Helen Brown Group

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Extra-credit entertainment

 Image (c) 2014 Gavin Whitner, Music Oomph

I’ve recently started a new regimen that affords me the opportunity to listen to a lot more podcasts. At least that’s what I’m telling myself so I won’t notice that I’m -ugh- exercising regularly. -ish.

One great benefit is that I’m now actively hunting for – and finding – some great nonprofit podcasts to keep things interesting in my shuffle rotation.

Here are a lucky seven that I’ve enjoyed that I thought you might like, too. Feel free to add others in the comments that you think I and other nonprofiteers should be aware of! Here they are, in alpha order. [Read more…]

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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 25th. 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.

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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…]

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Innovation: Measuring fundraiser portfolio strength

This week I’m very excited to share with you a podcast I recorded earlier this week with Mark Dumich and Ling Sun of the University of Notre Dame. Their department is doing innovative work to help strengthen and create parity amongst their fundraisers’ portfolios.

In our podcast, Mark and Ling shared with me the questions they were trying to answer, their step by step actions, and some unexpected (but welcome!) outcomes. Mark explains their plan:

 The Portfolio Strengths Model was developed at the University of Notre Dame to better understand both the strength of a prospect and the quality of a portfolio.  As fundraisers expressed concern about the giving potential of their prospects, we decided to score various attributes of those individuals to get a better assessment of their value. It moved the conversation away from how a development officer feels, and back to objective data points that we can all agree on.

It’s very easy to evaluate a fundraiser on the number of dollars he or she brings in to the organization, and it’s important, too. Unfortunately, that metric has some significant shortcomings when you consider that not all portfolios have the same potential. So how can we more accurately measure a fundraiser’s performance? When we viewed production relative to the strength of a portfolio, it highlighted a lot of incredible work that had been achieved at all levels of philanthropy within our organization.”

We’re especially fortunate that, not only did they speak with me for 30 minutes, they also generously provided a step-by-step worksheet of their project, so you can do it, too!

The podcast is below, and the worksheet is in our free member area. Warm thanks to Mark and Ling for sharing this with us!

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Giving Collaboratives – a podcast

Have you been following the emergence and exponential growth of giving collaboratives? Giving collaboratives can be individuals, foundations, NGOs, and others that join forces (and their finances) around a particular cause or toward a shared goal.

Angie Stapleton

Elizabeth Roma

This is an emerging phenomenon in philanthropy that caught the attention of two HBG team members, Elizabeth Roma and Angie Stapleton, who deeply researched and presented on the topic at the 2017 Apra Regional Conference (ARC). Part of their presentation included an 18-page companion guide to Giving Collaboratives, now available in the Learning Media Library here on our website.

I sat down with Elizabeth and Angie yesterday to ask them to tell me more about Giving Collaboratives and the resource they compiled, and recorded our conversation in this podcast so that you can hear as well:

 Whatever it is that you are looking to fund…there is a group of people out there who are looking to fund it” – Elizabeth Roma

Elizabeth and Angie will also lead an Apra Best Practice Webcast on the topic called “Collective Giving: Philanthropy as a Team Sport” on Monday May 15th at 1:00 PM ET. If you can’t make that day and time, look for the recording on the Apra website under Apra University.

For further reading: 

One of the resources Elizabeth and Angie mention in the podcast is The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers and their report More Giving Together.

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Foundation Research – a free tutorial

One of the things that makes me so proud of our profession is the way we so eagerly share tips, tools, tactics, and techniques with each other. At APRA International and chapter conferences, you can just feel the excitement in the rooms. Even in webinars and tweetchats, there’s still a vibe somehow.

So in honor of #ResearchPride month, my colleague Elizabeth Roma and I recorded a video podcast for you on researching grant-makers, including foundations and donor-advised funds. Here’s our webinar on “Researching Foundations” – we hope you enjoy it:

Here at HBG, we’re also preparing for more teaching this spring and summer:

  • In April, I’ll be leading a panel on relationship management at the NEDRA conference. Tara McMullen will also be moderating a panel on “Ten Years of Prospect Research, Management and Data at MIT.”
  • In July, there will be two teaching teams from HBG at the APRA conference! Angie Stapleton and I will lead a half-day workshop on “Advanced Web Searching,” and Elizabeth Roma and Rachel Dakarian will be ripping news from the headlines on high net worth individuals in their session “Strategic Vision for Today’s Philanthropic Realities.”

We hope you can join us. We’re excited to be sharing our knowledge and looking forward to learning from you, too.

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The hidden river

Magic DoorYou know what it’s like when you stumble upon something that makes you realize there is a whole other world out there that you had no idea about, right?

The most memorable time this happened for me was when I discovered an online forum where people gathered to discuss my – and their! – favorite author’s book series. Even better, reading back through the archives I discovered that the author posts to the forum as well, answering questions and debating plot possibilities with as much intensity as her readers.

It was like I’d found the magic door with a hidden world behind it! [Read more…]

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What makes for a successful wealth screening?

achievementDespite the title of this popular article, we love wealth screenings here at HBG. What we don’t love is when all that time, work, and money spent on a wealth screening go to waste. My colleagues Maureen, Tara, Heather W. and I were talking about this one day, and we were brainstorming so many great ideas that I asked them if we could capture them in a podcast for you. [Read more…]

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What you need to know about family offices

mansionAccording to INSEAD’s Singapore campus Executive Director Michael Prahl, the number of family offices in Asia and the Middle East will double over the next 8 years. As supersonic as that growth is, the sheer number of family offices in Europe (1,000) and the United States (3,000) are massive compared to their cousins in Asia (estimated to be at about 200).

With an estimated $4 trillion managed in family offices globally, we ignore to our disadvantage the impact and influence these investment and philanthropic powerhouses will have for the fundraising and social impact sectors.

To learn more about this, I interviewed HBG’s in-house experts on family offices, Kenny Tavares and Elizabeth Roma, to explain what it is about family offices that make them so important, and what resources are available to tap into.

[powerpress]

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