It’s a steaming early August evening in Minneapolis. I deposited my rented bike into the NiceRide
bike sharing system at the intersection of Franklin & Hennepin, two major
thorough fairs that run through the trendy neighborhood of Uptown
Minneapolis. I was happy that I stumbled
upon NiceRide which allowed me to escape the empty shell of downtown and
explored this livelier part of the city.
I read somewhere that “discovering a favourite street in any city is
always the tipping point from being just a visitor to feeling at home”. So when
I looked up and saw the Sabastian Joe’s ice cream shop siting on the corner of
the street, I had a feeling that this is it, the sweet spot.
Going to an international conference as the sole
representative of your organization can be as unsettling as visiting a brand
new city. As a first-time goer of APRA
International Conference, I was first stunned by the sheer volume of
researchers there. The feeling of being somewhat “special” as one of the twenty
or so prospect researchers in Calgary (or even amongst the very special 200 or
so members of APRA Canada) quickly vanishes.
I felt a little lost and overwhelmed for the first couple of days. Then I found the “favourite street”, my “ice
cream shop” at Elizabeth Crabtree’s session on “Substance, Matter, Function
& Form: High-Impact Research Analysis and Report Writing”. This jam-packed and much-tweeted session
further confirmed my belief that Prospect Research is just as much about communication
as it is about information. It was eye
opening to see the level of sophistication, originality, and seeds of proactive
prospecting in the original profiles from decades ago that was kept on file at
Brown University (great record keeping!).
It was also such a privilege to listen to a true veteran like Elizabeth
Crabtree, the recipients of the first APRA Visionary Award, to speak about our
profession with such confidence and honesty.
Her presentation style was as concise and sharp as the kind of research
analysis she advocated. I loved her
comments like “my own ratings are always better than the ratings from vendors,
seriously” or “we (prospect researchers) are not in the university’s
secretarial pool”. Yes, seriously!
Although most of us can probably say that we are already able to
implement the one-pager format, to report inferred value (especially in Canada
when information is scarcer), and to make strategic advices as they had done at
Brown, it is still a great feeling to be
validated and cheered on by a voice of authority in the field. She really brought it home for me when she
presented the success story by showing us the original document of a prospect
researcher’s advice on cultivating Warren Alpert for a major gift back in 1992
that had resulted 15 years later in a $100 million naming gift to the now
Warren Alpert School of Medicine. At the
end of the session, I realized although sharing and learning tools are perhaps
the main functions of a conference, I was also looking to be inspired.
Another impressive session that hit the sweet spot for me was
the penal discussion on the future of Data Modeling by Josh Birkholz, Peter
Wylie, and Marianne Pelletier. It’s
filled with enlightening stories and ideas that I tried to jot down at furious
speed. When you are able to speak to a subject without any preparation and
powerpoint presentation and still entertain a roomful of researchers, you are
definitely reaching that inspiring level of expertise like these three. When talking about talents in the field of
data analytics, Josh Birholz characterized three main traits: sense of
curiosity, a belief that you can do it, and fundraising knowledge base (he
emphasized that knowledge base and experience can be taught and earned but the
first two traits are harder to come by).
On the future of data modeling, the experts had many good questions and
thought-provoking ideas to be developed (perhaps by us) including: more and
more automate process (is it good or bad?), process modeling (a switch from who
to how; i.e. how do we close more gifts instead of who should we ask), how do
we deal with more and more data that’s going to be available through the internet
and how do we gather all the social media information into the database,
process, retrieve and analyze them. One
of Canada’s own, Kevin MacDonell of Dalhousie University, got mentioned for
upcoming books and projects. What a
great representation of Canada in the forefront of data analytics!
I finally found my Canadian colleagues thanks to Sarah
Anderson and Liz Rejman for their diligent organization of our Canadian
dinner. I would like to suggest to the
organizers to bring a small Canadian flag next time as we do all look very alike
the Americans (who don’t look alike these days with the diversity we are
enjoying in every part of the world)!
Some of us even ended up on the patio of Brit Pub, a roof top patio a
block away from the hotel that’s perhaps the only visibly crowded spot in
downtown Minneapolis after 10pm. There
was a huge TV screen playing the Olympic coverage at the back of a lawn bowling
court in the centre of the patio (all on the roof of a parking garage out in
the open). There, I was feeling it
again, the warm and fuzzy feeling of familiarity and contentment, surrounded by
colleagues who share my work and passion, in awe by the inspiring events
happening on the big screen. I realized that this is maybe why we go to
conferences, to be validated, inspired or simply to enjoy the accompaniment of
those who also work in this exciting field we call Prospect Research.
A Senior Prospect Researcher at the Calgary Zoo, Melody Song
is APRA Canada’s scholarship recipient for the APRA 25th
International Conference 2012. Melody
will also be presenting on Relationship Mapping for Major Gift at the APRA
Canada Conference 2012.
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