I consider myself fortunate to work in an organization where the front-line fundraisers are truly appreciative of all the work we researchers do in order to help them maintain their relationships with prospects, from capacity evaluations that tell them how much the prospect can give, to data hygiene that keeps our information on them up-to-date, to full profiles that pull together all the important information we have on a prospect in one place. The fundraisers know they need us, and it's nice to be needed. When things are busy, though (and these days, when aren't they?), it can be nice to be needed a little bit less. That's why in the research office at MIT, we've been teaching front-line fundraisers to do a little bit of their own research.

Whom to teach?

The training sessions done by our research office have so far been geared towards front-line fundraisers and their assistants. We have spoken to larger groups of fundraisers and their assistants about general topics, and have plans to speak to smaller groups about more specific topics geared towards their particular areas of interest. These training sessions don't just include people new to MIT, but also those who have been here for a while, and who might have forgotten some of their original training.

What to teach them?

The general training sessions we have done include topics such as:

• Finding basic contact and biographical information
• Determining whether someone has major gift potential
• Useful database reports and other database-related topics
• Overview of the kinds of work done by the research shop

Contact information is something fundraisers will often request from us, and while each request is usually fairly quickly resolved, a lot of them can end up eating away at our time. Since the sources we use to find contact information are generally free web-based resources (Anywho, Switchboard, etc.), there's no reason why they or their assistants shouldn’t be able to find it themselves. It often takes little more time to find it than to send us a request, and much less time than sending the request and waiting for us to respond to it. Giving them helpful hints like trying the prospect's spouse's name, or a reverse phone number lookup, can increase their odds of finding what they need.

When a fundraiser asks a general question like, "Can you tell me a little bit about Jane Doe?" they are often satisfied with basic biographical information or career history. We encourage fundraisers to look at company websites, LinkedIn profiles, and other reliable sources for this information, to help them get a broad overview of a new prospect.

Although our Prospect ID team proactively identifies and provides capacity ratings for many new prospects every day, fundraisers frequently send in requests for capacity ratings for people they suspect of being wealthy who have (or might be convinced to have) some kind of connection with our organization. For a long time, we found ourselves turning away a number of these requests with the explanation that after a quick look at some basic information, it was clear to us that they did not have the capacity necessary for a major gift, and that a full evaluation was unlikely to uncover more wealth. We've all received those kinds of requests, and they can sometimes be very easy to spot. Do they have a low-ranking title at their job? Live in a small house in a middle-class neighborhood? We've taught fundraisers to pay attention to indicators like job titles, to look at websites like Zillow to get an approximate idea of the value of a prospect's home, to do Google searches for indicators of significant philanthropy, and other tips. One of the associate directors of the office has even put together a video with a PowerPoint presentation, to provide this information. It's helped to cut down on the number of requests for evaluations of not-so-promising prospects, which allows us to spend more time on those who are likely to have major gift potential.

There are a number of reports that we can run from our database that are helpful for prospect management. Fundraisers are generally trained in using these when they first come to MIT, but the sheer volume of information involved in their initial training can mean that some of the less-used ones end up forgotten. We refresh them on how to pull useful information from the database such as lists of prospects with new major gift level capacity ratings in their area. With these reports, they are able to quickly get information in a neatly organized format, and are able to rearrange the data however works best for them. We also make sure to show them where to find the research that has already been done on prospects (both in our files and in the database), so that they don't have to ask for something new when there's already up-to-date information available to them. The more fundraisers are able to take advantage of all the features of the software used by the development office, the easier it is for them to do their jobs (and the easier it is for us to do ours).

When we train fundraisers and their assistants, we also make sure to give an overview of the work done by the research office, and the guidelines for requesting research. Although this isn't exactly research training, it does ensure that they are aware of the best ways to get the information they want, when they do need to rely on the expertise of the researchers. After all, we certainly don't expect them to do everything themselves! Describing to them the work that we do proactively can also help prevent them from duplicating that work on their own and wasting their time. If they know that our Prospect ID team is screening mergers and acquisitions news for potential wealth events, and that it's keeping an eye on recent large gifts made to our organization, for example, they don't need to screen those sources of information themselves.

Why do it?

Fundraisers know that they can rely on researchers to find the information they need. What they don't always realize, though, is that there are quite a few of them who rely on us. The volume of requests that come in to our office can mean that each one doesn't get handled immediately. Even when we make an effort to do so, having to stop in the middle of creating a full profile on one prospect in order to search for another prospect's new business address, for example, can be distracting. If we teach the fundraisers how to find this information for themselves, they can often get the answer more quickly than if we'd had to find it and then get back to them. It also allows us to use our time more efficiently. By empowering them to find some of what they need, we empower ourselves to provide the rest of it more quickly and more easily, ensuring that the development machine keeps running smoothly.