The Intelligent Edge - Helen Brown Group

August 26, 2021 By Helen Brown

The overlooked generation

There’s a puzzle that I’m trying to figure out. Maybe you’ve got some insight and can help me.

When I got started in my career in prospect research, it didn’t take me long to figure out that we were concentrating on people (okay, mostly men) who were in their 40s to 70s. These were the donors who were in their prime earning years or recently retired, finally able to spend their spare time on volunteering and their spare cash on donating.

We didn’t ignore their kids, of course, but since there’s only so much time in the day, it was the Boomers that got the majority of our prospect identification and research attention. It’s just Sutton’s Law.

So, okay, those Boomers are aging out of prime giving now. Most are now fully in retirement mode, so it makes sense that we look to the next generation who are in their prime earning years or recently retired.

In the press (fundraising and general audience), you can’t open a newspaper or magazine without seeing articles like Millennials And Charitable Giving: A New Approach To Philanthropy, How Millennials Are Changing Philanthropy, and How to Appeal to Millennial Supporters.

Which is great.

But that’s not the next generation after the Boomers. Gen Xers are.

Mackenzie Scott’s generation. And Jennifer and David Risher’s. Also Pam and Pierre Omidyar. John and Laura Arnold. And probably at least half of the donors who are giving large gifts to your nonprofit right now. They’re Xers. Not Millennials.

In fact, when you look at the Forbes list of 25 most philanthropic billionaires, there are only two Millennials on that list and they’re married to each other – Zuckerberg and Chan.

Sure, Boomers and Gen Xers are giving more in terms of dollars ($732 and $1,212 per year, respectively),” writes Justin Wheeler in Forbes, “but at an average of $481 given each year, Millennials are quickly gaining influence over the philanthropic space (source: The Next Generation of American Giving, 2018).

Considering that Millennials earn less than their counterparts did and are often riddled with student debt, years away from owning a car or a home, these numbers are significant. If people become more generous over their lives and are more likely to give if their parents give, Millennials will become the most generous generation in history. One can easily imagine this reaching 95 or even 100 percent by the time they reach midlife.”

So let me get this straight: Boomers and Xers are giving about twice as much per year right now, but we should be paying special attention to this generation that’s riddled with student debt and years away from owning homes? Who graduated college smack in the middle of the Great Recession and then, just as they were getting their feet under them, had to live through another economic tank-a-thon, with a pandemic thrown in for good measure?

Honestly, can we just give them a break for a few years? And (thanks for being patient on my getting to the point here) why exactly is the press (as well as several fundraising conference sessions) focused on Millennials to the exclusion of Gen Xers?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that Millennials are not philanthropic and that they don’t volunteer and that they’re not super-involved with nonprofits and/or that we should ignore them.

It just seems that Millennials are the press’s shiny object and, for some reason, despite all of their truly radical global-changing philanthropy we’re not talking about Gen X as the great philanthropic generation they are.

I mean, great Scott, look at them! Melinda Gates is an Xer, too!

According to a report by Fidelity Charitable, Gen Xers volunteer 8 hours on average per month (Millennials 9 and Boomers 6).

57% of Millennials say they give to a broad range of causes, while 63% of Gen X focus their giving on a limited number of nonprofits. Maybe Millennials are still looking for that special cause or two that they want to devote their time to, but what that says to me is, if you have a Gen X donor/volunteer involved with your nonprofit, chances are you will have them for life if you pay attention to them and steward them right.

Also, Gen X donors are more focused on their local communities, according to Fidelity Charitable. So for prospect identification purposes, that provides some helpful geographical focus for you to consider, too.

In prospect development, we have to remember Sutton’s Law. Today’s shiny objects may well be tomorrow’s philanthropists, and, yes, we should always keep our eyes on the periphery and pull it into focus over time. But we need to stay focused on what will work for our nonprofits now, and keep the philanthropic power generation in focus. Because that’s where the money is.

August 5, 2021 By Helen Brown

There’s No Business Like Show Business

This week we welcome HBG Senior Researcher and LA resident Mandi Matz to the blog to talk about all things Hollywood – and in particular, movie magic and money. Mandi provides us with some great resources for finding compensation and deeper financial information on everyone involved in bringing entertainment to our screens, large and small. ~Helen

Mandi Matz

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for more than 15 years. While I’m not originally from LA, I think of it as my adopted home now. When I meet people from other states and mention where I live, I inevitably get asked two questions:

Do I go to the beach every day?
Do I see movie stars all the time?

The answer to both questions is “no,” but I did recently see a Hollywood A-lister at my local coffee shop.

In addition to honing my celebrity-spotting skills after all these years, I’ve spent a lot of time researching prospects in the entertainment industry, which can be a fun but challenging task. While a quick Google search can lead to an abundance of information about the latest deals for top stars, figuring out how much other people in the entertainment business earn can be tricky. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, here are some resources I’ve found to be valuable that may help you too. And while you still may not be able to calculate someone’s exact compensation, these suggestions may help you make an educated estimate with confidence.

The Guilds

A good place to start when researching a writer, director or actor is the guilds to which they likely belong. The Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and SAG AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, otherwise known as the actors’ union) all make their contracts and rates available online:

DGA rate cards outline the minimum salary schedules for directors, unit production managers, assistant and associate directors and stage managers. Rate cards for 2018-2019 through 2021-2022 are available here.
The WGA’s basic agreements from 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2020, as well as its Schedule of Minimums for 2014, 2017 and 2020 are also available. These schedules list the minimum amounts paid to screenwriters, and each type of writing job has a set price. Rates are tiered depending on the budgets of the project, type of TV show (cable vs network), etc. The WGA also makes available extensive information about residuals. The Residuals Survival Guide, in particular, offers a good basic definition of residuals and how they are calculated for various projects.
SAG AFTRA’s rates are available for actors of all types, including commercial, television, theatrical and voiceover. From the Contracts & Industry Resources section of its website, you can find the specific type of project and navigate to the individual rate cards.

While directors, writers and actors are typically the most recognizable names associated with a movie or television or streaming show, they are just a few of the hundreds of people who help make the entertainment we all enjoy. Many of these behind-the-scenes folks belong to United Scenic Artists, which makes its 2018-2021 film and TV – as well as theatre, opera and dance — contracts available online. If you are looking for information about an art director, scenic or costume designer or someone who works in the art department, take a look here.

If you are researching a prospect whose job isn’t covered by one of these guilds, a little creative thinking and searching may lead you to another union of which they are a member and there’s a good chance that union’s current contract and rates are available online. Be warned though: it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole when looking at these contracts and rate cards, so keep that in mind before you start looking through them.

The Media of Record

Los Angeles is very much a company town, and there are many sources that specifically cover the business of the entertainment business. A news search through Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times and/or Variety may help answer some of your questions about what a prospect potentially earns. While each of these sources offers some content on their websites for free, you’ll often find that you hit a paywall quickly. Luckily, all of them are available through LexisNexis for Development Professionals, if your shop subscribes to that resource. Lexis has content from Deadline dating back to 2016, while content from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety is available dating back to 1991 and 1993, respectively. Content from the Los Angeles Times dates back to 1985, and the Los Angeles Times Online (content from the paper’s website edition) is available since October 2020. All of these sources are updated within Lexis on a daily basis.

By the way: In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter published a salary survey covering folks at all levels of the entertainment industry, including top stars, studio heads, show runners, key grips, boom operators and make-up artists. Although this data is now a few years old, it can be a good reference point – and you may be able to cross check the information it provides with more recent news sources. What I like about this resource is that it’s straightforward and easy to use, dividing each occupation into top-, middle- and bottom-dollar.

A Few Other Ideas

I’ll apologize in advance because I’m going to show my West Coast bias with these next two recommendations. For the last few years, I’ve enjoyed listening to The Frame, a daily podcast chronicling film, TV, music, arts and entertainment and produced by Southern California Public Radio (SCPR). (Full disclosure: I’m a member of SCPR, my local public radio station). The Frame went on hiatus during the pandemic, but I hope it will come back soon. The host, John Horn, is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered entertainment for more than a decade and his guests are often journalists who cover Hollywood – from both the business and the creative side. All episodes – dating back to the show’s first airing in August 2014 – are searchable and free on SCPR’s website.

Speaking of public radio, if you’re a fan, you may already listen to the business program Marketplace, which is based in Los Angeles and produced by American Public Media. While the program covers business in general, entertainment is also often on the docket. One feature I always enjoy is its occasional “Corner Office” segment. In the past, these conversations have included figures from the entertainment world including the CEOs of the Tribeca Film Festival, the chief content officer of The Walking Dead franchise and the creators of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I find these conversations enlightening for what they reveal about how top executives think, how they make decisions, and how those decisions affect us as consumers.

Both The Frame and Marketplace are available from all the major podcast providers. The “Corner Office” segment is searchable and can be listened to on the Marketplace website.

And Just for Fun (But Still Relevant)

Fans of the Turner Classic Movies network may already know about its The Plot Thickens podcast, which began its second season – “The Devil’s Candy” — in July. I’ve enjoyed listening to it as both a movie lover and as someone who has a professional interest in trying to understand the business of Hollywood. For the latter, it provides interesting context. Season 2 of the podcast focuses on the making of the movie adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and how one of the biggest books of its time turned into a box-office disaster. After listening to this season’s first few episodes (the final episode will be available August 10^th), my biggest takeaway is what an incredibly complicated process it is to get a movie made. It’s a minor miracle anything makes it to our big or small screens. Something for you to keep in mind the next time that director or actor’s salary seems outrageous or the next time you visit your local theater or binge watch something from your Netflix queue.

I hope these suggestions are helpful to you if and when you have to navigate the business of show business. And if we ever meet in person…do ask me about that A-lister. I’ll be happy to tell you who he was – just as soon as I get back from the beach!

July 29, 2021 By Helen Brown

Making remote work work

They’re calling it “The Great Resignation.” Millions of folks who have worked from home productively through the pandemic aren’t ready to give up their new quality of life for employers who will require them to go back to an office. According to the US Labor Department, a record 4 million people quit their jobs – and that’s just this past April.

For some professions it’s really not an option. It’s difficult for a surgeon and her team not to be in the presence of the patient, although not impossible, apparently.

But for fundraising, it’s a no-brainer. Old school ways of insisting that everyone has to be in the office all the time are losing their credibility. And for good reasons.

Keeping great staff

Staff retention, particularly for talented frontline fundraisers, is a perennial problem. When the average tenure of a fundraiser is 18 months and the average time from hello to major gift is 2 years, it doesn’t take a math degree to see that there’s an inherent problem in that equation. Offering flexibility gives your nonprofit a strategic staff retention advantage, and not just for frontline fundraisers, but for the rest of the team as well. Losing a talented data entry officer, or a campaign strategist, or insightful prospect development pro leaves a huge gap, creates recruiting and onboarding costs, and leaves you with weeks or months of lost opportunities.

True connections

The myth that you can’t foster a sense of team or build relationships with donors remotely is nonsense. You just have to create an infrastructure that supports connection, and encourage everything you can that helps people bridge those distances in large groups and small pods. Just because colleagues or fundraisers and donors are not in the same room doesn’t mean the relationships they build are any less meaningful.

Our team is 22 strong and growing, and we’ve been a remote company since 2005. I feel lucky that we have lots of experience in successfully working from home, but that doesn’t mean we’re not constantly thinking about ways to better support communication and foster that sense of team. It’s never perfect, but keeping an open mind and experimenting with the technology available are two secrets to our success.

One example I’ve mentioned before: we use Zoom for group and side chats. We have an all-team chat room which is basically like the running commentary going on in any open-plan office, except in silent mode.

On any given day there will be discussion of an interesting article, a mega donation, some good-natured teasing, celebration of a work anniversary or birthday (love the Zoom rain of cakes!), lots of gifs, really bad puns, kid pictures, puppy pictures, cake pictures…it’s a lot like being in an office. Except kind of better, somehow. Everyone’s in on the joke. Nobody’s left out.

We also have project-specific and topic-specific chat rooms, like the one created in March 2020 for the parents on the team they dubbed “New Reality.” HBG parents banded together in that room to provide advice, sanity, and a helpline early on in the pandemic when they were figuring out home-schooling and activities to keep kids occupied during the work day.

The group continues to be active during the pandemic’s long tail. “I like hearing about how my colleagues have navigated challenging situations with their families when everything is in flux” shared Kristina. Jen added: “As difficult as it was at times finding a balance between work and being a parent, I took comfort in knowing not only that others on the team were in the same situation, but that they were always readily available to listen if (when) I started to feel overwhelmed.”

Besides Zoom, we also encourage relationships by partnering new employees with a buddy who isn’t their supervisor – someone they can ask those real questions as they find their way around their new job. For prospecting projects, we ask that the lead consultant gather a ‘Council of Three’ to help brainstorm ideas before beginning. And we mix-and-match small teams to work with clients on special projects so that everyone has a chance to work closely with others they might not have worked with before.

And finally, we do fun non-work stuff, too. For example, Jayme is our Manager of Fun Swaps. She’s organized swaps of coffee, pastries, and jams-and-sauces – and it’s a little like getting a Secret Santa care package. You delight in packaging goodies up for someone (or ordering them to be delivered) and then receiving them from someone else. Not everyone participates in each swap, but they’re a great way for us to get to know each other through our favorite things.

What about building strong donor relationships – virtually?

Think you can’t forge real relationships with donors when you work remotely? I attended the RAISE conference last week by Evertrue, and when I saw this video telling the story of a connection built by a donor experience officer (DXO) with a prospect who became a donor because of their virtual relationship, I knew that technology has gotten us to the place where we can create meaningful donor relationships and experiences beyond just the top of the donor pyramid.

Not only did they forge a strong bond, but the proof of concept also created a new job, and you can’t help but smile when you watch it. (Full disclosure: I’m not an Evertrue client or partner and they didn’t pay me to write this. I think their DXO concept is forward-thinking for this new remote world we’re living in.)

Using a combination of technology that helps us communicate and encouraging and supporting a strong personal work ethic, we can build and expand our donor-facing teams with a new corps of fundraisers making those connections and provide new leads for the prospect development team to discover, research, rate, and assign into portfolios.

Side benefits to a remote team

As I think about other incidental benefits that remote work brings that help retain employees (like quality of life) one thing springs to mind that’s a major benefit to the employer: office space. Chances are good we won’t need as much of it anymore going forward, and it’s a major budget sink hole.

Wouldn’t you rather put the office-rental budget line toward hiring staff, funding initiatives, sending people to a conference where they learn something, providing benefits that help retain staff, buying resources for your team to be more efficient, doing a once-a-year all-staff blowout picnic… instead? Maybe the space you need for essential on-site work or shared desks could be a third or a quarter of the size. What could you accomplish with that budget savings?

There are lots of ways to turn the reality of remote work into an advantage for your department and your nonprofit. If others are terminating creative employees because they choose not to work in an office, your potential talent pool will grow and so will your nonprofit’s opportunities for innovation.

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