Finding new prospects is often compared to fishing. You throw out a proverbial net and hopefully get an incredible number of fish in return. Some are going to be bigger than others; hopefully, you’ll throw the smaller fish back into the water to grow and thrive.
Continue reading Fishing for Prospects: The Promise of Validations
It’s been a bumpy road for cryptocurrency over the past year. In 2021, cryptocurrency did not seem to have any limit to its heights but in 2022, the crash came. Many predicted it was the end of crypto. But 2023 has been an interesting year with the price of Bitcoin rising again. The Giving Block, a full-service crypto exchange solution provider, predicts that over $1B in cryptocurrencies will have been donated by 2027. Boston Consulting Group forecasts that the crypto market will grow significantly by 2030.
What does this mean for the fundraising world? Opportunity! It’s a chance to raise additional funds, engage new donors who may not have been interested in philanthropy anymore, and find new ways of fundraising. It’s volatility and risks. But there are ways to mitigate and manage risk.
By Elisa Shoenberger
Asking for a major or transformative gift is a little bit like asking someone to marry you. You’ve (likely) been dating one another for a while and know quite a bit about your respective interests. Maybe you’ve discussed marriage; perhaps you haven’t. Ideally, you have an idea that the other person will actually say “yes.”
But timing is everything. You probably don’t want to ask your beloved to marry you when they are dealing with their dying father or in front of a crowd of people if they’ve told you that public proposals are not their thing. Maybe you want to ask their father and/or mother for their hand in marriage. The way you approach the proposal may say a lot about the response.
Continue reading Strategic Research for Transformative GiftsBy Elisa Shoenberger
Most of us have eaten cheese in our lives. Some of us may have grown up with American cheese, string cheese, and cheddar cheese. Maybe you’ve tried mozzarella, spreadable goat cheese, and a bleu cheese. While all of those cheeses are delicious, it can be a little intimidating to walk into the cheese aisle or a cheese shop. Suddenly there are tens, even hundreds of cheeses in all different colors and shapes. So how do you figure out what goes best on a salad or on a steak?
That’s what it might feel like when you’ve met with prospects in your portfolio. You know something about them; maybe you even requested an Aspire Snap Bio on them before meeting them. But what do you do next? How do you cultivate them towards a major gift in the next few years or so? How do you fit the cheese to the cracker or side?
Continue reading Finding the Right Cheese for the Cracker: Using Research to Create Strategies and Tactics for Cultivating Prospects
Remember the first time you got behind the wheel of a car? Maybe you had taken your learner’s permit test or not; maybe you had watched your parents closely as they drove. But when facing the wheel, pedals, and all those buttons for the first time, it might have been really daunting. I was frustrated the first time I got behind the wheel; no matter what I did, I could not get the car to go. I soon realized that no one had told me to push the brake while starting the car!
Naturally, if someone is getting a donor profile for the first time, it can be a bit daunting. There are lots of sections; some filled with charts and graphs while others have lots of information. And what’s with the “likely” and “possibly” speculation?
Continue reading Learning to Drive: Using Prospect Research for Early Cultivation Meetings
NeonOne set out to understand what individual giving looks like in the post-pandemic world. By reviewing many sources including academic journals, industry reports, blogs, and more, they have synthesized six questions:
In Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 1, we focused on the first three questions. In this Part 2, we are focusing on the last three questions.
Continue reading Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 2
NeonOne set out to understand what individual giving looks like in the post-pandemic world. By reviewing many sources including academic journals, industry reports, blogs, and more, they have synthesized six questions:
Due to the length of the report, Aspire will focus on the first three questions. The second part will be published in 2023.
Continue reading Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 1
It happens. You get that profile and say to yourself, “Well, I knew all THAT,” or you take one look at that capacity rating and say, “In my DREAMS they’ll give that much!” — or worse, you say, “They could give so MUCH MORE than that!”
Where do profiles and capacity ratings go wrong and how can you unlock the major gift magic for you and your organization?
At Aspire Research Group, we prepare a lot of profiles, and we spend a lot of time fretting over capacity ratings. We also spend a lot of time with our clients, asking and listening to what information serves them best.
Following are three things we’ve learned that anyone can implement to unlock major gift potential in your prospect research efforts:
Every new client at Aspire gets a brief follow-up profile review after the first delivery. This is a critical juncture in making sure we are delivering the right information. When we get a request, we know you trust us to sort through a treasure trove of data and deliver the right bits to you. But how do we know which bits are the best?
Some of it is standard, but if you want major gift magic, we have to talk to you and learn more about what matters most to you and your organization. That first conversation leads to more conversations. Sometimes we have questions at the time of your request, or right in the middle of doing the work!
Making the time for periodic prospect strategy review meetings pays off with better information being delivered in the profiles. But if you really want to up your major gift game, you have to do more to get the most out of prospect research.
You have to push back, question, and – dare I say it – complain. We recently had a client get frustrated with the way we’re delivering information he found critical to his success. What if he had kept quiet? Grumbled to himself and spent twice the time finding it on his own?
Now we are back on track, supporting him on the research path he has discovered works really, REALLY well for his campaign. At Aspire we WANT our clients to be successful!
Aspire clients are probably a lot like you. Fundraising operations that do not have a prospect researcher on staff, but are either raising millions every year or on track to cross into 7-figure territory. What we’ve learned over the years is that confident fundraisers are BOLD.
Research is expensive. But NOT getting research is devastating. It means no new building. No programs for people who are suffering.
If you know how to build relationships with your donors and ask for larger gifts, what is holding you back from asking for more profiles? Why wouldn’t you want to know exactly what your experience indicates will lead to a deeper relationship faster?
Yes, information on prospects does go stale over time — but not if you are out there cultivating and asking for gifts. Bold and confident fundraisers make the investment – and generate the return they need to fund their mission.
There are so many types of gift capacity ratings or ways in which to calculate them, that it’s no surprise when development officers throw up their hands and give up on them altogether!
The primary purpose for a capacity rating is to help you prioritize and segment donor prospects. Does that surprise you? If this is true, then why are they on every profile?
When you see the capacity rating on your profile, think of it more like a weather forecast. You know it has a high level of unreliability, but it is correct often enough that you bring your umbrella when there is a high chance of rain.
If you have a relationship with your researcher, make sure you understand something about how they are creating, verifying, or updating the capacity rating. This will go a long way to helping you unlock some major gift magic from them.
Once you have some confidence in the gift capacity rating, you will have more confidence in using it as an important consideration when crafting your major gift proposal amounts. At this point, the gift capacity rating might validate what you were already thinking, or it might give you the confidence to ask for even more.
Major gift fundraising is even more hard work. It’s not your fault that you are pressed for time and struggling to pay attention to yet another thing – prospect research. We get it.
That’s why we created a new 30-min webinar series this year – Research Rocks!
In 30-minutes you get the “why” of profiles and capacity ratings and tips on how you can implement better practices easily and immediately. If you show up live, you get to interact and connect with others. But there’s always the replay.
WARNING: At Aspire we really do LOVE prospect research and by the end of 30 minutes, you might get hooked, too.
Gift capacity ratings are touted as one of the best ways to segment for major gift prospects, but just how reliable are they? And why are they based on a 5-year pledge? Veteran researcher, Jen Filla, tackles the topic, diving right into what works and what doesn’t for development officers responsible for major gifts. Walk away knowing the different types of capacity ratings, how to leverage them for maximum impact, and how gift capacity ratings are changing with emerging technology.
Not all donor prospect profiles are created equal – and that’s a good thing! In this session, prospect research professional, Jen Filla, demonstrates how you can navigate the prospect profile continuum to build faster, better relationships with your donors and feel confident asking for larger gifts. It all hinges on getting the right information at the right time – and using it.
If you have any questions about how you might use this training opportunity with your team or elsewhere in your organization, please contact us.
Just in case you are not experiencing soaring temperatures outside, let me remind you that it is officially summertime. And that means you need a summer reading list. Allow me to indulge you with Aspire’s!
At Aspire, we’ve made a habit of writing FREE publications. Like a tourist drawn to a Florida golf course gator (Is it real? Let’s get closer!), we simply must satiate our curiosity on a variety of topics. If you benefit from it, too, we consider that a bonus.
Curious what other publications we have available? “Check out” the complete Publications Library today!
The top blog posts at Aspire might surprise you, but then again, maybe not.
If this list leaves you wanting more, join our mailing list and get delicious research candy like this delivered to your inbox monthly. (Even your mother would approve of that dessert frequency!)
If this reading list doesn’t get you in the mood for summer frolic, I can’t imagine what will. Because fundraising research was meant to be poolside, or beachside, or watching the kids run through the sprinkler-side, or even in the air conditioning with a mocktail. Anywhere you go to let your neurons roam free so you can return to work with new ideas and new perspectives.
“Unlike many older philanthropists, this globally connected and tech-savvy cohort is not content with just writing a charitable cheque. They see their skills, networks and for-profit investments as part of how they make an impact with philanthropy.” -The Economist Intelligence Unit
What is this Report?Based on interviews conducted between November 2016 and January 2017 with affluent millennials and experts, the report assesses the shift in the approach to philanthropy by the next generation of affluent families, focusing on millennials engaged in family foundations. The report explores the millennial mindset, their investment tools and strategies, and the balance struck between family legacy and philanthropic innovation. The report defines millennials as those born between 1980 and 2000.