The Researchers in Fundraising conference this week in London feels like a milestone in our profession – the arrival of a real community of professionals.
There were signals everywhere that we are a real profession. We, the community, have our networks – I saw lots of ‘Hello again! How are you?’s. We have an emerging group of personalities – Martin Mina (Action on Hearing Loss) is the personification of the funny-but-with-a-message presenter. We have our academics – Dr Beth Breeze (University of Kent) continues to uncover the emotional underwiring that supports philanthropy and fundraising. We have international appeal, with Helen Brown (Helen Brown Group) and Gerry Lawless (iWave) flying all the way across the Atlantic to join us.
We have suppliers anxious to win our business and therefore competing (this is normal and healthy) to innovate for our sector. We have media – social media – as conference attendees Tweeted #RIFConf2014 to the world. We even have the beginnings of politics, the politics of women and women’s rights in a workplace where too many bosses (mea culpa) are still men, celebrated by Beth Breeze in her sense of enjoyment at a conference audience that was mainly female.
And we have the intellectual and ethical challenges that define a real profession, personified in Karl Newton of LSE with his intimate description of the Gaddafi incident.
So what’s missing? At the conference the missing ingredient, reported again and again by researchers, was power. They didn’t use that word. What they said was ‘I just can’t get my boss to take research seriously’, or ‘I couldn’t get the budget’, or ‘My boss wrote our policy and I can’t get him to change it.’
Power, and the lack of it, is not a new topic at RiF. But now that we have a real, fully-fledged profession the lack of it is becoming more painful. We need the power to influence our fundraising colleagues. We need the power to write strategy, manage people and influence policy in the fundraising community. We need the power to set budgets, hire and fire. We need the power to commission research, development and innovation in our field. With the Sword of Damocles of new EU data protection legislation hanging over us, we need the power to influence legislation.
We need power, and we need it now.
We know how power works. We research it all the time. It is linked to circles of influence, to people with a strong voice, to a community united behind one or two clear ideas simply expressed.
We don’t have to call it that. We can call it “voice” , or “influence” or “a seat at the high table.” We can be subtle about winning power or we can be loud and proud. We can fight or argue, persuade or hint.
We need friends high up in the non-profit trees. The Chief executive of a brand-name national charity who ‘gets’ research. The MPs and MEPs who used to work in nonprofits, who befriend research. Senior staff at the Institute of Fundraising. We need to find these people (ha! easy for us prospect researchers!) We need to cultivate them and we need to persuade them with one or two clear simple messages. And then, like good fundraisers, we need to steward them.
“Middle donors” is an area of growing interest for many non-profits.
Fundraisers refer to middle donor programmes as an easy step up from a regular donors programme. Middle donor programmes fit with the donor pyramid model, suggesting that donors will upgrade from regular giving into the middle donor space and that some will go on to become major donors.
Despite the interest there is remarkably little data on this. We know little about who is giving, what they are supporting, and how much is being raised.
To add a little new data to the debate we’ve done an analysis in Factary Phi.
At this week’s European Venture Philanthropy Association (http://evpa.eu.com/) conference, a senior UK venture philanthropist described our latest report, The Venture Philanthropists, as “very comprehensive.”
The focus of the report is the 254 board members and patrons who lead the UK venture philanthropy sector. We include biographies of each, and a handy networking index to identify who is linked to which fund. Many are people of wealth; we identify £38 billion in personal wealth.
The 177-page report includes:
A clear explanation of venture philanthropy
A brief history of VP
Detailed analysis of trends in this fast-growing sector
Detailed profiles of the 22 venture philanthropy funds active in the UK
Biographies of the 254 board members and advisers who lead VP funds
More than 150 organisations and projects that have benefited from venture philanthropy
A who’s who in VP index linking people to companies and charitable trusts and foundations
The Venture Philanthropists is available at:
Non-profits: £250 per copy
For-profits: £300 per copy
Subscribers to Factary’s New Trust Update or Factary Phi, or those taking out a subscription with the report: £150 per copy.
To order a copy of the report contact Nicola Williams at Factary, nicolaw@factary.com or call Factary on +44 117 916 6740.
This week there are two significant training events for Factary. Today, Tuesday 8th October, Factary’s Chris Carnie is helping to launch the new Postgraduate Certificate in Fundraising at the University of Barcelona.
The course runs over an academic year (November to June) and covers the skills and techniques required to be a fundraiser, with a focus on practical tasks and actions. We’ve got a range of great speakers and trainers taking part, from NGOs, cultural and arts organisations, campaigning organisations, the health and foundation sectors. Find out more, and register, here.
And on Thursday, Will Whitefield and Chris Carnie are giving a webinar with APRA on prospect research in the UK. “An Island of Information“ is aimed at researchers and fundraisers outside the UK who want to understand the market here. Find out more, and register, here.
It has a great team of tutors, including the Director of Fundraising at MSF Spain (Médicos sin Fronteras) Anna Pineda, and the director of one of the most innovative nonprofits here, Oriol Alsina from Fundació Amics de la Gent Gran. We’ve also got Juan Mezo, ex Marketing Director at Oxfam now at Valores y Marketing, and Miquel de Paladella, from SIC Social Innovation for Communities.
The course is focused on real-life practice – so it includes sections on how to ask, on understanding the market, on face-to-face and on innovation in fundraising.
Join us for this great new course, or tell your friends in Spain about it!
It must be tough being the Information Commissioner today. This morning’s newspaper will be a crumpled mess on your breakfast table after you read more of the revealing allegations from Edward Snowden. The Government that pays you to keep our private stuff private has also been paying the wages of the spooks at GCHQ who are, apparently, listening in to everything we send or hear.
It’s a classic State job creation scheme; GCHQ dig the holes and you cover them over.
This is all horribly relevant to prospect research, because we researchers live in the legal and moral minefield of personal privacy. Snowden’s allegations change the moral game.
If we are to believe Mr Snowden then the Government has been merrily breaking the spirit of the law. By plugging a USB into the transatlantic fibre-optic cable they are listening to much of what we say and do, most of it private. They must be storing terabytes of personal stuff including an email to my son in the USA about his shopping habits, or the note I sent a friend about her cooking (it was delicious, Martha). In amongst the banalities there will be stuff about race, politics, religion, trades unions, health, sex and crime – the “sensitive personal data” that the European Data Directive has tried to keep properly private. This is all being gathered into the State apparatus for the “greater good.”
Imagine that I were to include a little sensitive personal data in a prospect profile, in contravention of the European Data Directive. For example that a prospect was reported to have had cancer, or malaria, or to have a prosthetic limb. I would be breaking the law, but – given that the State must be collecting this stuff too, could you really, morally, claim, Mr Graham, that I had done wrong?
And then there are the Terrible Twins – Google and Facebook. These two, according to Mr Snowden, have been knowingly handing over to the US Government our search habits, our locations, our friends and our connections.
So if I were to gather some personal stuff about a prospect from her Facebook page and pop it into a profile, could you really, morally claim, Mr Graham, that I had done wrong?
To rub salt in your wounds these companies have been doing this while manipulating our Governments’ tax system in their favour. You, Mr Graham, have been doubly duped. You have (massively) failed to protect our personal data. And your 2012-13 grant-in-aid from the Ministry of Justice was cut…because your paymasters have not been taxing the same Terrible Twins.
The moral justification that allows the State to gather and hold this personal information is the “greater good” of public security; the State collects this data to protect us citizens from the bad guys. A greater good that, if Mr Snowden’s allegations are correct, overrides our laws.
But I have a greater “greater good.” My greater, greater good is to raise the money to feed the starving, to send them to school, to build their hospitals and to show them the beauty of the arts. The greater, greater good of philanthropy.
Does my greater, greater good also override the law?
So if I were to break the law by failing to protect a prospect’s personal data, just as you have failed to protect ours, could you really, morally, claim Mr Graham that I had done wrong?
Prospect researchers protect prospects’ personal information because we are ethical people. We believe that it is right that personal privacy should be protected. We work on the moral and ethical frontier of personal data, taking decisions every day about whether to pass on information to our fundraising colleagues, or to press “Delete.” Yes, the law provides some framework, but it is our moral and ethical belief which provides the foundation.
We will continue to do that – to guard personal information, to respect privacy. But the Snowden allegations have undermined the whole legal framework for data protection. They have made your job impossible.
It must be very tough, being the Information Commissioner today.
Helen Brown and Jennifer Filla have written the book I have been waiting for. It’s the book that talks to fundraisers about research.
‘Prospect Research for Fundraisers’ (Wiley, New Jersey, 2013, available from Amazon here) is a clearly-written, comprehensive, efficiently-designed book. Its mixture of straight talk, real examples and models makes it easy to read and immediately useful.
In the eight chapters and 216 pages of the hardback edition the book covers the how and the why of identifying new prospects, the different levels of research, relationship management, ethics and the law and international research. Crucially for its intended audience of fundraising leaders the book also explains how to improve the management of prospect research, and lays out future trends such as a move toward mapping relationships between prospects and donors – a trend that we at Factary have focused on with Factary Atom.
By including real case studies and personal comments (one researcher confesses she started an online newsletter to “… be more social…”), Jennifer and Helen create empathy in their reader, and drive home the message about management. We can believe that things need improving when “Mary” admits to having “… never created a process document…” for data entry, with the result that her successor had to live through a “… reporting nightmare that took months to untangle.” Now we truly understand why it’s important.
The models – especially, for me, the models of donor relationship management – are insightful. They are also clear and simple, benefiting from Helen’s superb track-record as a trainer. This is years of experience summarised; we benefit from the beauty of its simplicity.
‘Prospect Research for Fundraisers’ is a good size, in hardback. This is not a trite comment – much of the focus in the book is about making information accessible. Even the most hard-pressed fundraiser will find it easy to slip a copy into her bag or coat pocket for bed-time reading.
Put one on the pillow of your favourite fundraiser, today.
[Helen Brown is a director and shareholder in Factary, co- founded by Chris Carnie. Helen was not consulted on the content of this review.]
The standard view of prospect management in major donor or “strategic donor” programmes is that it’s a chain, or a cycle. First we identify a person, or a foundation or company, then we research them a bit, then we meet them, then research them some more, then decide (“qualify”) if they are worth developing as a prospect, and then cultivate them, ask them and steward the donation that they make.
At Factary we talk about a Prospect Value Chain, with a series of steps (Suspect, Prospect, Qualified, In Cultivation…) along which the prospect moves. Each step adds value to the prospect, and each implies a corresponding increase in investment in the prospect, an investment principally made in staff and volunteer time (hence the Prospect “Value Chain”).
The idea originated in ‘Customer Relationship Management’ a phrase that has been in use since the early 1990s, and which became part of software when Tom Siebel founded Siebel Systems Inc in 1993. [Source: “Customer Relationship Management, Concepts and Technologies”, Frank Buttle, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 2009.] By 1998 Ian Gordon was writing about ‘The bonding staircase’ linking customers’ relationship intensity and the purchase process and working through steps (Prospects – Testers – Shoppers – Accounts – Patrons – Advocates – Awareness – Interest – Evaluation – Trial – Adoption – Commitment) that resemble the Prospect Value Chain [Source: “Relationship Marketing: new strategies, techniques and technologies”, Ian Gordon, Wiley, 1998.]
Not Real Life
It’s a neat idea. But it looks increasingly unlike real life. As an example: many donors arrive with their first gift already in hand. At one leading nonprofit with which we work, the major donor team gets notified when someone makes a gift of €500 or more. These donors did not pass through the Suspect – Prospect – Qualify stages. Last week at a research organisation client I heard that a Government donor had met a scientist out in the field and had decided there, on the spot in Africa that, yes, they liked his research and would fund his project. That donor does not appear to have been qualified and cultivated. At a university recently the Development team told me how their major donor fundraiser had headed off from a cultivation meeting directly to a new prospect whose name and number had been mentioned at the meeting. Again, no qualification by the research team. And I heard about someone who was well-known to one part of the University but who was new for Development – she was ready give without being cultivated.
You will argue, technically, that yes, of course she had been cultivated. Just that the cultivation took place outside the Development department. In fact these examples can all be made to fit the classic Prospect Value Chain approach. It’s just that they don’t fit very well. It is time for a rethink.
If it works, don’t fix it?
The Prospect Value Chain has worked well for a number of reasons. It’s a process with milestones, and that’s attractive to managers. Being able to state definitely that Jane is an Unqualified Prospect while Abdul is “In Cultivation” means that we can count the Janes and Abduls. Each has a flag or position in the Prospect Value Chain.
But unless Abdul is a first time donor, or you are running a very simple fundraising campaign, he’s likely to be in many positions on the Prospect Value Chain at once; he might be a donor to an Annual programme (and thus in Stewardship), a Prospect for a Scholarship appeal, In Cultivation for a Capital campaign, on the board of a foundation that is a Qualified Prospect for your science appeal…
Where you have multiple fundraising products, or when you are beyond your very first major appeal, you are likely to face this tricky multiple-positions issue. This is a linear model in a network world.
It helps that the Prospect Value Chain puts labels on relationships. Many of our Customer Relationship Management programmes use these labels. The label ‘In Cultivation’ means, in practice something like:
“Well, Marty met her a couple of weeks ago and had, you know, one of thoseconversations. She told him all about her son’s application to the Uni and, although Marty told her he couldn’t help she seems to think he can. She tried the same thing at the dinner with the Vice Chancellor last week and, frankly we’re getting a bit tired of her…”
Categorising this prospect as ‘In Cultivation’ is a useful shorthand, but are we losing granularity?
Dimensions, the new Universe
And then there is the problem of squeezing prospects into one dimension. Here is the issue: we know that over the period of a cultivation various changes take place. A donor who barely knows us becomes a friend, or at least a professional acquaintance. She meets, makes contact with, other people in our organisation. This is the Connection Dimension. At the start of the process she had some perhaps only partly formed ideas about helping people from the poor neighbourhood where she grew up. By the end of cultivation she has a precise idea of exactly what she wants to do and how she is going to measure its impact in her birth community. Her motivations have shifted, or evolved or clarified. This is the Motivation Dimension. Back at the start she had a series of concerns about the college’s management and its finances, and was in fact talking to two other nonprofits. This is the Objection Dimension. And there are dimensions for Trust, for feeling part of a process (the ‘Participation Dimension‘), for cash and gift values…
Now try to fit that model to the classic, linear, one-dimensional Prospect Value Chain. Or boil all of that down to the one word “Propensity” [to give].
Just to complicate life a bit further, each nonprofit will have its own specific Dimensions: if yours is a faith-based nonprofit you might have a religious Dimension, for example. If you campaign you’ll have a political one.
People move across these Dimensions all at once.
A map would show the collected multi-dimension as a brane, with Dimensions curving across space and time, and touching at many points. These touch points are where a prospect’s Dimensions influence each other: last week one of your prospects met your leading research scientist. As a direct result she is much more motivated to support you, and feels a stronger connection; she and the scientist got on well. Her Connection Dimension touched her Motivation Dimension and both grew. Another prospect, who had quite a few concerns about your organisation, went to a meeting and learned that one of her barrier issues was resolved – in other words the Participation Dimension touched the Objection Dimension and both have shifted; she’s participating more and objecting less.
I get the cosmic idea, Chris. But how we could use this stuff in real life, back here on earth?
OK, let’s start with scores. Many organisations use scores to help them sift out the best prospects from a large pool. For example, we use a simple 1-3 scoring scheme for motivation. Jane, who is very keen on our cause, gets 3, while Pete, who couldn’t care less, gets 1. We score in the moment, and we don’t keep historic scores.
If we had kept a history of Jane’s scores we would have noticed that her interest in us tails off when the gap between meetings with her gets longer than six months. Her connection to us weakens and her motivation falls. With another more demanding donor we see the same effect after only four weeks of no contact. Back with Jane, we have identified that there is a problem with trust – she’s not making the big donation and a mutual friend has mentioned that it’s because she does not fully trust us to deliver. Looking back at her history of scores we can see that her trust score blipped positively when she took part in a planning group for the new laboratories. Participation built trust. So we plan a series of participations and consultations for her to restore trust.
You are thinking (I can see the thought bubble) “…this is just common sense. It’s what we do with prospects and donors every day!”
And that’s my point. Yes, this is what you do every day. But it is not what your CRM database is showing you. That is still showing this stuff as though it were one-dimensional. And if you use a scoring scheme like the one I have described, your wonderful CRM system is probably only recording the score here, today. It is not retaining all that valuable historic score data. So what you do, and what your database shows, are two different things.
Time to redesign the database, anyone?
Drawing Pictures
And what about the power of images – the images of Dimensions? Factary has recently learned the power of images in prospect research. Last year we moved from describing the people known to a prospect (her relationships) in words, to mapping these relationships as a diagram. Showing them as a visual, colourful map has totally changed the way we analyse and ‘read’ relationship’s information, helping clients to see the strategic potential in relationships. (See Factary Atom for more.)
Could we do the same with these many prospect Dimensions? Imagine a 3D map, over time, of one prospect’s Dimensions, showing Motivation soaring up when Trust grows, and showing, graphically the tragic impact on Objections when Participation drops. The map would highlight future dangers so that we could prevent them in time. Each prospect and donor would have their own map, and its shape would likely be characteristic of that donor (the sort of stuff we know now as ‘… she likes to be invited to events but doesn’t want to sit on a committee…’) Repeat the shape in the next cultivation, and you’ll get the same level of success.
Real life is messy
Dimensions, allowing us to record over time the many factors that lead to a person’s decision to donate, would allow us to craft a truly memorable customer experiences for our donors. And they would bring our systems in line with what is actually happening in messy, complicated real life.
Don’t get me wrong. The Prospect Value Chain has many, many advantages and I use it all the time. But it will not be around forever – maybe now is time for new thinking.
Two leading UK venture philanthropy funds are to merge – an interesting move and one which again underlines the clear business-like view of venture philanthropists. It’s a move that many philanthropists will welcome – particularly those who criticise the non-profit sector for duplication of effort.
The only downside is that the new entity’s board – announced in a press-release here http://bit.ly/13SEOxb – is all-male. This ties in with the gender imbalance that we identified in our 2011 report “The Venture Philanthropists,” in which we noted that 80% of board members are men.
In May 2012, Mama Cash launched a report (http://www.mamacash.org/page.php?id=2788) showing that only 4.8% of European foundation spend was directed at women and girls. Could this be in part caused by the male dominance of leadership roles in European foundations?
Factary director Helen Brown (www.helenbrowngroup.com) has co-authored a new book on prospect research. It’s aimed at researchers, but above all at the fundraisers who are managing researchers. Chapters include Identifying New Prospects, Researching Prospects, Donor Relationship Management, Ethics, and Managing Prospect Research.
The chapter on Managing Prospect Research includes sensible guidance on setting expectations and agreeing terminology.
A great practical handbook for everyone in the research and fundraising community.
