How to Hold On to Prospective Donors When Fundraisers Leave: a Conference Debrief

For many years, the people who did much of the advanced research on potential donors and provided fundraisers with valuable intelligence that could help them be more successful soliciting donations were not seen as equal partners in the fundraising process. At the APRA Prospect Development 2023 conference last week, professionals in the research field came together to discuss the important ways they advance fundraising and look at how prospect researchers can help development departments navigate changes in technology and in the field.

“We aspire to be trusted partners in the fundraising ecosystem,” said Darren Cooper, director of prospect research at the Mayo Clinic, who spoke at a conference session on building modern prospect development teams. “We all work together to maximize the value of philanthropy.”

The conference brought together almost 800 prospect development professionals in person and 324 online at the hybrid event. Sam Venable, senior manager of data intelligence and product management at Blackbaud, said that he’s seen a real change in attitudes toward prospect researchers in recent years. “I’ve seen [organizations] embracing prospect development as a core part of the fundraising team.”

Conferencegoers focused on new challenges, including navigating change within a fundraising organization and within the field, tapping into the next generation of philanthropists, and using research both to find new donors and to avoid potential givers who could cause reputational harm to the organization.

Navigating Change

With many development offices experiencing staff turnover, presenters doled out advice on how to maintain consistency. For organizations that know a transition is coming, it’s important to have a deep understanding of both current prospects and donors so changes can be seamlessly incorporated into the plan, said Rachelle Ficke, senior director at CCS Fundraising, a fundraising consulting firm, who spoke at a session on how to make sure good prospects don’t fall through the cracks during times of transition.

Ficke helped the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago assess its donor and prospect portfolios, looking at which prospects and donors were assigned to fundraisers, which were unassigned because of staff turnover, and which donors were in the wrong place — perhaps still in a fundraiser’s active pile even though that person had recently made large donations, rather than being moved to a stewardship team.

By doing this, the team was able to make sure gift officers had active portfolios that could be worked at a reasonable pace and weren’t cluttered with prospects who had already given, said they weren’t going to give, or had been asked to be taken off a solicitation list. The project also allowed teams to plan for change, without necessarily assigning every prospect to a current fundraiser.

“During a time of transition, think about a position that is unfilled at the moment,” Ficke said. “You don’t want to assign out all your best prospects. Then if a new person starts, you don’t know where to begin with building a portfolio for them.”

Cooper, who spoke at a session about building modern prospect-development teams, said that in the back of his mind, he’s always preparing for staff turnover. He noted that he keeps in touch with past applicants who were very close to being hired but were edged out by someone else and is always on the lookout for bright people in the field when he attends conferences.

“It’s just really being ready to respond,” he says. “That’s probably the most important element.”

Another big area of change that conference participants discussed: the increased use of artificial-intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, and how that might change the field.

“I really feel like we’re having a transformational moment in terms of what we can do and also what we should do,” said Venable of Blackbaud during a panel discussion on trends in artificial intelligence.

“Some of the changes that have emerged over the past couple of years in terms of our capability to visualize data, for example, show the tremendous power of what we can do,” Venable said.

The panelists predicted that A.I. wouldn’t replace prospect researchers but would change how they do their jobs. It would require more of their analysis skills to separate important data from the bulk of information available.

“People don’t want search results,” said Chris Green, CEO of Xapien and another panelist at the emerging trends session. “They want the answer to a question.”

Venable said the best bet for prospect researchers is to try out A.I. tools and see what works for their organization.

“Invest in experimentation,” he said. “In a lot of cases, we’re trying to figure out where that line is between what the computer is really good at versus a human. So having your teams spend some time playing with those tools will help you understand where that line is for you all: cases where it works really well and maybe where it doesn’t.”

Next-Gen Giving

Engaging younger generations in philanthropy is crucial to maintain the pipeline of donors, several speakers at the conference argued.

In a session on identifying younger prospects, panelists discussed ways prospect researchers can use data to get leads on next-generation donors. Younger people often had volunteering as a high-school graduation requirement, so they may volunteer before they give dollars, Jennifer Moody, vice president of research at the Gobel Group. She also noted that because they’re early in their careers, they likely have less to give. She recommended that organizations look for ways to get them involved.

“Do you have a junior board?” Moody said. “Do you have a seat on your board that is specifically for somebody next-generation? Do you sell tickets to a golf outing or a gala and give a discount to young professionals?”

Other ways to reach younger supporters include being active on social media, including newer platforms like TikTok, and accepting donations in a variety of funds — such as cryptocurrency — and through a variety of payment methods, such as Venmo or Cash App. Just as prospect researchers try to find connections to wealthy individuals during their research, Moody noted that asking younger donors for contacts can also be helpful for warm introductions to peers who can be cultivated.

“Their attitude may be, ‘I can’t give you $500,000, but I can tell you which of my friends might be interested in coming to your ball,’” Moody said about recent college graduates. “I can tell you which people in my class might be interested in learning more about this program.”

Partnering with social-media influencers to share information about your cause and using social media to highlight your organization’s work can also help attract young people, said Ashley Fitzgerald, strategic partnerships manager at Altrata, who spoke on the emerging trends panel. Above all else, she said, young people want it to be easy.

“Minimize friction around giving,” Fitzgerald said. “It needs to be as easy as possible. I should be able to whip open my phone, hit the QR code, it takes me somewhere I get to donate money, and that’s the end of that.”

Gifts From Russian Oligarchs?

More and more organizations are turning to prospect research to prevent hits to their reputations, several conference speakers said.

“People are asking: Do you want to take money from this person?” said Green, with Xapien. “They’re using it to look at appointments of honorary doctorates or academic partnerships with foreign institutions.”

Due diligence on potential donors has become increasingly common, said Elizabeth Goodman, director of the Center for Recovery and Identification of the Missing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“When I started off on the Ethics and Compliance Committee, due diligence was not a word that we were bantering about,” she said. “It was not necessarily something we were thinking about with as much intentionality as is thought about today.”

In a room of dozens of prospect researchers in the session, almost all said their organizations had fields in their donor-management systems to put codes essentially saying “do not engage” with certain prospects. The codes were reserved for potential donors who faced criminal charges, had reputations the organization did not wish to be associated with, or had other problematic ties. One attendee said her group had a “values misalignment policy” to help it avoid taking gifts from donors whose values were radically different from the group’s mission. The group recognized that accepting a gift from such a donor could lead to public backlash.

“We know that reputational risk is a big consideration for organizations,” Goodman said. “Wanting to be in the news for a positive news story is always something that we aspire to and definitely not something in terms of negative headlines.”

Sarah Price, managing director of research services at BWF, said that her firm looks for relationships both good and bad. For example, an organization wanting to reach a specific donor — say, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio — might use relationship mapping to determine if any of its current donors, supporters, or board members have ties to DiCaprio and if those ties might be strong enough to lead to an introduction. The firm, Price said, was also asked by an organization to vet a Russian oligarch interested in donating to ensure he didn’t have ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“There are a lot of different reasons you want to do relationship mapping,” she said. “And just making sure you’re doing your due diligence is one of them.”