March 13, 2012
Better Researcher-Fundraiser Relationships: A Response to “Prospecting Problems” and “Fundraisingly Frustrated”
About a week ago Chris Cannon wrote a great blog post outlining some prevalent problems plaguing the fundraiser-researcher dynamic. I had to retweet the link with the comment that it was “dead on,” because it is. Based on what I’ve frequently heard from other researchers at APRA conferences, in many shops the relationship between researchers and frontline fundraisers can be tenuous: e.g., researchers often don’t hear much feedback, if any, from the gift officers they help; fundraisers don’t easily engage with the prospect management system. (Just to name a couple things Chris outlined in his post.)
Chris replied to my tweet and asked what I’ve seen work in addressing these issues. The answer to that question deserves more than just 140 characters! (Plus it’s a pretty darn good topic for a blog post.) So I thought I’d touch on it here.
I’ve found that there are two key components that go a long way in tackling the researcher-fundraiser disconnect: getting the right people in place, and getting them to do the right things.
The Right Things
What are the “things” people need to do? Helen Brown, in her own response to Chris’s post, suggests that communication and relationship building are two of the things that are most critical. She’s absolutely right! But what exactly do we do to make that happen? At my institution, Research staff get face time with gift officers. We have both formal and informal meetings where we talk about the work and we just maintain a positive relationship.
- Every month, we have a formal “research partner meeting” where the researcher and fundraiser get together to review prospect management reports in preparation for the monthly prospect meeting. They go over outstanding and upcoming solicitations; they review prospect lists; they talk about recent visits; they talk about how they can best help one another.
- As much as possible, we try to have informal interactions with one another. I encourage my research staff to stop by the fundraisers’ offices from time to time or go have coffee with them. Frankly, I don’t care a whole lot about what happens in these encounters, as long as it’s positive. If the researcher and gift officer spend an hour talking about March Madness, great! They’re building that relationship and increasing the good rapport that helps keep open the lines of productive communication.
The Right People
Of course these “things” that we try to do to foster good relationships between researchers and fundraisers are practically worthless if we don’t have the right people in place to do them. If I’ve got a researcher who is too shy to drop in on gift officers, they can’t have successful informal interactions. If my researcher is generally surly and cantankerous, they’re going to have a hard time building a good relationship with the gift officers.
So any time I’m hiring a new researcher, I pay a lot of attention to their personality and general disposition. Are they generally outgoing? Do they seem relatable and easy to get along with? This is probably more important to me than a person’s research experience or capabilities, because I can train most people to do good research. It is far more difficult (maybe even impossible??) to train someone to be pleasant to be around, or not to be shy. If they are internally motivated to reach out to the people they work with and they enjoy doing it, that will be one critical piece I won’t have to worry so much about needing to continually push.
Do I feel like I’ve completely solved the problems Chris describes in his post? Nope. (I’ve got one fundraiser, for example, who has said more than once, “I can find plenty of stuff myself on google, but you guys have access to special databases that we don’t.” Sure, it’s true, but it indicates that we haven’t done a good enough job of educating about our capabilities as in-depth information seekers AND as specialized analysts.) But having the right people in place, doing the right things, sure does go a long way in making for a stronger, more productive relationship between Research and frontline fundraisers.
February 16, 2012
How do you know when to stop researching?
One of my favorite questions to ask candidates applying for open prospect research positions is “How do you know when to stop researching?” It seems like a pretty simple question, but for some reason many people – some of whom have more than a few years of research experience under their belts – don’t know how to answer it very well. A poor response to that question isn’t always a dealbreaker for me, but it’s close. Why? Because it tells me how efficient that person will be as a researcher.
Prospect researchers are often known for their willingness to hunt and hunt and hunt for information. This kind of dogged determination can be really beneficial – don’t give up until you find what you need! But the downside to this kind of behavior is that if a person isn’t focused in their efforts, they could spend a long, long time just wandering around the vast expanses of the internet, particularly late in the research process, when they have already gathered most of the easy-to-find information.
This type of aimless wandering can have a huge cost to the organization, as the return on time spent is rapidly diminished, and researchers miss an opportunity to turn their attention to more productive and impactful work. The only way to avoid ending up in this dead-zone of productivity is to know when to stop researching.
When I’ve asked people how they know when to stop, the poorer responses I’ve received have been along these kinds of lines:
- “I’ll usually wrap it up when I’m about five or six pages in on my google search results.”
- “When the search results are providing information on the wrong people, I know I’m about at the end of what I’m going to find.”
- “I stop at about the two-hour point.”
Now imagine if I asked people a similar question, but instead of talking about research, we were talking about taking a trip in a car, and the question is “How do you know when to stop driving?” In this context, the responses I’ve heard would sound completely ludicrous!
- “I’ll wrap it up after about five or six hundred miles.”
- “When my car runs out of gas, that’s about as far as I’m going to go.”
- “I stop driving after two hours.”
Obviously, if I ask you when someone should stop driving, the response is going to be “when they get to their destination.”
The same holds true for research. You stop researching when you’ve found the information you need. This means that a good researcher must define the research “destination” up front, so that he knows exactly when he has “arrived” and can wrap things up.
In some development shops, clearly defining what research is needed is one of the first challenges to overcome. People may make a research request by saying “Just give me everything you can find on Mr. Potentialdonor.” (Or to use the driving analogy, “Just drive really, really far going North.”) At that point, it is up to the researcher to ask good follow-up questions: What are you most interested in learning about Mr. Potentialdonor? Are you planning to solicit Mr. Potentialdonor, or are you just trying to decide whether or not he’s worth a visit? What are you hoping I’ll be able to find? These additional queries can help establish a clearer research destination, which means that the researcher will be able to provide what will be most helpful, and she will likely be able to do so on a much shorter timeline, without having to spend time looking for things nobody really cared about in the first place!
By knowing where we are “going” with our research, we will know when we can stop, without having to waste time dragging out the research process. This will ultimately pay great dividends by freeing us up to move on to other research “trips.”
October 13, 2011
Careful with How You’re Using that Data!
The Twin Cities chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN-TC) has a great website that features fairly frequent blog postings by guest authors. (Their social media output is pretty stellar too, by the way.) I’m a big fan of the blog, as it explores many interesting topics and advances some thought-provoking perspectives.
This afternoon they published a post outlining the differences between nonprofits and for-profits. Overall, it’s a really nice primer for the uninitiated! (Check it out here.) But I have to call out a point that caught my attention and reminded me of how important it is for us to be careful with how we use data to make a point.
Nonprofit employees earn just as much in wages as for-profit employees.
According to the most recent Minnesota Nonprofit Economy Report, the average weekly wages for for-profit employees in 2009 were $879. The average weekly wages for nonprofit employees in 2009 were $870. That about sums things up.
This excerpt is of course surprising at first because it says something that many people would dispute. What was more alarming to me, however, is how much detail is glossed over with his statement. When we dig into those details, we learn that the statement is actually kind of misleading.
Thankfully, the source of the statement is cited and linked! So we can go check it out and see what’s really going on. (I grabbed the charts from the source, and they are below. Click on them to see larger versions.) There are a few things that warrant discussion.
For one, the figures quoted in the paragraph are only for 2009. As you look farther back, the gap between for-profit and nonprofit pay widens considerably:
$872/wk vs. $818/wk in 2006;
$878/wk vs. $777/wk in 2003;
$867/wk vs. $716/wk in 2000.
Of course this is a good trend to see! We can certainly say that the pay gap between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors has been rapidly closing, and as of 2009 appeared to have all but disappeared. If this trend continues (or even if nonprofit wages simply keep pace with for-profit wages), the author’s statement is definitely valid. But it seems like a bit of a stretch to say something so broad based on data from one year.
There is another key point to make, and it is illustrated in the next chart of the Minnesota Nonprofit Economy
Report: “Average Weekly Wages for Nonprofit Employees by Industry.” The chart breaks out wage figures between health care, education, social assistance, and arts/entertainment/recreation nonprofits, and it is very clear that there are substantial discrepancies between wages in these industries. For example in 2009, average health care wages ($979/wk) were more than double those of both social assistance ($458/wk) and arts/entertainment/recreation ($484/wk) nonprofits. Similarly, average wages in education ($748/wk) were more than 50% higher than these two industries. So we miss a lot of information if we talk about nonprofit wages without highlighting the differences between the industries within the sector.
This differentiation among nonprofit industries is also important to note because it makes clear the fact that, as of 2009, three of them still lag substantially the for-profit sector’s average weekly wage of $879/wk.
Finally, it’s important to consider who makes up the workforce in each of the nonprofit industries profiled in the report.
Doctors, of course, have a relatively high income. (The AMGA reports that, depending on specialty, most doctors earn well into the low/mid six-figure range.) Naturally, this will raise the average weekly wage among all employees in the healthcare group. I would venture a guess that this effect exists in the higher education industry as well. Professors in MN earn, on average, about $85,000 annually, according to the American Association of University Professors. (That $85,000 works out to $1,635/wk.) The remaining employees – fundraising professionals, program managers, volunteer coordinators, and various other administrative types – balance out the other side of the average with incomes below what is reported in the Minnesota Nonprofit Economy Report.
While a person could argue that the author’s statement is somewhat truthful, it’s hard to deny that it’s a bit misleading and is short on a few key details. (Which is too bad, because the article is pretty good otherwise!)
This highlights for me how important it is for us to take care with the data we use. It is becoming more and more readily available, but its utility diminishes greatly if we misuse it. Without careful consideration, we run the risk of giving false impressions (at best) or simply making outright false statements (at worst).
In my role at Carleton, I spend a lot of time immersed in data, and I often use it to illustrate various aspects of our fundraising activities. One of our frontline fundraisers has remained skeptical of data-supported arguments, largely because he has seen so many cases where people have manipulated data or just used it poorly. (More than once I’ve heard him repeat the quotation “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”) While this is unfortunate and regrettable, who can blame the guy? For me, his attitude drives home the fact that, when we use data to support an argument, we have an obligation to do so honestly and accurately.
April 8, 2011
The “Next Big Thing”
I’ve been involved with programming for a few different professional associations, and there seems to be a constant hunger for “the next big thing.” I’ve even seen other programming committee members say to potential speakers “we’d like you to do a talk on what you think the next big thing is going to be in prospect research and/or development.”
Over the last decade or so, I’ve noticed a few key areas that, in the prospect research world, have taken their turn as “the next big thing:” prospect management and tracking; data mining and modeling (or just analytics); and probably most recently, social media.
People are getting acclimated to social media and its newness is wearing off a little bit, which makes me wonder again, what will be the next big thing in prospect research circles?
I know what it is. Well, I know what I think it should be: Data Visualization.
“Why?” you may be thinking. “Why is this something that we should spend any time on? Why do you think I need someone to tell me how to do this?”
Data visualization is just one of many things that we do in the workplace that people rarely get appropriate training on. (Other such things include giving presentations, hiring, giving feedback, assigning work, writing effectively, etc; [There’s another post in there somewhere…]) We’re just thrown into situations where we’re expected to do these things, and we don’t always get good training on it (if any), so most of us just make it up as we go along and generally get mediocre results. Which tends not to be a problem, because everyone is probably getting mediocre results, so if I do too, I fit right in and nobody knows there’s a problem!
But we should do data visualization better. There are a number of reasons for this. Not least of which is that we should just strive to do everything better on principal! But also because data visualization can be a powerful tool in all of the work that we do.
That data. ALL that data…
As everyone is well aware, data is becoming more and more a part of our lives and the work that we do. You’ll notice that two of the three past “next big things” I listed above are directly involved with data: prospect management systems and analytics. We have more and more access to data and we are finding more and more powerful ways of working with and capitalizing on that data.
But as we gather more information, the signal-to-noise ratio changes dramatically, and it becomes more difficult to determine what is relevant. Patterns are hard to find. The meaningful information gets buried. And our ability to actually take advantage of the data diminishes.
This is where data visualization comes in: it can help us more effectively explore, interpret, and understand our information.
One of our strongest, most utilized senses is that of visual perception. Most of us experience the world through our eyes, and our brains are wired to process visual cues in a tremendously effective way. (Don’t believe me? Check out this site on perception in visualization. There are some powerful examples and tools that illustrate how amazing our preattentive processing is.)
We can take advantage of this hard-wiring by looking at our data (literally) from different perspectives. In doing so, patterns become evident, data of note comes to our attention, and we will understand where further exploration is warranted to identify actionable information.
Let me tell you what I really want to tell you…
In my mind, using visualization to explore our data is reason enough to embrace it and learn as much as we can about how to do so effectively. Case closed!
But let me put on my infomercial pitch-man hat and say “but wait, there’s more!”
Visualizations can be incredibly effective at communicating information. If I’ve got a table of data, I have a few options for communicating that to you:
- I can just show you the table. You’ll have to comb through it to see where the high and low points are, what trends are occurring (if it’s longitudinal), etc.
- I can explain it with words. I will have to comb through it to see where the high and low points are, what trends are occurring, etc., and THEN I’m going to have to put that into words and either write it down or just tell you.
- I can put it into a chart. (Line graph, bar chart… doesn’t matter) The chart will show visually where the high and low points are, what trends are occurring, etc. Even if I don’t put any numbers on the chart, you can compare one datapoint to another and see them relative to one another.
By using a chart, I save myself and the other person lots of mental energy and drastically reduce the chance that there will be a misunderstanding or that the main message won’t be heard.
One of the benefits of this improved communication is the fact that we can more effectively make a particular point. If I want to highlight to our staff the fact that we have steadily increased the number of visit-ready prospects in our pipeline over the past five years, I can certainly just say that. But if I gather the data that supports that statement and put it into a visual format, it will be much more impactful. (See example below.) It also begins to quickly shed light on a number of other questions of the data:
- How many prospects do we have now, compared to five years ago? (about four times as many, based on a quick look at the first and last columns)
- When did we have the greatest increase in prospects? (2007-2008 and 2008-2009 look like they experienced the largest jumps)
- How has the rate of our prospect identification fared recently? (it slowed about two years ago, but looks like it might be picking up)
As our organizations move more and more toward embracing data, it becomes ever more important that we are able to present that data in a way that is understandable and powerful. In my opinion, the only way to do this is with visualizations, and the only way to become more effective at utilizing visualization techniques is to make data visualization “the next big thing” in our professional development.
Only recently have I become seriously interested in data visualization, so I’m just scratching the surface of what is possible. But in spite of my newness to the field of study, I’m tremendously excited about the possibilities. My current books-to-read list includes a number of titles by Edward Tufte and Steven Few, and I’m excited to get deeper into these. What are your favorites?
February 15, 2011
On Good Partnerships Between Researchers and Fundraisers
Two months ago I rattled off a pretty lengthy list of reasons why being a researcher at Carleton is great. Since that time, I’ve thought more about the things that have the greatest impact on this general awesomeness. And one of those is the highly collaborative relationship that we strive to maintain between the research staff and the frontline fundraisers. Overall, we’re successful in keeping this good thing going, and I’m continually trying to put my finger on what exactly we have here that provides the foundation of that success.
Clearly our frontline fundraisers play a leading role in this success. First and foremost, they’re all just great people, but also they are invested in the services we provide, and they appreciate the work that we do. They also are always more than willing to engage in lively conversations about their prospects and what they’re currently working on with those prospects. It’s not unusual for a researcher to have an impromptu meeting with a gift officer to learn more about how their most recent donor visit went, and it’s common for a fundraiser to stop by and say “Guess what I just learned in a visit with so and so…”
In my time at Carleton, this great partner-relationship has always struck me as something very special. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to conferences and heard other prospect researchers complaining about how inaccessible their major gift officers are, or how “they just don’t get it.” After hearing this sort of thing, I’m always happy to come away thinking about how lucky I am to not have that problem where I work.
Our fundraisers deserve a huge share of the credit for this!
But the researchers play a role as well. We continually strive to be key partners with the frontline fundraisers – supporting them, yes, but also collaborating and strategizing with them where opportunities allow.
What exactly does that involve on the part of the researcher? It includes a lot of the following activities:
- Thinking creatively about strategies around engaging prospects
- Helping translate the fundraiser’s activities into the appropriate coding in the system
- Proactively seeking new prospects
- Providing timely updates about the fundraiser’s current prospects
- Explaining, in clear un-jargoned terms, the nuances of the work we do (including our wealth & capacity ratings and our predictive modeling)
- Not just gathering information in the course of our work, but also interpreting and analyzing it to formulate suggestions and ideas for next steps
By continuing to do all of these things (and more), we do our part to keep good working relationships on the right track.
And now I need to find someone to join our research staff and help keep this good thing going. We’re looking for a researcher who can jump in and be a valuable partner to our fundraisers – one who’s got great research chops, but who can also effortlessly interface with the folks on the front lines.
Read my other blog post about all the other reasons why it’s so awesome to work at Carleton, and check out the official posting.
February 1, 2011
Some Thoughts on CRISP-DM (a response)
The always-thoughtful Alex Oftelie at Bentz Whalley Flessner recently posted about the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) and wondered how often it is truly realized. His ultimate question: “Is [CRISP-DM] a firm road map to successful data-mining, or does it suggest merely an outline of processes that is malleable?”
I’m not sure how others feel, but I have a hard time thinking of the process as “firm” or unmalleable, and there are certainly a couple of reasons why this is so.
As its name indicates, CRISP-DM is a standard: it provides a good starting framework. It is generally well-accepted, and seems to have a solid reputation as a common best practice. But like any standard or best practice, it will be most effective if we adapt it to fit the existing situation and business need. This flexibility allows us to capitalize on our capacity for creativity.
Just this weekend, I ran across some great thoughts on standards in Show Me the Numbers by Stephen Few. Chapter 12 is entitled “The Interplay of Standards and Innovation,” and in it Few notes “A good set of standards … provides a framework for innovation in the face of important … challenges. Standards and innovation are partners in the pursuit of excellence.” There may certainly be good reasons to bend the rules of CRISP-DM, especially in the pursuit of creative, effective innovation.
As I thought through this, I also was brought back to my early music theory days in college. In the first term of music theory coursework, we were subjected to loads of “rules” about voice-leading and harmonization and the like. In reality, these weren’t really rules about how music must be written, but they were guidelines: if you wanted your compositions to sound like certain Classical composers, you would be wise to observe the guidelines! Really excellent compositions in the Classical style often demonstrate a clear understanding of these concepts, while still taking liberties to skirt them for the sake of creativity.
Similarly, as we work on analytics projects, we do ourselves a favor by understanding CRISP-DM and where we are within that construct, but allowing ourselves the flexibility to veer from the established path to get to where we need to go.
December 6, 2010
What’s it like to be a prospect researcher at Carleton College? It’s awesome.
I’ve got good news and bad news: the bad news is that one of my valued researchers took a position in our Annual Fund; the good news is that this means I get to hire a fresh face into my department.
And this is great news for any researchers out there who might want to work at Carleton. I joined the College in 2006, and it was the best career decision I have ever made. And if I was not working at Carleton now, I would jump all over this Prospect Research Officer job opening. Why? Well, there are a few reasons…
- You get to do a range of work: prospect identification, in-depth information development, strategizing, analytical work (many of our fundraisers find great value in well-presented statistics, AND we do our data-mining in-house), etc. So the job never really gets stale or uninteresting.
- You partner with the frontline fundraisers. They’re not clients; they’re not customers; they are partners, and this relationship is taken very seriously at Carleton.
- Pretty much all of your colleagues & coworkers are grade-A, top-notch, best-at-what-they do folks. If you’ve been out of college for a while, you know that most places you work, there are a few “weak links” here and there. Not at Carleton – pretty much everyone here is really, really proficient in their roles. They actually do what they are supposed to do (and they do it well). For example, not only do our gift officers do a great job of raising money for the College — they also consistently file contact reports. On time.
- You get your own office! With walls. And a door (that shuts!). And windows!
- You get access to all the resources you need to do your job well and do it efficiently. You know that really great, top-of-the-line, if-only-my-budget-was-5x-bigger subscription resource? Yeah, we’ve got that. And a whole bunch of others too.
- You get solid professional development support. It’s pretty much assumed that if you want to go to the big-boy APRA-International Conference each year, you can.
- We’ve got a fantastic donor database (BSR Advance) with top-notch programmers dedicated to Advancement, who help us get at ALL of our data. If it’s in the database, they can get it out for us. (And they write some totally rock n’ roll reports too!)
- Speaking of data, we’ve got LOTS of it. Our central records people have been all over high-quality data collection for decades (literally). Our lost constituent rate is 2.0%; our lost alumni rate is 0.6%. Yes. You read those numbers correctly.
- The students! Carleton students are wicked smart, creative, fun, and amazing. (They dressed up the campus observatory as R2-D2 earlier this year; there is a moustache club; they have silent dance parties in the library…) The energy at this place can’t be beat.
- And the alumni love Carleton: we are consistently among the top colleges and universities in the nation in terms of alumni giving participation (61.3% of our alumni made a gift last year!)
- Not only are so many other people at Carleton amazing, the Research Department itself is nothing to sneeze at. We’ve got solid, management-supported, top-of-the-line best practices in terms of our Prospect Management System, our capacity ratings procedures, our analytics, etc. All of our practices are best practices. (Of course the other side of this coin is the fact that we’re always trying to improve – striving for excellence is embedded in the culture.)
I know, this reads like one big infomercial, and I probably sound like a complete shill. But it’s hard to hold back my enthusiasm for Carleton – it’s simply a great place to work. Everyone should be so fortunate to have such a wonderful work environment!
That includes you. Check out the job posting for our current Prospect Research Officer opening, and submit your application materials.
(Seriously, do it.)
October 19, 2010
How do I talk about Prospect Research without creeping people out?
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a prospect researcher.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I help our fundraisers by finding new donors for the college and gathering information about our most important alumni.”
“Hmm. Where do you find this information?”
“Mostly the internet. And some specialized databases.”
“The internet? And secret databases? So, you’re like some sort of cyber-stalker?”
“Um… Well… Not really, but…”
And this is how a number of my conversations have gone with people who don’t know what prospect research is.
Like most researchers, it’s taken me a while to get accustomed to talking about what I do without spooking people. My strategy has essentially evolved to the point where I just say something along the lines of “I work in fundraising. I help find the people we can ask for money.” It’s bland enough (but still descriptive) so people don’t usually ask a lot of follow-up questions.
It took me a while to get to this point though. For some time I would be very straightforward and honest about what exactly I did. Turns out people are a little weirded out by the idea that someone is paying any attention to the value of their home. Or estimating their salary. Or “mining” their data in any way.
So I tried a few new approaches. A couple of times I’ve said I was just a fundraiser. The usual response to this was “Well don’t bother asking me for money.” Once I told someone “I’m a bureaucrat,” which must have implied that I was surly and grumpy, because the conversation stopped right there.
Given how much I’ve grappled with this, I was pleased to come across an article recently that described research in a couple of innocuous, yet descriptive, ways. (It’s about a long-time APRA-MN member, Fran Corcoran, who also has some unique hobbies.) None of the mentions of Fran’s work made me cringe, which was great! Some of these descriptions included:
- “Tracking the accomplishments and life events of alumni and donors”
- “[Writing] stories about people for [our] development staff”
- “We help fundraisers focus their efforts”
- “People who are experienced donors expect you to know about them. The very least we can do is show we’ve taken the time to do that.”
Now that I’m armed with these much more pleasant (and less creepy) ways of talking about prospect research, I look forward to the next time someone asks that inevitable question: “So, what do you do?”
October 8, 2010
When models and intuition collide…
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
This is a quote (from George E.P. Box, I believe) that I use pretty much any time I’m talking about our statistical models that I create for our major and planned gift fundraising programs. It’s nice in that it covers my rear and makes clear the fact that, while our models are helpful and do point us in the right direction, they are not foolproof, and we’re going to get some false positives and false negatives from time to time.
I found myself reiterating the quote again today as I defended my models to one of our frontline fundraisers.
We had found a couple of prospects who had scored well in the modeling process, and they came to our attention on a wealth screening. From a numerical perspective, these folks looked great! They were predicted to be major donors, and we confirmed that they likely had the assets to be able to make big gifts.
But the problem was the fact that, while they looked great on paper, each of them had none of the hallmark intuitive indicators of a good prospect. In fact, many of their attributes raised red flags for this particular gift officer:
- poor (if any) giving history;
- non-grads;
- had attended few (if any) college events; and
- one of them had even let the College know back in ’97 that he wasn’t too fond of us.
This gift officer had a pretty hard time wrapping his head around the idea that he should even try to see this person.
I did my best to sell the model: “It takes a lot of non-intuitive things into consideration, so it catches things we’d never think of!” and “We do have some major donors who match some of these criteria, so it’s not entirely out of the question that he could be a major donor!” But ultimately, I know he wasn’t convinced.
So I was left in an unresolved quandary this afternoon: what do we do about people who score very high on predictive models, but who look terrible according to all the traditional “good prospect” attributes? We can’t just write them off, because then we’re essentially throwing out the model because it doesn’t match our fundraising paradigm. (And this is precisely one of the key benefits of statistical modeling: it brings to our attention those people we wouldn’t think to find on our own.)
On the other hand, don’t instinct and experience play a role in the prospecting process? I truly think there is a place for both science and art in prospect research, so shouldn’t we embrace this notion and let this prospect get vetoed, so we avoid wasting staff time and energy on someone who probably won’t pan out? (And for the record, if it wasn’t for the models, I’d discount these prospect entirely – they had few redeeming qualities as potential donors. This gift officer had a pretty good point.)
I’m not sure what my conclusion is about it yet, but I feel that I lean towards at least giving these ugly duckling prospects a shot. Sure, I’m not the guy who has to make the cold call or sit in these folks’ living rooms, but it seems like we should at least make a respectable effort to give it a shot.
Now if I can just convince this gift officer…
September 2, 2010
Has Your President Publicly Commended the Work of Your Prospect Research Department?
Just four weeks ago our new president started at Carleton, and today our division finally got to hear him speak at length for the first time. It was an encouraging and exciting meeting, as he gave us a glimpse of some of the ideas he has in store for the College. It’s clear we’re in good hands.
But our new president’s talk was the highlight of my day for another reason: he acknowledged the work of the Research Department.
After talking briefly about his background, he started into the exceptional things that he has noticed about our division’s operations at Carleton. He acknowledged the good work of our Alumni Annual Fund (who, for the ninth year in a row, ranked first in alumni participation rates among liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. New & World Report), he cited the exceptional College publication, the Voice (which has won multiple CASE awards), and he talked about the great alumni volunteer event held on campus just weeks ago. But before any of these, the FIRST two things he noted as being exceptional about our division were:
- The research he receives in preparation for visits with Trustees and key donors; and
- The background materials (prepared in part by Research) provided to him for donor cultivation events.
I was blown away. I was humbled by such high-level recognition, and I was intensely proud of the fact that the work of my team elicited such high praise.
But more than any of this, the president’s comments reinforced my long-held belief that I work in one of the best development shops around. I’ve been to plenty of APRA conferences and am sure that very few other researchers get the support at their institutions that we receive at Carleton.
How did it get this way?
For one, our research shop has a long history of doing excellent work and being a best-in-class (dare I say best-in-show?) operation. Our “charter” Director of Prospect Research was a leader in the field, helping to found the Minnesota Prospect Research Association (which eventually grew to become APRA). So we’ve had the whole “best practice” thing down pretty well for quite a while (for the most part).
And this tradition of excellent, thoughtful research has remained consistent for roughly 30 years. This kind of performance helps to establish a pretty good reputation.
More important than this, though, is the fact that our senior fundraising leadership – our Director of Development, our Director of Major & Planned Giving, and our VP – fully understand the value and importance of a robust Research program, and they support it completely. As the Director of Prospect Research, I am included in nearly all major meetings involving fundraising. Research always has a seat at the table, and it is my belief that the organization benefits greatly from this.
I say all these things not to boast, but to explain why I’m really thrilled to work at Carleton. To be recognized so prominently by your organization’s president is a pretty amazing thing, and I think it’s the product of the good work my team does, and the great support we receive from our fundraising leadership. I sort of lucked into a really great shop, and I’m tremendously grateful it worked out that way!
