Continuing on last month's theme of cutting down and cutting out, Ian T. Wells of Ian T. Wells & Associates has some tips for making prospect research more efficient, and more useful to your organization.

Less is More: Three Steps to Make Research More Strategic


The development industry is becoming increasingly competitive and fast-paced. Annual objectives are being pushed to higher levels, and campaign goals are being set at figures that were unthinkable just a decade ago. While research professionals have found greater and greater demands placed upon them, they have not always been provided with extra resources to help them achieve those goals. In such demanding scenarios, increasing the efficiency of prospect research and management processes is often a necessary strategy.

Implementing such a strategy is easier said than done. Often, there are many obstacles to negotiate: frontline fundraisers requesting great volumes of research; limited funds to invest in research tools; and/or unrealistic expectations create pressures that derail attempts to implement streamlined processes. But there are some basic steps that can be taken at development offices of all sizes to help researchers improve the impact of their work.

Step #1: Stop Over-Researching Prospects

At first glance, this advice may be misinterpreted to suggest prospect research isn’t valuable. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is because research is so valuable that it should never be wasted. Yet, whenever someone invests an excessive amount of time in researching a prospect, that is precisely what happens.

At many shops, research is evaluated by how thorough it is. This is not a bad thing in the abstract; thoroughness is a virtue. But any virtue, taken to excess, degenerates into vice. If research is excessively detailed – that is, it records matters that are superfluous or irrelevant to advancing a prospect through the solicitation cycle – then some time has been wasted that could have otherwise gone towards another priority.

The motivation for being exceptionally detailed is understandable. In many cases, it is due to researchers anticipating that they will face demanding expectations to find every piece of publically available data. In such environments, researchers are incentivized to be excessively thorough, lest a gift officer complain about the research being “incomplete”. The last thing a researcher wants to deal with is an inquiry about why a research document failed to note that a prospect’s roommate’s second cousin played intramural rugby.

The level of research provided on a prospect should be proportionate to the prospect’s proximity to making a major gift. If a prospect is about to be solicited for an 8-figure gift, it is perfectly reasonable to expect a researcher to thoroughly analyze every SEC Form recently filed on the prospect. But if a constituent has only been newly identified, it’s unnecessary to create a multi-page document detailing the prospect’s life story. Instead, design templates to address the key needs at each stage. Newly identified prospects just need a few sentences to facilitate the assignment process. (E.g. what is the prospect’s connection to the organization? What is the source of the prospect’s wealth?) Prospects in the Cultivation stage may require more research regarding family information, personal interests, or affiliations. Full Profiles should be reserved for top prospects and actual solicitations. More targeted research will allow you to provide more helpful support on greater numbers of prospects, and as a result, you’ll make greater contributions to your organization’s bottom line.

Step #2: Ensure Metrics Align with Priorities

Despite the importance of providing more targeted research, Step 1 should not be taken in a vacuum. Indeed, a sudden change to research protocols may be unlikely to get approval from executive leadership without being justified as part of a broader effort to provide more strategic support to the organization. And a good way to spearhead such an effort is to evaluate how well research metrics align with organizational priorities.

As the maxim goes, metrics lead behavior, so it’s important to ensure that metrics are incentivizing researchers to contribute to the priorities of your organization. There may be additional metrics, however, that were already established for researchers. And these metrics may suddenly compete for your limited time. Even if the original metrics were adopted for good reasons, and may still be good practices in the abstract, it may be for the best to stop using such metrics until the organizational priorities have been achieved. Rather than try to juggle a multitude of priorities poorly, it’s better to focus on supporting the top priorities of executive leadership very well.

The instinct to take on new priorities without re-evaluating how well they dovetail with prior objectives is a noble one, albeit misguided. Many researchers have a drive to serve their organizations as best as they can, and will take on additional responsibilities without a complaint. This “mission creep” can hurt productivity, however, by making too many demands of too few people. Even if it requires meeting with your supervisor to discuss the possibility of reframing your objectives for the year, it is important to have an honest assessment of how to best achieve organizational goals. It is better to triage metrics in hopes of focusing on only the most essential objectives than promise do achieve the impossible and subsequently fail to meet those goals.

Step #3: Find More Prospects

There is one objective that should always make its way into research metrics, and that is to identify new prospects. Devoting less time to cumbersome research and less time to complete unnecessary metrics will yield more time to discovering new prospects. This is a worthwhile goal, for an organization can never have too many prospects. At most, it can only have too few fundraisers to properly cultivate them.

Increased prospecting provides a number of benefits. By having a larger pool of newly identified prospects to recommend for assignment, researchers can be more selective and add higher caliber constituents to their gift officers’ portfolios. With proper tracking of identified prospects, researchers can tally the cumulative total of gifts coming from donors they discovered. Furthermore, the continuous flow of new prospects into the pipeline provides some political cover for researchers seeking to revise their prospect development processes. Frontline fundraisers who feel assured that they have the prospects needed to reach their goals are less likely to find faults with researchers than those who don’t feel so supported. And in turn, researchers who are less concerned with protecting themselves from criticism will be more empowered to help their organizations reach their latest goals.

The call for scholarship nominations has gone out! If you want to attend the conference this spring, and are looking for ways to defray the cost, consider applying for the Heather Reisz Memorial Scholarship (to benefit those new to the field of prospect research), or the Conference Scholarship (open to all). Both scholarships are need-blind. Please note that applications for both scholarships are due by February 27, 2015. If you have any questions about the Heather Reisz Memorial Scholarship, contact Amber Countis. If you have questions about the Conference Scholarship, contact Mary Taddia.

We would like to thank everyone who came out on the night of November 12 to the VINO (Very Informal Networking Opportunity) at the Red Hat in Boston, sponsored by EverTrue! There were NEDRA members present from a variety of organizations in the area. It was an excellent opportunity to meet new people in the prospect research field, to socialize, and to share information. We hope that those of you who weren't able to make it will be able to join us at future VINOs!

The way we find public record information may have changed since Jane Kokernak wrote this article in 1998, but the considerations about privacy and the use of publicly available information are still relevant today--if not more so.

Public Records, Private Lives.pdf

The Board of Directors had its monthly operations call on October 23. Among the subjects discussed were upcoming programs, the 2015 Annual Conference, and the results of the 2014 Membership Survey. Read on for more information!

Today, a Research Basics Bootcamp is being held in Boston! If you were unable to sign up for this one, though, don't worry--the next Bootcamp will be held on November 21 at Smith College. Join Tim Enman for a full day of research fundamentals, and take advantage the opportunity to network with other NEDRA members! Register on the Upcoming Programs page.

Speaking of networking with other NEDRA members, NEDRA will be holding its next VINO (Very Informal Networking Opportunity) on Wednesday, November 12 at The Red Hat in Boston. VINOs are a great chance to meet other NEDRA members--and non-members in the prospect research field--in a relaxed and fun setting. This time, the first 30 people to RSVP for the event will receive drink tickets courtesy of EverTrue, our generous sponsor for the event! Register at the Upcoming Programs page now, to make sure you get one.

Coming up in December, Sarah Benson from Wesleyan University will be presenting a webinar on the campaign pipeline. Keep an eye on your inbox and on the NEDRA webpage for more information as it becomes available!

It's Halloween, and in spite of all the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins prowling the streets, the scariest thing a researcher could have to face might be...the Attack of the Fifty-Page Donor Brief! If your profiles are starting to look scary, NEDRA News editor Laura Parshall has some tips on how to make them more manageable.

Briefer (or, How to Tell Stories with the Delete Key)

At the end of September, my office got together to wish a happy retirement to someone who'd been a fixture here for over 25 years. Charlie Carr, who received the Ann Castle Award from NEDRA in 2010, was the principal gifts researcher here at MIT. Over the years, he had come to be deeply familiar with our highest-level donors and prospects, and the stories of their relationships with MIT. It was difficult to imagine the research office without him. It's still difficult to imagine now that I'm one of two people trying to fill the big shoes he's left, as a new principal gifts researcher.

Although I've been a researcher at MIT since 2007, I'm finding that stepping into this principal gifts role is providing me with new challenges and opportunities to learn. One of the biggest changes I've seen with the prospects and donors I research now is that many of their stories are very, very long--much longer than most of the other donors I've researched. Most of these donors have relationships with MIT that span several decades. Some of the relationships have been going on for multiple generations.

I recently had to research a donor who was the third of four generations of his family to attend MIT, and the second generation to be engaged philanthropically with the Institute. When I was tasked with updating our research on this donor, I realized that the summary of his interaction with MIT was two whole pages long. (This was a summary?) Now, even if our office hadn't already been in the process of shrinking down our research briefs, I had to admit that this was getting unwieldy. Sure, there was a lot of history there, but there was also a lot of future interaction ahead, and it was important to make sure there would be room for that. It was also important to make sure that the story of the donor was told in a way that the high-level administrators who visit such donors would be willing to read and able to digest. I'm sure these are concerns that other offices have as they try to make their work processes and products more efficient, and that they are also facing challenges in doing this. Here are some of the steps I took, and the things I considered, in deciding what to keep and what to cut.

1. Look for the themes.
Yes, the first thing you have to do is read the whole profile, even if you've read it many times before. Even better, if you have time, go back and read through the donor's file, or at least the contact reports from development officers. Rather than a timeline of events, try to pick out large themes that recur over the course of the donor's history. Do they repeatedly reject solicitations to name buildings, but instead support scholarships and fellowships? Do they always show interest in certain kinds of projects? Do they insist on only making expendable gifts rather than endowing funds? Do they have specific complaints that they have raised multiple times? These themes show what's been most important to the donor, and paint the big picture of their relationship with the organization.

2. Look at the details.
Now that you've identified these main themes, look at the details. What details do you see that support these main themes? Which ones are important to telling the story? If one of the themes is that the donor's attitude towards the organization has gone from disaffected to very warm, it might be important to note the origin of that initial disaffection (such as a child's application being rejected by the admissions department at a school), and any big events that led to the change of heart. If their support of a particular initiative stems from a long friendship with the person leading that initiative, that's important to know as well. If simply stating the theme would raise significant questions for an unfamiliar reader, including some of those details is a good idea.

3. Don't be afraid to cut.
The rest of those details? All the hemming and hawing about the specific timing of a gift? All the back-and-forth that went into deciding how to allocate it? All those many, many meetings where people met with the donor and they talked socially with only the briefest mention of the philanthropic relationship? Ninety percent of the time or more, you can simply leave it all out. Sometimes, leaving in every detail can actually make the story more confusing, as it can be harder for those big important themes to stand out in a sea of minutiae. I've had some pushback from development officers on some of this, I'll admit: they understandably see each interaction with the donor as important, and don't like seeing anything left out. I try to stick to my guns, though, and suggest that if there are details they feel the person meeting with the donor should know, that they should brief them on those before the meeting. Realistically speaking, five years from now, when this donor has a new relationship manager, will it really matter that the current one met them for coffee and chatted with them about politics after thanking them for a gift?

4. Keep up with it.
Sometimes, when you're on a tight deadline, it can be easy to just tack information from the most recent meeting on to an existing brief. With some of these high-powered donors, though, last-minute meetings are par for the course, and an extra line or two added on with each brief can add up over time. Instead, when you're looking at new information, be ruthless in deciding whether it's important to add to the brief. Does it really add to the story? Does it tell us something important that we didn't know before? Does it mark a real change, or a milestone in the relationship with the donor? If not, it shouldn't be necessary to add it. If you can, try to get an idea from your development officers about which prospects are likely to be visited in the near future, so you can plan ahead and do some cutting-down before the last-minute research request comes in.

The trend toward shorter prospect profiles seems to be a widespread one, and with good reason: they don't take up as much of a researcher's time, and they are more comprehensible for the reader--and more likely to be remembered. As researchers, we love being able to find information, and are always eager to communicate it. Sometimes, though, we have to remember that communicating information is as much about knowing what to leave out, as it is about what to tell.

The NEDRA Board would like to thank Valerie Anastasio, a past recipient of the Ann Castle Award, for agreeing to serve on the Ann Castle Award Committee. Also serving on the committee will be Katherine Reisz-Hanson, who accepted the Ann Castle Award on behalf of her late sister, Heather Reisz, last spring. Amber Countis chairs the committee.

The deadline to submit your educational session proposal for the 2015 Annual Conference has been extended to Wednesday, November 5. We know NEDRA's members have huge amounts of knowledge and experience that are worth sharing, and would love to see you present a session at the conference. If you have an idea for a session, please submit your proposal at the RFP page. If you have questions, feel free to contact Conference Committee Co-chairs Amy Begg and Anne Brownlee.