Growing your Prospect Pipeline: Prospect Research and Screening

Growing your Prospect Pipeline:
Prospect Research and Screening
Stuart D. Entwistle
October 16, 2012
Stuart D. Entwistle
Vice President of Sales with WealthEngine
• 20 years working within the Non-Profit Community
• Formerly with Catholic Relief Services, Episcopal
Diocese of Maryland and the National Prostate
Cancer Coalition
• AFP- MD Volunteer
• 8 Years with WealthEngine
Topics of Discussion
•
What Is Prospect Research
•
Why Conduct Prospect Research
•
Who Are Prospect Researchers
•
What Information Can/Cannot Be Found
•
How Is Prospect Research Found And Results Delivered
•
Now You Have The Prospect Research…What’s Next?
•
Finding Success
•
Research & Prospecting in Practice
•
Ethics & Security
•
Research Tools & Resources
What is Prospect Research?
Using the Internet and other current
technologies, researchers collect, evaluate,
analyze, organize, package and disseminate
publicly available information in a way that
maximizes its usefulness and enables accurate
and educated decision-making.
What is Prospect Research?
(continued)
• Advancement Research, Development
Research and Prospect Research are
synonymous
• Approximately 20 years old as an organized
profession
• Includes Prospect Management and Data
Mining and Analysis
Why conduct Prospect Research?
To Address the Fundamental Challenges that face Development
Offices:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Not enough major donors
Not always asking for the right amount
Not understanding their donors
Not segmenting their donors correctly
Wasting time on the wrong donors
Not enough information for planned gifts
Difficult to determine whom to invite to which events, where
Don’t know what marketing approach or campaign to best use
Don’t know how much to invest in executing the campaign
Don’t know how to measure ROI for each initiative
Who Are Prospect Researchers?
• Approximately:
49% have a bachelor’s degree
37% have advanced degrees (Master’s, MBA, JD, PhD,
etc.)
97% work in nonprofit organizations
67% work in higher education; 17% work in
healthcare; 16% work in all other organization
classifications
Source: APRA International 2006
Professional Survey
What Can We Find?
•
•
•
•
Real Estate
Insider Stock Holdings
Assets…aircraft, yachts ownership
Compensation
 Public Company & Comparison
 Comparative Salary Info
• Published Indicators of Wealth
• Affiliation related information…corporate and non-profit
boards, Foundations board membership past/present
• Past philanthropic giving
What We Cannot Find!
•
•
•
•
•
Private Bank Account Information
Private Stockholdings (non-Insider)
How Much is in Someone’s Trust
Precise Mortgage, Debt and Investment Losses
Other Non-published Assets
Jewelry
Art
Anything that would not create a public record
Prospect Research: More Art than Science
• Challenges to the ever elusive “Net Worth”:
Not enough public information exists to
calculate exactly
• Only time we have an idea on net worth:
Subject makes a statement in the press claiming a
“net worth”…take with a grain of salt
Forbes 400
Rich Register
Statistical Modeling
How To Find…What We Find?
Research Deliverables
Seamless Interface Options for Most all
Donor Management Systems
Prospect Generator
Identify New Prospects Not Known To You
Turning Your Prospect Research
Into Results…Creating More
Donors and Greater Giving
Prospecting Tactics
Empower Yourself with Knowledge
• Develop Prospect List
Most Likely Current Donors
Best Prospects have high capacity and high affinity
Do You Know Your Organization’s Top 10 Donors?
…Top 20?…Top 50?
Prospecting Tactics
(continued)
• Best “Research” is a combination of resource
gathering via databases/online tools and live
contact with donors, friends and prospects
• News Searches
• “Source” Searches (Real Estate, Stock, etc.)
• Peer Screenings
• Wealth Screenings
• Data Modeling
Research Focus
• Individual prospect research should be
centered on Major Gift fundraising or higher
level Planned Giving prospecting
• Research and Frontline Fundraising are a
partnership
• Prospect Management is a tool to move
prospects identified by Research through the
pipeline
Conduct a Database Screening
• Allows for segmentation of donors
• Helps target prospects at a variety of giving
levels (annual, major, and planned giving)
• Assists in prioritizing workload
• Can identify additional wealth indicators
• Provides access to numerous data sources
without the need for multiple subscriptions
• Cost and time-effective
Plan of Attack
• Extensive planning should be put into a
screening project
• Expectations & Stakeholder Buy-in
– Stakeholders: Fundraising Leadership, Gift
Officers, Research, Advancement Services
• There should be a plan for Major, Planned and
Annual Giving
The Importance of Segmentation
• Screenings can vary in size, but always present a
challenge in how you target your results
• Segmentation is a strategy and process whereby
you select manageable groups of names for
validation and roll-out for further development
(new prospects and “upgrades”)
• In-depth Research should only be focused on
Major Gift potential returns, others should be
moved to an Annual Fund or broad Planned
Giving process
Predicative Modeling Segmentation
• Prospect Research and Screenings will reveal potential
capacity, affinity and past/current relationships
• Predictive Modeling is a method by which the data is
analyzed to help determine the actual probability that a
prospect will make a gift, be it a Major Gift, an Annual
Gift or Planned Gift
• Predictive Modeling is most often applied in two ways:
– Apply Predictive Modeling first then screen
– Screen first then apply Predictive Modeling
Segmenting and Managing Your Screening Data
Segment
Your WE
Screening
Results
Major & Planned Gift Prospects :
CONFIRM
RATING
1. P2G 1-0’s: Most Well-Qualified
1.
2.
2. P2G 1-1 to 1-5’s: Next Most WellQualified
3. P2G 2-1 to 2-5’s: Require Most
Validation
Is this my prospect (i.e.,
“my” Robert Smith)?
Is this a good mg
prospect?
DO NOT
VALIDATE
Annual Fund Prospects:
4. P2G 3-1 to 3-6’s: Do Not Validate
unless special circumstances warrant
5. P2G 4-0’s and 5-0’s: Do Not
Validate unless special circumstances
warrant
Include in
Annual Fund
Not a Viable
Major Gift
Prospect at this
time
“Yes”
“No”
Research Pre-qualified
Prospects
1. Assign to DO for
Qualification or
Assessment, OR;
2. Assign to Capacity
Pool for future
Qualification or
Assessment, OR;
3. Assign to
Researcher for
further
qualification
Finding Success
Identified prospects with a high capacity who have never been invited to make a major gift
• Those prospects are then interviewed one-on-one with peer screeners
• Results: A system of scores for each prospect based on opinion of peer screener, prior prospect
knowledge, prospect research, and screened results
• Return on Investment: The discovery of 284 new major gift prospects
When you look at the growth in the total dollars raised, increase in the size of major gifts from
donors and steady rise in renewal rates from donors over the past three years since we implemented
prospect research, there is an obvious positive return on investment. We’ve realized a 30-fold return
on investment from prospect research, which may sound like a staggering number, but so is our 82%
increase in overall contributions. Both are great achievements.”
•Uses gift history combined with screening results to model donors and find new gifts
• Special event screenings
• Specific Example: An alum who verbally committed $150,000 to the current campaign was
identified with greater potential; end-result: a $500,000 contribution and new Campaign Chair
• Return on Investment: Event attendees give on average 21% more because of the timing for using
the data
Research & Ethics
What Makes Your Information Confidential?
Research is Gathered From Publically Available
Resources…
But
When all the information is put together into a
profile format the information is highly
confidential!!!
Information “Need to Know”
•
•
•
•
Keep Everything In-House
Only Development Professionals
Be Careful of Volunteer Requests
Develop Organization Policy to Institutionalize
Information Protection
Document Sources
Make sure that information used from
databases, books, online, contact reports, etc.
are documented on any research profile or
compilation
Security
• Documents/Files…Online & Hard Copy
Clearly mark files/documents “Confidential”
Lock-up hard copy docs in secure filing cabinet
Password protect files/maintain on secure server
Be weary of transmitting via email & fax
Do not email profiles in Word format
Shred documents no longer needed
Ethics & Security Guidance
• APRA International Statement of Ethics
http://www.aprahome.org/AboutAPRA/PrivacyEthics/StatementofEthics/tabid/74/Default.aspx
• AFP Donors Bill of Rights
http://www.afpnet.org/ka/ka-3.cfm?content_item_id=9988&folder_id=898
Professional Associations
• Association of Professional Researchers for
Advancement International
http://www.aprahome.org
• 29 Association of Professional Researchers for
Advancement Chapters Nationwide & Canada
Compiled Research Resource Webpages
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Portico
http://indorgs.virginia.edu/portico/
NETSource@USC
http://www.usc.edu/dept/source/
Stanford University Development Research
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/
University of Vermont Prospect Research and Reference Tools
http://www.uvm.edu/~prospect/index.html
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