Written by: Beth Inman, Senior Director of Prospect Management & Research Analysis, University of South Carolina and President of APRA-Carolinas

Picture it: the year was 2015 and the University of South Carolina’s $1B capital campaign, Carolina’s Promise, was coming to an end. And, one of our development officers had 300 prospects in her portfolio.  Yes, 300. I can hear the collective gasps as you read this and wonder how a portfolio could be that big! In the development officer’s defense, there had been turnover in her department and she inherited a lot of prospects.  That being said, 300 is an unreasonable amount of prospects in a portfolio and it was one of the primary motivations to get started on a large scale portfolio review project.

In the past, portfolio “reviews” in my shop were very one-sided and there was very little actual reviewing going on. A list of their prospects was sent to the development officers requesting they review it and let us know if there were any changes. You can imagine how many changes were sent back to us; not many. I knew the process wasn’t working but I honestly had a hard time wrapping my head around how to do a project like this for 40 development officers. We decided reviewing one prospect manager category for each development officer was a good beginning; every Primary Manager assignment (approx. 3,400) would be reviewed.

In February 2015, I convened a Prospect Management Committee to discuss the idea of a portfolio review project and came to the meeting prepared with stats to illustrate the project’s importance. I created graphs to show the total number of Primary Manager assignments and from there, broke down how many of those were individual constituents and how many were corporate and foundation constituents. To help make my case, I also included the % of constituents who had not been contacted in the last 12 months (28%) and, without sharing names, included the high and low number of prospects in the portfolios. In proposing the project, I shared that the Primary Manager assignments would be reviewed and one of three recommendations would be made: keep, release or needs attention. The committee saw this as a positive step in helping them manage their portfolios and suggested that my team approaching it from a positive approach would go a long way in the project being successful. At that point, we made the decision to refer to the review process as a ‘portfolio consultation.’  Getting the support of this committee was a huge boost to getting the project started officially.

One lucky development officer agreed to be our guinea pig; we did a practice review of her Primary Manager assignments and scheduled a meeting with her to discuss. For each Primary Manager assignment, each record was reviewed for information in the contact reports, total giving, date of last gift, # of years giving to Carolina and the status of any major gift asks. We also reviewed the constituent’s philanthropic giving outside of Carolina and their gift capacity rating was reviewed for any changes. This first consultation clocked in at an hour and a half because we discussed every prospect on her list. While this was very informative, we knew it wasn’t logical for each consultation to last 90 minutes. From there, we made the decision to sort the spreadsheet by the recommendation for the prospect – the prospects recommended they keep would be grouped at the top, the prospects needing attention would be grouped in the middle and the prospects recommended for release would be grouped at the bottom of the list.  This helped with the efficiency of our reviews; we would only discuss the ‘keep’ prospects if the development officer wanted to release a prospect we recommended they keep.  This way, our time was spent delving into the ‘needs attention’ and the ‘releases.’

Other time savers were to have a template email to send out to the development officer when it was time to schedule their consultation meeting and a template in Excel for the review and its results/recommendations.  In the email, we explained the project overall, what data was being reviewed and what we were requesting they do prior to the meeting.  The Excel template ensured the data and recommendations we were providing were aesthetically and analytically consistent; an example of the template is pictured below.

This project took approximately 7 months; we met with 39 development officers and reviewed 3,545 manager assignments. We recommended that 61% of the manager assignments be kept and 39% of them be released.  After the project was complete, we calculated that, in the end, 59% of the assignments were kept and 41% were released.  It was validating to know that the development officers agreed with almost all of our recommendations.  From the development officers’ view, they often told us how helpful this process was and that they really appreciated our input on their prospects. There were even some who said they had forgotten about a few of their prospects.

Why bother with a portfolio review project? We learned a LOT! By meeting with every development officer about their portfolio, there was valuable dialogue about their prospects and their strategies and we also heard some really great stories!  We updated a lot of solicitations, we adjusted manager assignments when the development officer felt like their prospect was better suited for another division, we updated a lot of records with information on divorces, deaths and we now have a much more accurate picture of the total number of real prospects under management.  This helps with gift forecasting, campaign planning and staffing requests.

This project was also a good opportunity for my team to show how valuable we are to the division of development. We have access to a lot of information and we are the experts on finding, interpreting and analyzing this information.  Our hope is the directors of development will continue to utilize our expertise and view us as the valuable partners we are in the University’s fundraising efforts.

*This project would not have been possible without Kristin Richardson, Vicki O’Brien, Abigail Mann and Matt Bundrick.  This was an enormous project for my team and they were invaluable throughout the entire process.

December's blog comes to us from Barbara Chadwell, Director of Prospect Management and Research at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC.

When an organization has a change in leadership positions there is often a mixture of excitement and uneasiness in the air.  Existing procedures, protocols, and reports will be used or seen for the first time by new players.  Assembling information that will help assess the soundness of your fundraising operation will be a given.  Those of us that work in prospect management and research should be among the most important go-to persons because we have one of the best “big picture” views of the fundraising operation’s strengths and weaknesses. We see the work of most everyone and we know the ins and outs of the giving and prospect data.

During times of transition, hopefully it is revealed that your prospect management system is one of your organization’s most important assets and not one of your weakest links.  Many of us have spent a great deal of time establishing and refining a prospect management and reporting system that captures the basics:  prospect ratings, assignments, external screenings, contact histories, solicitation data, and action items.  We have reports that can be sliced and diced numerous ways to reveal the big picture for anyone who will take the time to review them.  The system shouldn’t be complicated.  It just has to be kept up to date!  If you haven’t been successful in eliminating shadow lists and gotten your leadership to support the idea that “if it isn’t recorded in the database then it didn’t happen” then your big picture view will be incomplete.  The database must be the central point of information sharing; otherwise accountability and progress reporting will continue to be a difficult and time consuming task. 

To this end, one of the most fundamental things you must stress with every new member of the fundraising team is the importance of documentation.   Be specific about your standards.  Share examples.  Give them feedback.  Show them the work of the person that does this the best on the fundraising team.   When you see gaps, keep after them to do better.  In our respective areas we all have a responsibility to record value-added information and leave a plan of action for the person that may come after us.  Without a shared trail of activity, you can have potential chaos when a key position becomes vacated.  You will lose momentum and you may even run the risk of looking unprofessional because you’ve let something important fall between the cracks.  Why risk that happening?

We should never quit being among the loudest advocates for recording and centralizing information.   When you have a simple prospect management system that everyone buys into and leadership commits to reporting from, then there is no angst in accurately answering questions such as “How many major gift solicitations did your team make last year?” or “What asks are currently outstanding?”  In the end, the prospect management system that you maintain on a daily basis will be an everlasting gift to your organization.

 

 

 

October's post comes to us from Mary Collin, who is the Director of Research/Alumni Relations/Special Projects at Central Piedmont Community College.

I have been very fortunate in my professional career in prospect research. In my early career, my employer brought in two power-house women who at the time were working for a consulting firm. They helped me set up shop, trained me on the available tools, and ignited my already abundant curiosity. They helped me refine and deliver gathered information into a workable, cohesive format that would come to define me as a solid and reliable prospect researcher.

I have watched the stellar careers of both these women over the years. How fortunate I was to have been schooled, tutored, and mentored by these women.

One of the most important lessons I learned during training was to ask questions. I proudly delivered a project to a development officer only to have it handed back with a note that it was not what was needed. When I called the consultants, I got this sage reply, “You gave her what she asked for, but it was not what she wanted. Did you take the time to ask her what she needed, how she was going to use it, or what the overall project was?”

Keeping those questions as my focal point has helped me through the years. It keeps me humble, reminds me that while we are all working towards a common goal, the delivery of research goods needs to be in a usable format for the development officer receiving it. As a single-person shop, that means I sometimes have to append my delivery to meet the audience.

Am I spoiling my development officers? Maybe.

Getting to know the development officers, their personalities, and needs, gets me invited into their inner circle. I get called into strategy meetings to weigh-in and offer opinions based on findings. I have learned to trust the development officers and they have learned to trust me.

Developing relationships with the development officers also led me to join the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and to gain certification as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE.) Was this necessary? No.  What it did, was to give me insight into the dynamics of fundraising and the challenges of being a development officer. I believe it made me a better researcher. It helped change my mindset, and chinked away at the wall that sometimes separates “us” from “them.”

The great thing about our profession is that we all have the opportunity to be great, to find our niche, our specialty and to create a dynamic working relationship that will advance the field and the profession. So take the chance, strike up a conversation with the development officers and ask what they need from you. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I will always be indebted to Karen L. Green and Diane Crane, for their knowledge-base and mentoring skills that helped launch my career.

 

September's post is from Tania Drummond, Director, Prospect Research at NC State University, Raleigh, NC.

Most prospect research professionals probably describe their work to others something along the lines of this statement, which is part of the information presented about the prospect research office at my institution:

Prospect research professionals conduct research on people, companies and foundations. They collect, evaluate, analyze, organize and disseminate publicly available information in a way that maximizes its usefulness in making decisions for development operations.

Prospect Researchers have always been responsible for analyzing data in order to put it to practical use in fundraising efforts. One type of analysis might include sifting through large volumes of information, understanding what the data may be telling us and determining which pieces of information should be included in a report and which should not.  Another type of analysis might be applying the results of a predictive giving model to suggest potential new gift prospects for discovery pools or to inform development officer travel. But whatever the variety of projects on which prospect research professionals are asked to work, much – if not most - of our value lies in our ability to analyze data.

The availability of data to development personnel, free and purchased, and how easily we can get that data has changed tremendously in the last decade or so. It’s far more common now for nonprofit organizations to be able to purchase wealth screening data and predictive giving models from a wide choice of vendors. People who don’t do the work we do, however, often don’t understand that getting all this available data and using such tools as screening and modeling, while helpful and valuable, aren’t turn-key solutions to informing development strategy. The data gleaned from such projects as screening and modeling can’t be implemented and used effectively without having someone analyze that data in conjunction with the organization’s internal data, in context, and make sense of how it all can be used together and applied to the project or problem at hand. It’s the prospect research professionals who do this analysis, and who make sure that the organization is getting the highest return on the investments made into purchased data and data services.

I think those of us in prospect research should look for every opportunity to showcase and highlight that which is unique about the work we do and to display, in all the ways that we can, our ability to objectively analyze and evaluate information to come to an informed decision or judgment. We can do this not just in the prospect research work that we do, but also in the choices we make in our office operations, our budget proposals, and our project and staffing plans. Our critical thinking and problem solving abilities should be on display in everything we do, and we should always be able to answer the question of “why” – why we made that choice, why we made that decision, why we suggested that strategy. In doing so, perhaps we’ll better the odds that we’ll never have to answer the question, “why is prospect research important?”

Our August post is from Chris Nuckols, Senior Donor Identification Analyst at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC.

In 2014, I completed a project which involved the “holding pool” prospects at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.  These are prospects who were previously managed, but can still be reactivated.  Over the years, our holding pool gradually increased to over 1,300 prospects.  As a result, the size of the pool was becoming difficult to manage.  This increase was due to factors such as the following:

• Development officers determined that some of their managed prospects were too young
• Development officers determined that the circumstances were not ideal at the time
• A prospect had strong connections to our medical center, but a meeting could never be arranged

Since the holding pool had grown from a “kiddie pool” to an “Olympic size pool,” the prospect management team decided we needed to dive in and explore the situation.  I was chosen as the lead diver for this project and was ready to become the next Jacques Cousteau.  After carefully analyzing the background of the 1,300+ prospects, I resurfaced and divided the group into three new mini-pools:

• Ready to Assign Prospects: These are very worthwhile prospects, but have not yet been contacted by a development officer (portfolios are full).  This would be the equivalent of the kid who jumps into the neighborhood pool as soon as he arrives.
• Delayed Prospects: These prospects have been contacted by a development officer, but are not ready to give a major gift now.  They could become major gift prospects at some point in the future though (after they are more established in their career and/or when children have graduated from college, etc.).  This would be the equivalent of a young adult who goes to the pool on a 75 degree day, and the pool is a little on the cool side.  So, this person would take his good ‘ole time getting into the pool.  Additionally, the development officers provided review dates (typically 2-4 years out) which will prompt the prospect research team to evaluate for possible reassignment on that date.
• No Response Prospects: These are good prospects who were assigned to a development officer, but did not respond to multiple attempts to meet.  This would be the equivalent of a kid asking his mom or dad several times to jump into the pool, but the parents would rather sit poolside soaking up the rays and enjoying a beverage of their choice.  For these prospects, a one year review date was added for evaluating and possibly reassigning the prospect.     

In addition to the prospects who were placed into one of the three mini-pools, several prospects were deemed not viable and were subsequently removed from the holding pool.  Also, many were reassigned, reactivated, or marked as deceased. 

I now act like David Hasselhoff (portrayed a lifeguard on Baywatch, for those a little younger) and monitor the three mini-pools on a regular basis.  When either a delayed or no response prospect comes up for review, I will reevaluate the prospect.  Depending on the circumstances, I will extend the review date, place the prospect into a different mini-pool, reassign the prospect, or permanently remove from the holding pool.

The goal for this project was to restructure the way prospects are assigned from our holding pool.  We now have much more reliable and useful categories of potential prospects when a development officer’s portfolio needs to be replenished or increased (for a new development officer).  With the completion of this project, the way we manage prospects has become more efficient and effective.      

July’s post comes from Tracy Martin, the Advancement Services Coordinator at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

In the world of donors, of course, not all donors are created equal. However, using the savvy information included in this article you can capitalize on donors of any size. I hope you find it both entertaining and informative.  

You might be a student leadership donor if…….

You have influence over your classmates and can give a dollar!  Leveraging the information from student applications is helpful by reviewing engagement with non-profits and fundraising positions. Students in these roles already get the importance of philanthropy and therefore can help further spread the philanthropic mindset through peer solicitation. Oftentimes you can also capitalize on student leadership to ‘infect’ the rest of their classmates with their philanthropic spirit. With this group in particular, playing up participation rather than dollar amount is key.

You might be an annual fund donor if………

You can give a dime that you found on the ground to the organization of your choice. This is a tricky, yet simple, category of donors. The simple answer is, no matter what organization or capacity to give, everyone engaged with your organization should be an annual fund donor. By supporting your cause, program or school- each donor is saying with affirmation that they agree with your mission and they want you to continue to succeed in all you are doing.  Generally speaking, these are your first time donors, young donors and perhaps your aging donors. These are likely your donors that give more of their time and talent perhaps because they cannot give much past their annual gift. This only shows their passion for your organization!

However, it’s not as sexy as say naming a building or having a professorship named after you. What you can glean out of your annual fund donor lists are the following things. Trends in increased giving levels over time can indicate deeper engagement and loyalty. By examining the times of their giving, you can estimate the appropriate time to solicit them once instead of inundating them with continual solicitations and save your organization valuable dollars. Focusing on time and amounts can reveal that they may be a potential planned gift prospect also. This will be discussed in the planned gift segment. By combining this information with birthdates of their children, you can also anticipate increased giving as their children approach coming to your school or upon graduation from college.

Even when a donor is being solicited for a major gift, continue to keep them in your annual fund pool unless they have declared they are not interested. When you continue to keep them as an annual fund donor, you can also leverage their standing in your community to demonstrate to other annual fund donors their potential to grow.  This goes back to the old Fabergé shampoo commercial. “Then you tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on…” (Yes, I realize I am dating myself greatly!)

You might be a major gift donor if……………………..

Your passion is matched by your capacity and inclination.  I’m sure everyone is well versed in how to identify a prospect with the potential and having given to similar organizations like yours. That’s the easy part.  But what else can a major gift donor do for you?

As mentioned in the section above, they have the potential to influence other annual fund donors and potential new major gift donors. Do they have a nice office space or second home or connections to an upscale country club? How about an interesting collection of art or cars? Have them host an event where they declare they are going to lead a challenge to assist you in securing new major gift donors. Let them throw down that gauntlet! If your organization gets 50 new donors giving at your major gift threshold, this leader will give a larger than usual gift to commemorate the occasion. Keep in mind that this is different from a matching opportunity in that no one that gives at the new level will receive any credit, soft or otherwise, from your leadership donor’s gift. This will keep the accounting simple on the backside.

Leverage these donors with higher capacity to host a small event to include potential new major gift level donors or assist in stewarding a circle of annual fund donors. Again, using awesome space can only enhance the mood.

You might be a planned gift donor if…………………

You are approaching the 72 year mark where gift planning can be counted in full. Many of them have been sitting quietly at the lower threshold of your annual fund pool for years without raising any eyebrows. However, their steadfast giving speaks for itself. Some may be your worker bees who have worked diligently beside your staff for many years in eager anticipation of the next time they can give of their time to your cause.   Still others will be those that made their money quickly and planning is essential to them while they still have a large sum.  This is another category of prospects that should be considered with all donors, at some point.

There has been a noticeable increasing trend of prospects in their mid-forties who have begun looking philanthropically at their estate planning. While you might be able to capitalize on the value, you can capitalize on the timing. Eventually this will pay off for your group.

Once they become a planned gift donor, no matter the age, treat them special from your annual fund donors. They can also be leveraged as you would your major gift donors by inviting their friends to special events, and so on and so on.

You might be a worker bee prospect if…………………

You just can’t resist when the call for help arrives. These are the steady Eddies that are always there for you, rain, shine, sleet or snow. They don’t mind pitching in by mentoring, helping with events, speaking at an information session or cheering for your leadership.

These are your core people who will give more when they can, but you should always value the fact they give of their time and themselves! They likely will have you in their will, speak kindly of your group to anyone they know and will be there when the chips are down.

They will give annual fund gifts; some even major gifts. These are the people for whom Distinguished Awards are created! Give the people what they want!

You might be a connector if……………………….

You are a mover and a shaker in your industry, circle of friends or community. These are the “who knows who of the who’s who.” They are seated on several boards, chairs of committees and can influence many with a few tweeted words. Use them to open doors that might otherwise remain closed.

Ask them to make introductions, host dinners whereby you may meet future prospects interested in your organization or even ask them to submit a list of friends they’d like to invite to something honoring their service to your organization.

You might be sour grapes if…………………………

You claim you’ll never give another dime unless they bend to your wishes or complain about everything the organization does even when they do get it right!

It’s hard to do, because we are ever hopeful. However, sometimes you just have to know when to quit. If they never take a call or meeting, or when they do- it’s to complain about something that was on Facebook or other social media about your organization; it’s time to just back off and leave them alone.  You can’t win them all.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick and dirty way of sorting your prospects into apples, oranges and pears.  May you enjoy the fruits of your labor and there be few sour grapes!

Joyfully submitted,

Tracey Martin

Last month we heard from USC about their experience in creating a model for donor affinity and this month we have the pleasure of hearing from Kathy Mills, Senior Donor Identification Analyst, at Baptist Medical Center who shares their approach for a similar project at Wake Forest.  

In 2013, our prospect management/development team here at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center embarked on a plan to create an affinity score for our non-managed prospects. The goal was to use this score as a tool to find lower-level donors who were shaping up to look like our major gift donors and who should be assigned to a major gift officer.

First, we brainstormed about characteristics of our major donors and criteria that would indicate someone had an affinity for our organization. An APRA Carolinas meeting where fellow member Patrick O’Toole presented on the topic further guided our methodology. After lots of conversation, we decided on the following:

•         Consistent giving
•         Gifts of stock
•         Gifts through a donor-advised fund or foundation
•         Planned gifts
•         Attended 10 or more events (lifetime)
•         Alum of the medical school
•         Alum of both Wake Forest University’s undergraduate and medical school
•         Current or former board member
•         Hospital volunteer

We knew that some of these characteristics should carry more weight than others, but we were not sure how to determine those weights, so we consulted with statisticians on our faculty. We sent them a list of 800 donors, including some of our very highest-level donors, and included their total household giving and which of the above characteristics they had.

The statisticians analyzed the file and made their score recommendations. After a little tweaking, we finalized the figures and determined the maximum score a prospect could obtain. We had our systems analysts overlay the scores on our sample file of 800 donors and analyzed the results. We were delighted to find that the donors we expected to have the top scores did indeed score very highly. The scoring system appeared to be working.

Next, we had our systems analysts overlay the scores on a file of about 29,000 unmanaged donors, with the data refreshing every night. As with our previous test, those with the highest scores also tended to have higher household giving levels and alerted us to those who were shaping up to look like major donors. What surprised us, however, was how few donors scored highly. We uncovered very few hidden gems that could be assigned immediately to major gift officers.

This exercise indicated to us that we needed to do a better job engaging our annual funds donors to help move them through the pipeline. We are currently looking at ways to do that, including digital communications, event invitations, better stewardship for annual giving donors, and other methods.

We also realized the need to have special gift officers on our team to help move those with moderate scores to a higher level in which they would be ready to be assigned to a major gift officer. We are now in the process of hiring these gift officers.

We took a snapshot of what our unmanaged donors’ scores look like today. With the enhancements we will be making to our program, including increased engagement and special gift officers, we are hoping to see the overall scores increase over the next few years.

This month our blog comes from Vicki Williams and Abigail Mann; Prospect Research Analysts from The University of South Carolina.

At the University of South Carolina, we are creating a predictive behavioral model using attributes assigned to our constituents to predict the outcomes of future solicitations and identify high quality prospects with a strong affinity for our university.  

Our model came about from a simple question:  How does affinity influence a constituent’s giving?  We asked ourselves this deceptively innocuous question in Fall 2013, and it has morphed into a research project that has gone through several developmental stages as we have met challenges that had to be overcome in order to create a model that would work for us and meet our needs.  Over a year later, we are ready to test our model, but reaching this phase demanded a lot of time and hard work.  It also required us to meet with colleagues outside of our prospect research shop.  We learned early on that we could not build a strong, actionable model without our colleagues’ specialized knowledge and expertise.

To begin with, we defined the term “affinity.”  For our purposes, affinity came to be known as engagement with the university through involvement.  In our CRM, attributes are assigned to constituents for event attendance, participation in athletics, memberships in clubs, service organizations, and more.  We knew attributes were going to be the critical piece to creating our model, because they would be our way to measure affinity.  We proceeded to measure every attribute through assigning it a weight on a scale from 1 to 5, with one being the lowest level of involvement and five being the highest. Through this process, we essentially quantified involvement. 

There are over 1,400 attributes in our CRM, and, believe it or not, we weighted every attribute for level of involvement.  As we’re sure you have already guessed, this was by no means an easy process.  Due to the sheer volume of the data set, there were, understandably, gaps in our knowledge regarding the significance of many attributes. Not only was it necessary to conduct individual research, but also to collaborate with our donor relations team and development officers from several divisions in order to make sure that as many attributes as possible were clearly defined and weighted accordingly. There were debates and marathon meetings on what attributes warranted a five, what attributes warranted a one, and what some attributes were doing in our CRM in the first place. This led us to request Information Systems to generate reports of constituents with particular attributes to examine trends in total giving and other involvement with the university.  One example is our athletics teams. Each of the university’s twelve teams has its own attribute and all were initially given the same weight. We began to wonder, however if this was using too broad a brushstroke.  This motivated us to request a report of constituents with these attributes.  We found staggering differences in engagement and giving between the various teams.  Surprisingly, we found that constituents who had played golf for the university were more involved and gave more frequently than constituents with other athletics attributes.  As a result, we adjusted our weights for these attributes according to the data.  

With the attributes finally weighted, we will be working with Information Systems to integrate the weights into our CRM to enable us to generate datasets that show constituents’ affinity scores.  In the next month, we will be prepared to test the strength of our predictive behavioral model by running linear and multivariate regressions of a sample population to see how our attributes, coded by their weight value, can predict giving.  We are in the middle of choosing our first sample population for our test run.  It has been our experience that constituents who were members of a Greek organization during their college careers were also members of other organizations with some even serving in leadership roles, and, as a result, have a total weight of attributes that shows significant affinity. We have also witnessed trends showing that as constituents advance in age, their giving increases. Should we use this sample population, our goal will be to see how much giving increases as constituents with a membership in a Greek organization and high affinity score start to age.  Our results may reveal to us that giving by constituents who were members of a Greek organization and have a high affinity score increases by thousands of dollars from when they were fifty to the age of sixty. The strength of this relationship will have the power to help us make predictions about future giving.  We will then be able to consider increasing our solicitation amounts of constituents who were members of a Greek organization and have a high affinity score who are entering the retirement stages of their lives all based on the data results of the regression that the model enabled us to run.      

Another added bonus to the model is that we will be able to use it to fill our pipeline through identifying prospects that may have otherwise gone unnoticed, because we did not screen them through our customized model to see their predicted giving based on their affinity.    

Knowing the strength of the relationship between affinity and giving will help us to understand our donors better, and understanding our donors is most certainly one of the guiding principles of prospect research.  Our hope is that we will have persuasive statistical evidence that supports our empirical observations that affinity can predict giving.  We feel very strongly that we have created a predictive behavioral model which will enable our leadership to make data-informed decisions about our donors and future solicitation amounts.

In a couple of months, we will be excited to share the results of our project with you when we have precise numbers explaining the relationship between affinity scores and giving.  Stay tuned for another post about the outcome of our first application of the model as well as tips and tricks for how you can “DIY” your very own model. 

Our March blog post comes from Kristin Richardson, Director of Development Research Analysis at The University of South Carolina

Data analytics—it’s the buzzword that prospect research and management can’t seem to stop using.  But what does it really mean?  And is it something that is even possible for everyone?

Well, a lot of that depends on your shop.  If you are a bare bones shop using Office products to get your analysis done, you’re going to have a few more hurdles to clear.  Larger shops, with more software and staff, will certainly have an easier go of it.  But that doesn’t necessarily translate into robust data analytics output.  Regardless of the size of your shop, there are two key components that both need in order to succeed with data analytics: human resources and functional data.

To fully implement a strong data analytics strategy, you have to have the right staff.  Not everyone is comfortable with linear regressions, ANOVA, and all the other statistical formulas that are used in data analysis.  There are still plenty of us in prospect research who can barely use the basic functions available in Excel!  In order to build an analytics component in any size research shop you have to have the personnel with the requisite skills to make it happen.  For those shops without an existing data component, this will mean evaluating the strengths of your existing team and possibly rearranging daily functions.  Even though all team members may have the same title, not all will have the same skills.  In our shop, we have one researcher who is most proficient with the research and writing, updating the CRM, and identifying strong prospects that have already been prescreened or modeled.  Our other researcher, while having similar skills, is also very talented at statistical analysis; thus, her annual plan is weighted more heavily on the data side.  It’s also important to realize what duties make the members of your team most productive. If someone is a whiz kid at manipulating pivot tables, but enjoys writing profiles more, let them do more of that; it’ll make everyone happier and more productive.  If you are in the position to hire new staff, and don’t have someone with strong data skills in place, use this opportunity to rethink the job description.  By overlaying some of what you want data analysis outcomes to be for your shop onto the prospect research job description, you can try to find someone with both skill sets.  And if you’re really fortunate, you can make the case to leadership to hire a true data analyst, someone whose sole function will be to perform data analysis projects as part of your prospect research deliverables.

The other key component, functional, data is not necessarily within your sphere of control.  There are plenty of factors that keep data from being “clean”—the number of users for the CRM, training, data cleansing, report writing and gathering, and the list goes on.  What is working for us in getting better data into and out of the CRM actually happened as by-products of other initiatives.  A combination of in-person training with online tutorials is helping condition the CRM users in the proper way to input data into the system—what fields to use, when to use them, when not to use them, and the like.  By continual reinforcement from the prospect management and research teams of how the data is captured and utilized, we are finding that data is more functional now compared to 3-4 years ago. What has really made the biggest difference?  Getting better at articulating what we want the data to tell us and communicating that with the information services team members who are going to extract that data.  Filling out a request form with a simple statement such as “All donors with giving over $100,000 and ratings under $100,000” doesn’t really tell that data extractor much, does it?  But telling them you are looking to identify those donors who were rated lower than gifts received to help model future donors by looking at key indicators such as education, marital status, giving outside the institution, etc., will certainly help them build a better report.  And an added bonus is you’ll also get more data that you won’t have to pull out manually because they know which tables to pull this data from in the CRM. Additionally, forging a strong relationship with the information team will go far—never underestimate the power of respectful questioning of what they do and how they do it.  You know, the more you know!

Data analytics isn’t going anywhere—if anything, we are going to see more and more of it being expected from any size prospect research department.  Keeping in mind the key components which are under your control will help you get there with less stress.  Even if you don’t know the difference between a data set and a linear regression, remember this: human resources and functional data are all under your sphere of influence.  Even if you don’t know the difference between a data set and a linear regression, remember this: you can influence your human resource capital and work within your department and with the information systems team to improve your data.  Bringing data analytics to your institution can now be a reality keeping these key factors in mind.

Our February blog post comes from Lisa C. Ukuku, Director of Research at The Citadel Foundation.

Here at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, we have a unique solicitation strategy that has worked very well for several years. It’s called CRC, which stands for the Class Reunion Campaign. The idea is for classes to hold a mini-campaign and have an immediate impact on campus as a collective group. The milestone reunion classes, those celebrating their 10th, 25th, 40th, and 50th class reunion, are assigned to a CRC officer, who is responsible for both major gift and annual gift donations made as part of the CRC.

The CRC officer begins the process by recruiting a committee of volunteers, who determine a project and monetary goal for the CRC. Once the project and goal are approved, the CRC officer presents them to the class. Then, the CRC officer meets with class members whom the Research Office has designated as the class’ top prospects. The campaign includes gifts and pledges made two years before and pledge payments made up to three years after the reunion year.

The process for selecting the top prospects of each class is very precise and is done twice a year for each reunion class. This report can be a bit of a “beast” to format. However, the data is very helpful to the CRC officers, because it assists them in determining the giving history/pattern of the class members. The Research team creates a query from the Raiser’s Edge database and exports it into an MS Office Excel spreadsheet. The following material is retrieved:

1. Contact information
2. Employment
3. Spouse
4. Company
5. Class year
6. Total giving for last three years
7. Cumulative lifetime total giving
8. Number of gifts
9. Date of first gift
10. Date of last gift
11. Name of fund to which last gift was made
12. Date of last action (i.e. touch)
13. Target gift dollar range (for an annual gift)
14. Major giving likelihood score (MGL)
15. Solicitation code

This data is then sorted three ways and saved on separated tabs of the spreadsheet; the tabs are labeled as follows:

MGL: MGL score (Major Gift Likelihood) ranging from 1-1000 based on the constituent’s ability to make a major gift to The Citadel Foundation.

Company: The name of the barracks where the cadet lived while he/she was a
student at The Citadel

Total Giving: The cumulative lifetime giving amount, sorted from highest to lowest amounts

To further segment the MGL group, the list is sorted from the highest to the lowest scores and divided into three tiers, based on the MGL score and total lifetime giving of $25,000 or greater.

After the list is compiled, it is sent to the Director of Development for Annual & Reunion Giving and copied to each of the corresponding CRC officers. The Research team saves each class list in a folder on the network so that all CRC officers and staff have access to this information.

The benefit of the CRC is that the Foundation is educating alums on reunions and preparing them for capital campaigns, board memberships, etc. The alums who give are actually being cultivated to become the next annual and major gift donors to The Citadel. Once their class campaign is over, the CRC officer meets with the Research department and discusses the donors individually and recommends if they should be assigned to Major Gift Officers or to Annual Gift Officers. Another option is that if the CRC officer and the alum have formed a good relationship, the CRC officer can choose to remain assigned along with an Annual Gift Officer or Major Gift Officer. The team assignment offers continuity of the class reunion experience and gently upgrades the alum to the next step in philanthropy.

The “beauty” of the CRC is that it enables graduates, who formed strong unions as cadets, to continue to challenge and support each other after graduation. It also plants the seed of giving and provides much needed funds to special projects, programs, and scholarships for future cadets.