A year after I first attended APRA International Conference,
I had already forgotten the feeling of seeing 1000 researchers in one room:
definitely thrilled, a bit scary perhaps. I am so used to being in the minority
and all of sudden, voila, you see researchers everywhere! What’s even scarier
to see is all 1000 researchers standing up on their feet and doing a happy
dance together! What was going on?!
Ok, let’s back up.
August 7, 2013, first day of conference.
We all woke up as our up-tight researcher type selves in
Baltimore, the World Capital of Blue Crabs, to attend the 25th APRA
International Conference. What we or at
least some of us didn’t know was that Jon Duschinsky was such an energetic
opening keynote speaker that we might just end up dancing in the end…
Jon is the author of “Philanthropy in a Flat World” (2008)
and “(me)volution” (2012). His delivery
of the keynote on “Access People Power” is nothing but exuberant and passionate
(with a cute British accent too).
“People power” for researchers is the knowledge research brings to help
us cope with a fast-changing world.
Non-profit organizations need to adapt to the pace or as Jon put it
“people will change the world (through social ventures and social media) and
bypass organizations like ours as we are too slow and cumbersome”. Jon proposed that we kill “SWAT” analysis
(“stone dead!” as Jon said) and replace strategic sessions with a 15 min brief
from researchers. People like us shouldn’t be in the shadows, he insisted,
researchers should “drive agendas” for our organizations. But he also posed a valid question, are
researchers in the shadows because we like to be there? Are we uncomfortable getting out of our
comfort zone?
Fast forward to the afternoon of that day: I attended a
session called “From Researcher to Vice President: You Can Get There,” which
was presented to a jam packed audience.
The presenters of the session were Shelby Radcliffe and David Shanton,
both had rose above their “humble” researcher origin to “glamorous” Vice President-hood.
I loved that most of the session was a direct conversation with the audience.
One most interesting discussion was when Shelby said that, as the Vice
President of Advancement, she was more concerned about hiring and retaining a
frontline development officer than a researcher, since the market for someone
who could close big gifts had been very competitive. “The harsh reality for researchers is that
they stay and not moving much,” she explained and as a result “dollars will
never go to a researcher’s job unless he or she is doing something
exceptional”. She also added “the bottom
line of an organization is directly and immediately affected by frontline
fundraisers but never by researchers”.
These comments provoked outrage from the audience, as expected. “Sounded like we were being punished by our
loyalty. Is it true that the only way to
move up is to threaten our bosses and start looking around?” asked one audience
member. The answer was yes. Both presenters had stepped out of their
comfort zones and took risks to advance their careers. For example, Shelby had volunteered to do
donor visits and annual donor events. Because of her front-line experience, she
was able to make changes and run the research division completely different and
this made her stand out. Incidentally,
both presenters didn’t have formal frontline fundraising in their career track
at all. David thought that what gave a
researcher an edge, when it came to moving up to the leadership role, was the
understanding of the advancement operation as a whole, thus making it easier
for a researcher to design and operationalize strategy. “Researchers are in perfect position to be
leaders in campaign planning,” added Shelby.
Both presenters agreed that there was definitely a trend for
advancement services to move towards more accountability and information based
decision making as well as towards the science of fundraising. Having a
research background provides us with a great foundation if one aspires to move
into an advancement management role.
One other important tip that they mentioned is that
researchers need to improve their presentation skills. Even if a Major Gift
career is not required for someone to move up the track, it’s nice to have the
ability to present your case and talk about the organization at a higher
level. The ability to network beyond the
research world (such as attending AFP or
CASE conferences) also helps to create opportunities to move either vertically
or horizontally.
Maybe some researchers are asking: what if some of us just
don’t want to move into a leadership role. We enjoy what we do. Does this mean
that we can stay in our comfort zone? What change would come if we stay in the
researcher role? Well, read on then as many other suggestions follow.
August 8, second day of conference.
The Canadians ended the first day of the conference by
going wild that night (). We went to Captain James Crab House and
experienced a Baltimore style crab shack experience where we sat around a
brown-papered picnic table on a floating dock and had all-you-can-eat blue
crabs and round of drinks courtesy of iwave).
I can tell you that the researchers present at the feast certainly went
out of their comfort zones and went down and dirty with the crabs! Guess what’s for breakfast the next day? Crab
cake cheese quiche (yes I’m mentioning “crab” for the 5th time). Crabs also
accompanied the first “APRA Talk” – a series of mock Ted talks on innovative
ideas in prospect research.
At one of these APRA Talk sessions, Valerie Anastasio from
Boston Children’s Hospital Trust reviewed how prospect research had changed
over the years (from micro-fiche to internet), and predicted that a lot of the
quantitative and data-intensive part of the job would be replaced by vendors or
computer generated information (woo, we are being replaced by machines!). She wanted us to think “in the face of an
information delivery landscape that is evolving rapidly, how will prospect
researchers need to respond to ensure that our work continues to be integrated,
strategic, and actionable?”
As she left the discussion open ended, my answer is that researchers need to become more like
fundraisers. We should not be viewed or
operate as a service department in another building but more as team members in
the Major Gift team as we deliver more qualitative and strategic
recommendations in an advisory capacity.
As such, we need to learn more about frontline fundraising and equip
ourselves with skills that complement our knowledge about donors (such as
presentation and communication skills, and knowledge about relationship
building). Another possibility is for
the research department to become a
central intelligent office, in terms of donor and market research, which would
be as essential and valuable to non-profit organizations as the market research
department is for the for-profit
organizations.
As Jon mentioned on the first day, we as researchers should
elevate ourselves from being “nice to have” to the “core business” of the
organization. This will require us not
just to do research on our prospects and write profiles, but also to research
and provide insights to understanding the world around us and what are
customers and donors really want and care for.
I think it’s really timely that the theme of this issue of
SCOOP is career related as it is obviously a hot issue in the whole prospect
research community now. Whether we are
being replaced by machines or not, one sure thing is that our job is changing
and we need to change with it. I
sometimes get the feeling that we became very removed from the excitement of
the frontline. We get consumed with
processes and information so much that we forget why we are doing what we do.
Just like frontline development officers, we are fundraisers. We are facilitators of philanthropy. We
connect philanthropists with causes. We
are making a difference. And that’s a
really good reason for us to get on our feet to do a happy dance!.
To advance the profession of prospect research, we need to
immerse ourselves in the culture of philanthropy and the causes we are serving
and ask ourselves, what is my value in making this happen? It may require us to learn more about the art
of fundraising (in addition to what we know about information management) and
to be closer to the causes. If you think
you can make a bigger difference by making changes to your job (i.e. become a
leader, a consultant, a manager where you have more said) then you should go
ahead and do it. I agree that there is a
comfort zone for researchers. The
comfort zone is data and information. We
need to move beyond processing data and information and look into ways of
delivering data and information that can be valuable to our causes. As Jon Duschinsky put it: “This is a time of
profound opportunity. For the work we do as prospect researchers will not just
transform the organization we work for but also help us to take some real steps
to change the world and to challenge ourselves”.
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