How a Senior Fund Raiser Improved the Performance of Big Gifts Solicitors

Susan C. Martz, assistant vice president of development at Rice University, and Kelly Quin, head of donor research at the Houston institution, described how they have worked together to upgrade the skills and performance of the university’s fund raisers and the researchers who find information on potential big donors.

In a session at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, they said they joined forces when Ms. Martz was hired two years ago to help oversee the university’s $1-billion capital campaign. One of her first priorities, Ms. Martz says, was to assess the skills and capabilities of the 21 fund raisers at the university who specialize in winning big gifts.

To accomplish that, Ms. Martz came up with a written profile of an imaginary donor, identical to the ones the university’s prospect researchers create. But the imaginary donor, she says, was modeled on her own personal and professional life with some added embellishments, such as a family foundation.

She then distributed the research profile to the fund raisers and invited each one to her office for a one-hour role play. During the hour, the fund raisers demonstrated how they would find out more information about Ms. Martz’s financial capacity and desire to give and if and how they would ask her for a gift during an in-person visit.

They were also required to send a thank-you and other follow-up material to Ms. Martz, just as they would in working with an actual donor.

All of the fund raisers wanted to be successful, Ms. Martz says, but some were better than others. Among the problems she observed were a lack of focus, providing too much information, relying on hand-out materials rather than communicating with the donor, and not using research consistently or effectively.

To solve those problems, Ms. Martz and Ms. Quin have held training sessions in which fund raisers share stories of their best and worst solicitations, brainstorm about solutions, and share ideas.

Another big change the two women made was getting fund raisers and researchers to work closely together.

Before the change, researchers had a basement office and passively responded to fund raisers’ requests, in many cases not ever meeting with the development officer.

“Research was reactive,” says Ms. Quin. “It was like a mystery elf in the basement would do the research.”

The women moved the researchers into a new working space within the development office, changed the title for their position to “development research analyst,” and started to require them to attend meetings with fund raisers where they now actively participate in coming up with ideas for approaching individuals for large campaign gifts.

Ms. Martz says that one important result of fund raisers and researchers working more closely together is a requirement that fund raisers file reports about their visits with donors within seven days after a visit is made. She also instituted a policy of reading all of the contact reports once monthly and providing “coaching memos” to fund raisers whenever she sees a need for more information or other improvements.

“Two years later,” she says, “we see a definite correlation between the quality of the reports and how much is raised.”