And then another thing they're looking for is, do the ask could get made? So the job of the prospect development for a person when you're thinking about the relationship and measuring that is to really track that for the development officer and really see that moves are being made, that we're moving the donor along this pipeline, and we're getting them ready for the ask. Their job is not to make the ask. Their job is to make sure that the development officers have everything they need to be able to get ready to do that. Okay, so we've seen this particular chart before. I love it obviously. I use it in all of my slides. But I think it's really important to think about when you think about how a relationship or a development cycle begins. They begin as annual donors and then they move into potential major gift prospects. So, from an annual donor, this is where, any time you see identify, that's really where the prospect development team is coming in. So there're annual donors, and they start to identify like, "Hey, they've been giving for a long time. They've been their givings are increasing. We might need to get that person into someone's portfolio, a development officer's portfolio to get to know them a little better." And then they come in when there's a major give prospects to the researchers are helping during that cultivation stage. That's where a lot of information is being gathered about this potential donor. Do they have the ability to give? Do they have an inclination to give to your organization? So they're really identified, or they're really involved, I should say, in the identification process and the cultivation process. But you can see if you take any of those out of the cycle, the whole process breaks down. So the prospect development team is a really important part of the whole cycle. So I just wanted to show you that graph again just to show you that there's so many pieces of the puzzle, and it can't be done, development can't be done in a vacuum. Okay, so let's talk about some of the tools to use when you're working on managing the relationship or tracking the moves for a potential donor. It can be just something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. So, the development officer went to see the person this day, a few months later, we know they came on campus for this event. They participated in this particular lecture. So it's just managing it on an Excel spreadsheet so that there's some way to be able to track all of these moves to see that there's progress. Another potential tool to use is actually purchasing a donor database. Raiser's Edge is one really good example. Many of the nonprofits that I've worked with over the course of my career have used Raiser's Edge. It's a pretty affordable way to be able to track all of the data that you need about donors and potential donors in one space. And you can track it in lots of ways. You can keep as much good data in there as you want. Remember, data, good data in, good data comes out. So, donor databases are a super effective way and a tool to use to manage that relationship. The third responsibility of prospect development is really the analytics or looking at the data. There's lots of good data. If you're doing a good job of keeping this data in your donor database, the neat thing about it is you can also pull this data out. You can start to identify trends and look for other like donors. So let's say you find a donor who has made a major gift to your school or business. They're in their mid-50s. They are at this level within their organization. They've been giving for this many years in a row. They graduated from this class this grad year. You could look at all of those things, put it and look in your database and try to find other folks that are similar and see if you can go after like people. You can start to infer who might have the potential to give. Research and prospect development plays a really critical role not just in identifying, not just in managing their relationship but also looking and trying to uncover other like people and other like donors who potentially could give. If one person gives because of this reason, you might be able to find another one. It'll also help you identify what some of the trends are. Where are folks giving? Are they giving to a specific thing right now? Are they really interested in research? Are they really interested in scholarships? Are they really interested in cancer? A really good prospect development professional can identify these trends. That's their job. So what are some of the tools that you can use for data analytics? If you sort of think of it in two spectrums, there's qualitative information and then there's quantitative. Let's talk about qualitative first. So that's more personal one-on-one individual examples. So, as a development officer is sitting down talking with someone, they're gathering information, and they're getting all kinds of experiences and observations about this donor. So qualitative is really taking all of that information and inferring some sort of like things or some trends or some commonalities. So qualitative is not as official as using the scientific numbers. It's also a really good tool to use in identifying prospects or potential prospects. The other side is quantitative, and this is if you have great data in your database and that you can pull out. This is where you start to use the quantitative and start looking for donors of this size from this zip code. You have numbers or closed-end questions. You have to be able to rate things. So the key thing about quantitative research is that you have to have numbers. You have to be able to pull the numbers out. You can put those in graph forms. You can put those in pie charts. Those are the kind of juicy things your senior leaders are really looking for, is to find out where are people giving. What college is more successful? What research program is more successful? Those are all quantitative bits and pieces of research that you can pull out of your database. So if you think about data analytics, there are really two ways to study your donors, your prospects, your giving, and I think that both are equally important. Not one is more important, but I think it's important for prospect development to be able to look at both sides. So we've already talked a little bit about prospect identification or identifying potential donors to your organization. I want to dig in a little bit more and talk more specifically about two methods that prospect development really works and uses. One is wealth screening and the other is peer screening. So a wealth screening is taking whatever financial information we know about someone that we can find and determining a donor's capacity to give. There are three prominent markers that we look for as researchers to identify if someone has potential wealth. Do they own any stock? Have they been giving to their political party? And then also where do they live? What kind of real estate do they own? These are all clear identifiers of folks that have wealth. One thing to consider though with real estate ownership is, in California or in other areas like New York City, places where it's really expensive to buy a piece of property, sometimes that can skew the results of your wealth screening to make that person look like they maybe have more capacity or they have more wealth. But, really, it's because of where they live in their zip code. So, I want you to factor that in and when you're thinking about, does this person have capacity? We recently did one for UC Davis in getting ready for a next campaign. And we identified a lot of people that have huge capacity, and when we started to look at what put them over the edge, what we found that put them over the edge is the fact that they actually lived in California and owned property. And that doesn't necessarily mean that someone has wealth. That just means that they have an expensive piece of property. They may not have wealth to be able to give away. And that's what we're looking for. So now let's talk about peer screening. This is an excellent tool in identifying potential prospects to your organization. Peer screening is are pretty affordable way to identify great prospects. It doesn't cost a lot of money. Really, all it does is having great people that you can sit down with and start to uncover who they know, what they know, and if they think they'd be potential. So there's a few steps to consider with peer screening. One, first you have to identify a list of people that you know, that you want to know, that you'd like to know a little bit better. Then you need to get your board members, your volunteers, friends. You can even use family members, any business owner, anyone that's well connected in your community and sit down and say, "What do you know about John Smith? They look really good on paper. Do they have a philanthropic capacity? Are they interested in X organization? Are they wanting to give back? Do they want to get involved? How would we best engage them?" So, using those folks that are connected with them to help you uncover and identify a little bit more about them. Step three of a peer screening is then to host a screening event. This event can look like an actual event with several people sitting around a table, or it can be a one-on-one kind of event, sitting down in someone's office and talking about the list that you have or folks that you think look really good on paper, and see if you can find some additional information. Remember the three things that you're looking for when you're identifying if they have the potential is do they have any connection to our organization? Is there any type of affinity? Do they have an affinity to what it is we're doing: education, cancer research, the Red Cross. Do they have an affinity to that? And the third thing, of course, and the most important thing because we're all fundraisers is to talk about, do they have the capacity to give? So, in summary, prospect research and management really is, I hope that you walk away knowing that it's a really critical step of the development process. You need to have key people to help you identify who are the next potential donors. And they're the ones that are helping manage that relationship and tracking that relationship. The second thing that I want to make sure that you walk away with is that you know that there's really three parts to prospect development. There's the identification and research. We've talked a lot about that. That's finding out who those folks are and uncovering where they are. The second is relationship management, and that is really tracking the relationship that the development officer and the organization has with that prospect or potential donor. And the third is data analytics, studying, looking, uncovering any research, any data that's in your database to try to find trends or other like donors. So those are the three components of prospect development. And the third thing is, and sort of I say this tongue in cheek is, it really is who you know. The more you know about someone, the better able you are to connect with them, the better and more likely they are to give to your organization. So it really is about who you know.
