2012 APRA International Conference Review

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. 

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A Senior Prospect Researcher at the Calgary Zoo, Melody Song is APRA Canada’s scholarship recipient for the APRA 25^th International Conference 2012.  Melody will also be presenting on Relationship Mapping for Major Gift at the APRA Canada Conference 2012.

An Integrated Communication Approach to Prospect Research Management

An Integrated Communication Approach to Prospect Research Management – One Researcher’s Perspective

By Melody Song, Prospect Research Specialist at SAIT Polytechnic, Calgary

(Published in the Fall 2010 issue of APRA Canada Newsletter SCOOP)

I joined the Prospect Research team at SAIT Polytechnic in early 2009 after being a front-line fundraiser with Alberta Ballet for two years.  I was surprised to see that most people found my career move a “backward” step. The trend it seems is for prospect researchers to “advance” and become front-line fundraisers. Prior to my entry to the non-profit world, I worked in the private sector as a marketing professional and event planner. In university I studied marketing and completed a B.Comm degree. I then worked on and completed my Master’s degree in Communication Studies.  I fell in love with Prospect Research, mostly because I have always thought myself as an introvert and the “behind-the-scene environment” suited me more.  However, I found that my atypical background and my first-hand experience on the front-line tremendously complimented my work as a prospect researcher.  Together with SAIT’s Research Coordinator Sandra Gomez whose background is fundraising (another one making the move “the other way”) and journalism, we have developed an internal communication strategy that advanced our research team in the driver seat of SAIT’s development team through a combination of business processes and an integrated communication perspective. In this article, I would like to share our success with you.

The Theory

The Scoop has published many valuable articles on experiences with tips to help researchers shift the focus of research from reactive to proactive. Finding the team approach can be done successfully in smaller organizations. There are different problems associated with bigger institutions where sometimes we are not even in the same physical space as development officers.  Another consideration as well was the reality of a more vertical hierarchy which impacts communication with leadership and volunteers.  We soon realized that we needed to develop a set of strategies that were facilitated by business processes along with “buy-in” from leadership.

We recognized that a fundamental shift of perspective was needed.  For me, Prospect Research is not about information, it is about communication. There is a wealth of literature and practices on finding, dissecting, storing, and managing information but not a lot about communicating.  I would like to suggest that we stop looking at information but take a look at who we are first. 

For example, let’s look at Development Officers - who are they? Colleagues? Clients? Partners? There are lots of “US” and “THEM” going on in the industry and surely “THEY” are a major problem. 

What about Prospects?  We find them, assign them, and move them around in the pipeline, but maybe they are more than “subjects”.  I would like to think of all of them as Audiences and ourselves - researchers - as Communicators.

I have created a communication model for prospect management based on these thoughts illustrated as follows:

Everything we do (as researchers) is about communication. Many communication models have been created to theorize this process from a simple one-way communication, to gatekeeper style, to an interactive model.  Most of these models would consist of basic components of source, message, receiver, noise, and channels etc.  I created one for internal communication with development officers (see figure one).  You can also adapt this model for all stakeholder groups in and outside of your organization including volunteers and prospects. The idea of “separate strategy depending on target audience” is a part of the stakeholder analysis practice in the for-profit business world, but it can be also borrowed for non-profit as well. 

The key to achieve successful interactive communication process is:

 1) Understand each other and elements that interfere with our communication

2) Create channels to communicate

3) Allow feedback and build on them. 

So how does that apply in practice?

Fields of Experience

In our APRA Canada conference plenary session with David Palmer VP Advancement at University of Toronto, David mentioned that all researchers should be making donor calls and that what he really needs from researchers is their point of view.  We might not be able to all make donor calls, but learning about front-line fundraising and looking at our research from the development officer’s perspective is greatly helpful to provide that point of view.  I found my experience in fundraising has given me insights and confidence to make suggestions and recommendations to our development officers.  Our researchers (3 full-time and 1 part-time) take every opportunity to learn about fundraising and go to AFP and other fundraising seminars. We also schedule sessions with our internal experts to learn about estate planning, gift structure and other facets of fundraising.  Most importantly, the whole research team meets with our prospect management council (PMC) and drives the fundraising tactical meetings. Since we are the owners of all information internal or external and are aware of the whole picture, when a request comes up, we can sometimes decide what deliverables are needed. For example, someone may request a profile while we may decide that a qualification one-pager would do the trick. 

Development officers in turn need to learn about research, not through conferences or special presentations, but every day at work.  At SAIT, we take every opportunity to educate and promote our own field of experience.  We give presentations regularly at team meetings on our new research approach or methodology.  At every PMC meeting (which research owns and chairs), a standing item on the agenda is a database quiz to help them learn tips and create habits of logging history into the database.

Communication Channels

In bigger institutions, just modifying one’s perspective and what one does is not enough.  We have created a series of business processes to help us facilitate effective communication with other stakeholders - in this case development officers. 

We do not ask development officers to define their deadlines and priorities as we are the ones who actually create a report of upcoming asks based on activities logged in the database.  For prospects being asked in the next three months, research has created top priorities to ensure all necessary information is there. One important document we use is the “Strategic Summary” – a one-page document that summarizes recent moves, affinities, and most importantly our recommendation in ask amount, gift structure, approaches and supporting rationales (and yes they can be all squeezed into one page).  The Strategic Summaries are prepared before the Development Officers even make a request as we know exactly what stage their prospects are in the pipeline. 

We have implemented flash meetings where our research coordinator will meet with each development officer every week to get their feedback and to update our ask reports and knowledge base.  We also implemented an annual survey to find out what development officers think about our research services and where they think we could improve.

One of our new initiatives is the “Portfolio Assessment “process which is the equivalent of a spring cleaning of each development officer’s portfolio to ensure maximized efficiency in their use of time.  Without wasting a whole lot of time for anyone, we were able to address some of the inactive accounts and help development officers to get more research and their portfolio in shape. 

We now provide a list of inactive accounts to development officers and ask them to update the status from a list of drop downs including such choices as:

Return to suspect pool

Reassign to others

Require research

 Keep for Cultivation (the list go more detailed in each option). 

This approach was non-imposing and generally welcomed by everyone.

Messaging

Prospect researchers sometimes over- research information which can result in an inefficient use of time.  As a marketer in my previous career, I developed the habit of identifying what the audience needs or wants to hear and filtering information accordingly.  It helps me to stay focused. If the development officer didn’t make a specific request, I often read past contact reports and history as well as fundraiser or volunteer notes to determine what is required. In this way I avoid  spending 6 hours on a profile when all that is needed is a qualification of a simple answer on capacity or affinity. Researchers sometimes can make a better judgment call on what to highlight in a briefing or summary instead of providing all and sometimes irrelevant information.

Management Buy-In

We weren’t able to implement the above mentioned processes without support from our development and advancement director and associate directors at SAIT.  If you are having problem driving the process in your institution (because research is often viewed only in a “supporting role”) I highly recommend that you create a communication plan stating goals, processes, and deliverables and present it formally to your directors. We had created a Strategic Prospect Research Plan and presentation which proved to be a big success with our directors. They now recognize things from a researchers’ perspective and understand the importance and power of information. 

Areas to Improve

For our research shop at SAIT Polytechnic, the change came once we began to realize that a lot of the problems are not research specific but are about organizational communication process.  As the experiences and examples I present here mainly concerns internal communication, similar models can be applied to external communication and other stakeholder groups of the organization as well.  For example, how can we look at our volunteers as an audience group (with common problems, characteristics and fields of knowledge) so that we can communicate better with them? In our case, research does not get face time with volunteers and hence lost opportunities to get vital information that weren’t recorded.  What about our donors and our prospects? What are our communication strategies for these groups which are essentially our research recommendations?  I also see value in continuing to apply principles and theories from other discipline to this field, as it is still an evolving and dynamic profession.