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February 14, 2019 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

A lot to love

There’s a lot to love about fundraising intelligence (aka prospect development), which, for those of you who are new to the term, is comprised of prospect research, prospect management, due diligence, and fundraising data science.

In research, each profile we build is a love letter, of sorts, to the donor prospect we’re writing about. We gather the information carefully. Ethically. Lawfully.

We are curious and diligent. We pull every loose thread.

We paint the individual, company, or grant-giver in their best possible light in profiles. We shine them up and present our diligent work like a bouquet.

Especially if the prospect is someone we found through our own efforts, we want them to be chosen to be asked to join our nonprofit in doing the extraordinary. Pick this one! She’s going to be a great partner for us!

If it’s due diligence we’re doing, we research to protect something else we love – the reputation and future well-being of our nonprofit. Our research then is personal; we are the stakeholders protecting all the other stakeholders. Watch out for this one – they could bring trouble.

In fundraising data science, our love of puzzles and patterns and queries and questions helps us surface the very best amongst the previously hidden. We love finding whole new swathes of possibility. These are the ones with potential – let’s show them some love.

We put our hearts into prospect management, too, because we want our frontline fundraisers to be the most successful they can be. So we shuffle portfolios like cards, pulling the aces, kings and queens of hearts up to the top for them, moving the twos and threes for later.

As I’ve said many times before, though, the main thing I love about fundraising intelligence is our brilliant, smart, vibrant community and our willingness to share, show, and tell each other the innovative things we’re doing. As you may remember, March is prospect development pride month, and this year I wanted to shine a special spotlight on women in our field who are doing cutting-edge work.

The focus of our Research Pride Month special spotlight this March will be prospect management. Our star bloggers are going to talk about why a strong prospect management system is so important; how to start one from scratch; critical metrics to have in a more established system; and how to fix a broken prospect management system and make it work again.

I’m delighted to welcome to the Intelligent Edge contributors Jessica Balsam from the University of Washington (March 7), Janna Holm from the Trust for Public Land (March 14), Misa Lobato from the University of Colorado (March 21), and Lisa Howley from the University of Southern California (March 28).

Their knowledge and experience will bring you great ideas and new ways to think about starting or improving your prospect management system.

I hope you’ll make a special effort to read, comment, and share their articles with your colleagues. I’m sure you’re going to get a lot out of each article, and I can promise there will be a lot to love.

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Relationship management, Research Department Success, Strategic planning Tagged With: #ResearchPride, Janna Holm, Jess Balsam, Lisa Howley, Misa Lobato, prospect development, prospect management, relationship management, Research Pride

March 1, 2018 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

Olympic-Sized Appreciation: #ResearchPride

The past two weeks, there’s been a whole lot of Olympics-watching in my household. You too? I don’t know what it is about curling, I don’t even care who’s throwing the stones, I will watch it. (and GO Team USA-men on your gold medal!).

The same goes for ice dancing (did you see those smokin’-hot Canadians?? Wow!) and figure skating. I honestly can’t tell the difference between a lutz, a toe loop, and a Salchow, but the fact that they nail the landing 9/10s of the time is just astonishing.

It was while watching the fortnight highlight farewell review by the NBC Olympic Ice commentators – Scott Hamilton, Liam McHugh and Tanith White – that one of them said in closing how grateful they were to their off-camera research team for helping them be as informed and prepared as they were. That they couldn’t have done their job without them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Campaign Success, Research Department Success Tagged With: #ResearchPride, Research Pride

December 29, 2016 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

The most popular articles of 2016 from The Intelligent Edge

I’m going to get to the top posts of 2016 in just a second, but as we bid goodbye to 2016 – a rollercoaster year if ever there was one – we at The Helen Brown Group wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

To our clients, thank you for making 2016 our best year yet. Your missions – and your personal dedication to them – inspire us to do our best work for you. Our appreciation also goes out to the kind folks who point others in our direction – grateful thanks for your referrals.

To our 1,200+ Intelligent Edge subscribers and to the readers who drop by, thanks for signing up, for reading, and for your comments, both on and offline. Two years ago, our mailing list comprised 65 hearty souls! We couldn’t be prouder of the way our readership has grown or thank our wonderful guest bloggers enough. Thank you.

We also really appreciate our vendor partners, who make the great tools we use and who share our commitment to using quality information to make the world a better place.

And to our colleagues in the prospect development community – thank you so much for your support and for the part you play in building and growing this wonderful profession.

And now, to our top five… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Most popular, Non-profit trends Tagged With: Amelia Aldred, APRA North Texas, Elizabeth Roma, Factary, Heather Hoke, Jen Filla, Matt Farrow, Namrata Padhi, Nicola Williams, prospect research, Research Pride, Rick Snyder, T. Clay Buck, top 5 of 2016

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