Recession Means Fund Raisers Have to Re-Assess Each Donor’s Wealth

The recession is keeping the fund raisers who conduct research on potential donors busy.

At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, researchers have had to go back and redo the majority of the profiles they had compiled before the economy went into a tailspin last fall, says Susan Paresky, a senior vice president at the institute.

Profiles are based on information about potential donors, such as the value of their homes, their stock holdings, and their charitable giving, all of which are likely to be down, says Ms. Paresky.

“If someone is rated as having $10-million in assets, and maybe being a $1-million prospect, now all of a sudden, they don’t have $10-million in assets,” she says. “They might have half of that.”

In that case, she says, fund raisers might decide to wait until the economy rebounds and the potential donor’s wealth increases to ask for a gift, or they might ask for a smaller contribution than they had originally planned.

Having an accurate picture of a potential donor’s wealth is critical, says Ms. Paresky. Without it, she says, a fund raiser risks asking for too much, which is likely to embarrass the prospect, or asking for too little, which can be insulting.

Says Ms. Paresky: “You always try to get as much information as you can to put yourself in the best spot possible for when it comes time to really evaluate and solicit a donor.”