hobbies, or passions?
  • Has the donor been featured in a local magazine or spoken at events?

Quotes or stories can provide a glimpse into what matters most to them. Occasionally a tiny nugget of information mentioned in an article about your donor can reveal a world of information you never expected.

Hint: My favorite resources here are to check out local publications and newspapers for your prospect’s hometown, as well as their alumni magazine and any trade journals within their business industry.

 

It’s Alive!

Finally, remember that donor profiles should evolve. Update them regularly with new information or changes in the donor’s status.

A dynamic profile ensures you always have the most relevant information at your fingertips, keeping the focus on the person rather than just the data.

Creating a detailed donor profile doesn’t need to be overwhelming or complicated. By keeping it simple, answering the immediate questions and focusing on the individual behind the donations, you can craft profiles that truly resonate.

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Ode to the Obituary – A Prospect Research Perspective

by: Maura Monley Baron, Consultant

Maura Monley Baron

Maura Monley Baron

From the beginning of my career as a researcher I have always been drawn to obituaries. Not only because they provide information essential to our work, but I also love the stories they tell and the generational history that can be learned from them.

I see obits as a window into the lives of individuals and families and the people, places, and things that they care about. Last December I worked with my family to write an obituary for a beloved family member. As a researcher, my first instinct was to be cautious with the amount of personal information shared because I know how researchers use this information, and I knew it could be used for identity theft.

However, as we started writing, I found myself letting go of my concerns and wanting to share because I was proud of my family member, and I wanted to tell their story. This experience advanced my appreciation for obituaries and inspired this blog post.

A Brief History of Obituaries

As I started working on this blog my first step was to do a little research about obituaries. In doing so I learned that obituaries have evolved from simple death notices to detailed narratives that tell the story of a person’s life.

The earliest known obituaries date back to ancient Rome. With the invention of the printing press, the newspaper industry boomed, and the tradition of publishing death notices continued. During the American Civil War newspapers published death notices for soldiers, which included biographical details. This practice helped communities keep track of the living and the dead, making obituaries a vital part of the public record.

By the late 20th century, obituaries had become more personal, including family stories and photographs. Today, obituaries are often published online, allowing for even more detailed memorials. Funeral home websites, and the platforms they utilize provide space for families to share photos, stories, and memories, creating a digital tribute and a valuable source of information for our research.

Sometimes you cannot find an obituary – which is frustrating – however my research informed me that obituaries are not a legal requirement, and certain religions and cultures may choose not to publish them for various reasons. Some families may opt not to publish an obituary due to privacy concerns, financial constraints (most newspapers charge by the word to print obituaries), or because the deceased requested not to have one.

Newspaper archives are the best place to find older obituaries and a subscription to Newspapers.com is helpful. Other resources include Legacy, Genealogy Bank, Family Search, Dignity Memorial, and Find a Grave.

Tips for Using Obituaries in your Research

The Basics

To be clear I do understand that a deceased person is not a good prospect. However, the obituary can confirm key information about a person’s life, including birth date and place, education, career, where they lived, and other life events. This gives you an overview of an individual and is useful for verifying information about surviving family members.

Generational Wealth

A “good” obituary can be one of your most valuable tools when working on a complex prospect with generational wealth. Most obituaries list surviving relatives, including spouses, children, siblings, and sometimes even grandchildren or great-grandchildren. This information can help you build family trees and identify connections between different branches of a family. I often find myself revisiting an obituary as I move through my research, and I like to keep the obit open in my browser for reference.

From the 1870s to the 1950s, in conjunction with the publication of an obituary was the practice of publishing details about a deceased person’s will and estate in newspapers. While this seems like an incredible invasion of privacy, I learned that during this period, newspapers were a primary source of information for the public, and legal notices, including probate notices, were often published as part of the public record. This was how surviving family members were notified of the contents of a will and provided a means for distant relatives to discover information about an inheritance (or a missed one). These articles, though not an obituary, will provide detailed information about how much family members inherited, including cash, securities, and real estate.

Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, February 12, 1944

So Much Can Be Learned from a Name

A middle name or even a middle initial can be very helpful for confirming a prospect with a common name. An obituary can also confirm where a prospect lives. By finding these additional details it will be much easier to confirm your prospect when you utilize research tools like LNDP, Kindsight, or ResearchPoint. I also look for a relative of my prospect with a less common name and search for that person on social media which can lead to more information about the family and the ability to confirm relationships.

Obituaries can be particularly helpful in identifying women’s maiden names. Often, I find an indication of generational wealth from first or middle names which identify a last name of a previous generation.

    Baltimore Sun, May 23, 1973

Finding Clues for Further Research

Obituaries detail community affiliations, such as religious organizations, professional associations, or social clubs. Sometimes they include information about where a prospect’s family has lived, including second homes, that may still be in the family. The name of a business found in an obituary can lead to the discovery of a current company and a history of stock ownership by the family. Following these leads often brings you to additional records and sources of information.

 

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 6, 1996

 

Sacramento Bee, April 15, 1952

Philanthropy

Obituaries also indicate organizations a person was affiliated with as an alum, board member, or volunteer. This may help you confirm gifts from your prospect to these organizations. Information about where a family directs memorial donations can confirm a family’s philanthropic interests or reveal significant donations recognized through naming opportunities. Sometimes a specific donor advised fund name is provided as well.

Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, February 1, 1995

In the End….

When using obituaries for research, it is important to remember that the information provided may not always be 100% accurate, as it is often provided by family members. Cross-referencing with other sources is always necessary for verification.

As with many things in prospect research the obituary will serve as a piece of a larger puzzle. A detail from an obituary may lead you down the road to finding information about your prospect that influences your rating or creates a connection to your organization. I feel most satisfied with my work when I can provide my client with a strong prospect in terms of capacity but also when I feel I have found evidence of a connection between the prospect and their family and the work of the organization, and an obituary often helps with both.

Obituaries have changed significantly from their simple beginnings to the detailed digital memorials of today. They continue to serve not only as a public record of death but also as a celebration of life.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for obituaries. Like all things their evolution will be influenced by the complex digital world we live in. As a human and a prospect researcher I hope they do not become obsolete as they are important to the process of grieving and provide an opportunity to tell the story of a life well lived while also being an indispensable resource.

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The Real Estate Quagmire

by: Melissa Bank Stepno, President & CEO

Real Estate is often the easiest asset for us, as prospect researchers, to identify.  After all, more people in the United States own a home than have any other type of clearly identifiable (and quantifiable) asset.  However, using real estate as an asset to estimate household wealth or capacity is not as simple as it seems.

The list of reasons is long and varied.  For example:

  • When was the property purchased?
  • How are you determining the “value” of the property, and which “value” are you using?
  • Is there an outstanding mortgage? If so, how much and what type of mortgage is it?
  • Where is the property located geographically?
  • Does the property have any special features such as a boat dock, ski-in-ski-out, sits on a private golf course, etc.?
  • How many properties does the prospect own? If there are multiple properties, are they personal/private residences, investment properties, rental properties, etc.?
  • Is the property owned solely by the individual or spouse/partner pair, or are their other listed owners, or is the property held in trust?
  • Generationally, how old is your prospect?
  • What else can you learn about the prospect that is not related to real estate holdings but may inform your interpretation of those properties?
  • And, if there are no identifiable real estate holdings, what else can you learn about their place of residence? Is it in a ‘high rent’ or exclusive building?  Do they appear to be living with relatives?  Are there any other pertinent details?

Each one of these questions could produce its own blog post.  For the purposes of today, we will focus on just two – when was the property purchased and generationally, how old is your prospect.

Now, it might seem obvious that someone in Gen Y could not have purchased a home in 1991 – they might not have even been born yet!  However, the situation could be significantly more subtle than that.

I fully admit that this is not a common scenario but I do know of at least one Gen Yer who did inherit his grandparents’ home via their family trust.  At first, he wasn’t very much interested in owning a home where it happened to be located.  But then he realized the financial implication of it and understood that it would set him up for a very different financial future than he had anticipated.  He decided that relocation wouldn’t be so bad after all.

In another scenario, this time a younger Gen X couple where the female partner  was gifted a condo in a large city upon college graduation from her wealthy parents and the male partner  inherited his grandmother’s rural estate in another region of the country.  As the couple started to grow their family, they sold both properties and used some of the proceeds to purchase an incredible family home in the suburbs.

While a rarity, in both of these instances, while still in their 20s, these two households owned their homes outright without any personal financial outlay and no mortgage!  Think about how much further their household dollars would go than their peers, whose largest monthly expense is likely their rent or mortgage.

Now of course, there is the age old (no pun intended) question in both cases is whether additional financial stability and a significant amount of discretionary income will translate into charitable dollars, but that is not the purpose of this blog post.

I also realize that both of these examples are outliers.

So instead, let’s look at home affordability over time for those in a more normal, or traditional, circumstance.

Colloquially, we probably all know that home prices have been on the rise in recent years.  In fact, the Federal Housing Finance Agency report for Q2 2024 stated that nationally, home prices have appreciated in value every year since 2012.  Quantitatively, home prices have risen 319% since 1991 and 58% just in the most recent 5-years.

This may sound great for homeowners!  And, some might say that it helps to create wealth in the country.  However, everyone needs a place to live so we must add one additional layer to provide context.  That layer is home affordability.

To put it simply, the rate that household income is increasing over time is not keeping pace with the rise in home prices.

To be more specific, in that same time period since 1991 where home prices have risen a median of 319%, Median Household Income has only risen 167.5%.  So to use rough math, home prices have increased twice as much as household income.

The same is true over the most recent 5-year period when comparing the 58% increase in home prices to the 27.5% increase in household income.

Historically, home prices are rising roughly 2x faster than income.

Yes, for some, the rise in home prices might be creating wealth.  But, more commonly, the rise in home prices is creating an affordability challenge.

From a housing affordability perspective, a common metric is that a household should not spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs.  Typically, this doesn’t just include mortgage (or rent) but also includes things like property taxes and utilities.

A 2023 study reported that nearly 1 in 4 homeowners are “house poor,” meaning they are spending more than this 30% benchmark on housing costs.

Unfortunately, while impacting every generation, this phenomenon typically impacts younger generations more heavily than older generations, such as the Baby Boomers.  It’s also one of the many socio-economic reasons why the rate of homeownership is lower in younger generations.

So, what’s a researcher to do?

Most simply stated: we must look beyond a simple real estate “value” to determine capacity.   Refer to the top of this blog post to see the checklist of questions I propose you ask yourself.  And, stay tuned to the Intelligent Edge as I plan to dig into some of these in future blog posts!

***

Image Credit: “Houses on dollar bills” by Images_of_Money is licensed under CC BY 2.0. 

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Building Your Own Brain Trust

Debbie Olley

Debbi Olley

It’s always a good time to take stock of your resources and build community so that you have help when you need support. One thing I love about prospect development folks is that we are an incredibly generous and helpful bunch, eager to share resources, techniques, and valuable advice from experience. This week we’re so pleased to share words of wisdom from HBG’s Debbi Olley who gives great advice on building your own brain trust. ~Helen

Here at the Helen Brown Group, I’m beyond fortunate to have a team of experienced, responsive fellow researchers who are always open to questions. We have a chat group where we’re able to pose all sorts of questions, ranging from valuing real estate to assessing business ownership and everything in between. Because the brain trust is my go-to when I may feel stuck, I’ve become somewhat spoiled. And so, while thinking about a good topic for a blog post, I realized that focusing on ways to create your very own brain trust could be helpful. I have the following suggestions for making sure you have some go-tos of your own if you need help with your own questions:

Professional organizations

I hesitate to lead with this, because it seems so obvious, but a great place to start is with your own community of researchers. This is especially true if you’re in a solo shop (as I have been in the past), and need some feedback on a question or issue. So, if you’re not already a member of Apra and/or one of its chapters, now is the perfect time to join! By the time this piece is published, Prospect Development 2024 will have come and gone, but you can still take advantage of everything the group has to offer via membership, including opportunities for networking, education, and resources. When you join a chapter, you’ll also be able to attend programs and learn more about a host of relevant topics. And one of Apra’s longest-running resources, PRSPCT-L, is a fabulous place to ask (and answer!) pressing questions in our field.

Subject-specific Sources

When I have my own questions as a researcher, it can be tempting to just “google it,” like the rest of the world. That can work, of course, but when you’re building your own brain trust, it also makes sense to have your own subject-specific sources on hand, especially if you want to go deeper and educate yourself.

When it comes to finance, for example, I have a few favorites myself. Investopedia has a thorough dictionary of financial terms and also gives you an opportunity to subscribe to its term-of-the-day newsletter. Those newsletters may be a bit distracting when you’re in the middle of a time-sensitive project, but even a cursory look may teach you something you never knew. Even a basic overview, like this beginner’s guide on the SEC website, can be a helpful introduction or refresher, depending on your level of expertise. Thanks to HBG, I learned about Mergers & Acquisitions, a great resource for financial information, after I came on board. Again, it’s a great opportunity to educate yourself on all sorts of financial topics. I’m choosing to focus on financial information simply because it can stymie me, but for a good overview of subject-specific sources, check out this March 2024 blog post from my HBG colleague, Kelly Labrecque.

Related to finance is compensation information. I’m going to refer to yet another incredibly helpful blog post from my HBG colleague, Tara McMullen-King, who covered this topic just about a year ago. When I feel a brain trust question coming on about private equity, for example, I try to check a compensation survey first before reaching out to our crew. I know I keep a list of compensation resources bookmarked, and I assume you probably do, too. Financial information and compensation are just two examples of subject-specific sources; other subjects for gathering information include due diligence, international research, and prospect management.

Mentorship

Let’s face it: when you’re trying to build your own brain trust, a list of sources and resources is an obvious good start. But in referring back to the start of this article, other people truly are your best bet. And yes, it won’t surprise you to recall that my colleague Anne Melton covered this topic in her blog post. Here at HBG, new hires are paired up with a buddy who can answer questions about the organization, workflow, and, of course, their own thoughts on go-to resources for getting answers. I would have been lost without my own mentor in the field when I first became a prospect researcher, and we’re still very good friends today.

The Brain Trust: Just Ask!

One thing that’s become abundantly clear to me over my time in this field is that other people who do what we do are almost unfailingly eager to help others. And so, when you build your own brain trust, know that you can always reach out and ask for help! That’s one reason it’s always a good practice to introduce yourself to presenters at conferences, or even plan to set up informal gatherings in your field of interest before you arrive. We all seem to have an abundance of curiosity in our field, so keep your focus on always learning and picking up tips along the way. I’ve been spoiled by HBG’s brain trust for sure, but I hope this serves as a guide to creating your own. Have fun and if you can bear my referring to still another HBG blog post, keep your focus on learning something new! As we know, lifelong learning is an important aspect of keeping our own brains healthy and active.

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“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

Ah Summertime! It’s a great time to take time to recharge your batteries. But it’s also a great time to to recharge your prospect research activities as well – getting ready for the year ahead. Whether you’re gearing up for a campaign or just a busy fall ahead, Grace Chandonnet has some wonderful suggestions of projects to tackle now to help your future self. Happy summer! ~Helen

Grace Chandonnet

         Grace Chandonnet

As a kid, summer was the most anticipated season – sleeping in a bit, staying up a little later, lightened responsibilities, and more time for fun. It’s a bit different as a working adult, but even so, the pace of life – and work – does slow down a bit during the summer for many of us.

So why not take advantage of fewer deadlines, a lighter workload, and clients, colleagues and bosses taking some time off, by tackling those “someday” projects and tasks that you never have time for the rest of the year. In addition to switching up what your work is like for a little while, you just might set yourself up for success when the busy season inevitably starts in September.

In our profession, there are lots of ways we can use this time to help out our future selves while also having a sense of real time satisfaction. I surveyed my colleagues at HBG for some of their/their clients’ wish list items and I’ve included a couple of my own.

Database Hygiene – We all run across things (or the lack of things) in our databases that we wish were “cleaner” but often just move on to what is pressing in the moment thinking we will get back to cleaning things up at some amorphous future date. Why not dive into your database and tackle tasks like deduping records, being sure that all assigned prospects have capacity ratings, batch updating addresses, and adding phone numbers and email addresses to skimpy records? A clean database makes for a happy prospect intelligence professional, because we all know that if it isn’t in there, or if it is in there incorrectly, it doesn’t exist.

Research Refresh – One forward-looking client is interested in having full profiles completed for their top prospects now, in anticipation of being ready to go when the organization’s president’s calendar starts filling up with meetings in the fall. All that will be required will be a quick refresh when the meeting is imminent. If a pile of full profiles to complete seems too ambitious for one summer season, you could always review recent philanthropy and new board appointments for your trustees, top donors, and other partners, and brief the relevant fundraiser on anything especially interesting that you find. And while you’re in those database records, take the extra few minutes to update information as outlined above!

Proactive is the Name of the Game – Now might be a good time to undertake some proactive work.

  • Do you have a sense as to what priorities your organization will be turning toward this autumn?
  • Can you undertake some prospecting to identify a few new potential donors to those priorities?
  • Can you start a process for screening new donors (of an amount that makes sense for your organization), to quickly assess their capacity, their potential inclination to become closer to your org, and how to engage them?
  • Do you have some screening credits with any of your vendors that you could use to screen some subset of your database, and then use some of your time to validate the results?
  • How about checking out those folks who are checking out your organization on social media?

Prospect Management – Setting your fundraisers up for success is tantamount to setting yourself up for success. Maybe you could spend some time working with fundraisers, whose workload might also be lighter this season, on optimizing their portfolios. Having the right prospects and the right number of prospects in a portfolio is an effective way to eliminate frustration for fundraisers, and to ensure that time is being spent on the people who are going to move your organization forward.

Professional Development – With your supervisor’s blessing, this could be a suitable time to enroll in a course or workshop that you’ve been wanting to tackle. If the subject matter contributes to the advancement of your career, all the better. You might also consider joining a board or otherwise volunteering for your favorite cause to take advantage of the longer days and (hopefully) your increased energy because of a little less stress at work this season.

The Feel Good Stuff – Okay, it is summer, and some part of that should be about things that make you happy right now, and that you might neglect during the busiest times. Presumably, everyone is breathing a little easier at the moment – why not ask a colleague or two if they’d like to take a lunchtime walk on a pretty summer day and get to know them a little better? Or invite a few colleagues for a Thursday evening happy hour? Focus on people who have a different job description than you do, like a frontline fundraiser or the IT person who drops everything to write the query you need. I have found that working with people whom I know and like makes my days better and happier, and everyone has something interesting to say. Your colleagues will be glad you invited them.

And don’t forget to take that vacation or staycation and recharge your batteries! As author and journalist Charles Bowden wrote: “Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

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