This month’s post comes to us from APRA-C member Kristin Richardson, Director of Prospect Research Analysis at the University of South Carolina.

While trying to come up with an idea for this blog post, my mind raced over all the agenda items I review on a daily basis.  From reactive requests to data analytics needs to improving our information and reporting, I was looking for that ONE thing that most of us probably encounter in our world that also can cause the most headache/heartache.  What glared back at me is Proactive Prospect Leads (echo, echo, echo).

In my little corner of the higher education fundraising world, proactive lead profiles were sporadically distributed prior to my arrival.  I was fortunate to come on board during a time of some pretty significant change in prospect development in my institution.  My immediate supervisor was a newly hired Sr. Director of Prospect Development and was implementing policies and procedures for moves management; this position had not previously existed; rather, its responsibilities were being managed as time allowed by another Advancement Services team member.  When I came on board, both my manager and I were determined to make proactive profiling and lead dissemination a priority.  We thought, “How could fundraisers NOT want to have prospects handed to them, fully vetted?”  We quickly came to the realization that we were way more excited than the frontline staff!

Of course, they didn’t tell us this at the start.  I met with frontline fundraisers when I first came on board and talked about the goals of our division and how we were ready to support them.  All seemed pretty excited about the possibilities of having new prospects to whom they could reach out.  So we dipped our toes into the water and got ready to test proactive leads.  I set monthly proactive goals for the two researchers on staff, plus myself.  I created a spreadsheet to track the leads that we sent out.  We “made the case” for each lead, reinforced it as needed, and had each lead signed off by leadership before we sent it out.  With bated breath, I sent the first batch of leads out, quietly rejoicing that we were going to be instrumental in the forward momentum of this campaign.

Then reality hit.  Seems that frontline staff were perfectly happy to keep their existing portfolios, thank you very much. They knew their existing prospects and felt like they could probably identify new prospects on their own.  After all, we had reports and a dashboard to help them drill down by capacity, education, and giving to locate those prospects that would be a good fit for their unit.  Of the handful of leads we sent out, only a couple fundraisers made attempts to contact the prospect.  None of the proactive leads was added to a portfolio.

At this juncture, you may think we just threw our hands up and gave in.  But no, we are way too invested to do that!  We analyzed where some of the breakdown may have occurred and discovered the following: It was taking way too long to distribute the leads, it was manually taxing (we had to use in-house reports combined with good old fashioned researching on every single potential prospect to create a profile), and we didn’t really give each profile the appropriate level of fanfare when we sent it.  We went back to the drawing board, so to speak. We lobbied and identified a better way to identify proactive leads.  We purchased a proactive model from a vendor, formed a multi-unit committee to review how the model was derived, and developed policies on how this process was going to work.  Then we reviewed – IN DETAIL – the lead identification and disbursement process to ALL the frontline staff.  Ultimately though, it also became a priority for our new leadership.  And with their backing, it has continued to be an issue that is front and center in our development shop. 

Now that is not to say that each frontline officer jumps for joy when they get my email saying “We’ve identified a great lead for your division!”…but the response is drastically better than our first go-round.  We are continuing to work on ways to improve communication with the frontline fundraisers and build more excitement around these leads.  Some of our percolating ideas are monthly newsletters from Prospect Development, playing BINGO with the blocks corresponding to the steps in the process, and internally creating a more robust reporting system to give to leadership.

So though we may still have a long way to go, the path behind us is equally as long.  We have made dramatic changes in the output of our shop.  We have become innovative in how we use both our database and external systems to measure and track our proactive leads.  We continue to try to build and maintain enthusiasm around proactive lead generation.  I can honestly say I think we are in the midpoint of this journey towards proactive prospect nirvana.   And it feels pretty good!