Your Successful Giving Day & Biases In Prospect Identification

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd suffer with dextrogastria if I had to stomach the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate to give you the highlights.

Kate Martignetti
Hey Tony, I'll be happy to. Your successful Giving Day. Our coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference continues as Jackelyne Briseño helps you leverage Giving Day opportunities Through segmentation, gamifying strategies, multichannel methods, collaborating internally, using social influencers, preparing your CRM database, and more. Jackelyne is with American Near East Refugee Aid. Then, biases in prospect identification. Let's name how and where selection bias confirmation bias, and availability bias creep into your prospect identification processes and identify methods for stepping away from bias so it's mitigated. Sarah Marcotte is at Sick Kids Foundation and Katherine Scott is with Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation on Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Tales from the Gym.

Kate Martignetti
Here is Your Successful Giving Day.

Tony Martignetti
Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, continuing coverage of 26NTC, the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference. My guest now is Jackelyne Briseño, Director of Digital Fundraising at American Near East Refugee Aid. Anaira. Jackelyne, welcome to Nonprofit Radio.

Jackelyne Briseño
Hi, Tony. Thanks so much. I'm so glad to be here.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, it's a pleasure. Oh, you're smiling and you're all bubbly. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jackie. Your session topic is A Complete Guide to Planning and Executing a Successful Giving Day. If you would, just give me the 30,000-foot view to get us started.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure. Yeah, I think giving days are becoming increasingly important for nonprofits. They have been for a very long time. I'm sure your listeners are very aware of Giving Tuesday, which is the one that a lot of people know. Sure. Recent stats came out for our most recent Giving Tuesday in December, and over, I want to say, 38 million Americans gave on that day, and over $4 billion was donated on that day. So I think Giving Day as a concept is really relevant for nonprofits, and this session really talked about, okay, so whether you're doing Giving Tuesday or your own Giving Day another day of the year, which is totally possible, Here's kind of what they are, what they look like, why they matter, and here are some 6 main strategies on, you know, creating a successful one and making sure that you're checking all the boxes and seeing some really good results on that day.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, cool. That's a great overview. Thank you. So let's talk about knowing whether you want to create your own giving day, maybe in addition to Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, but Maybe you want to do something in June or May or April or something, you know. How do you know if you might be ripe for your own, creating your own, before we get into how-to?

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure, yeah. I think some things to think about are maybe the day you were founded as a nonprofit, or you can look at observance days are another really good one if you want to kind of anchor the day on a specific time of the year outside of Giving Tuesday. But quite frankly, you could pick a random day and then just build branding and stories and build a campaign around it. So I don't think It matters so much, but if anybody's thinking, well, we want to do one, we're really thinking about timing, what makes sense for us, but you have no idea where to start, I would look at observance days, look at your organization's history and founding days, days that might make sense for you. But the other question I think more importantly to ask is, when does it make sense on the calendar for a nonprofit, right? If you're looking at, well, you know, we don't really have much going on in Q2, Giving Day would be great in Q2 because no one's going to be extra stressed out.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, okay. So you have 6 strategies. Yeah. Can we— can we— can you tick off the 6?

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
And then we'll go into some detail?

Jackelyne Briseño
For sure, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right, so give us the overview of the 6.

Jackelyne Briseño
All right, so I think first you want to segment your audience. That is a really big one. I also talked a lot about gamifying strategies, which are really fun to do, especially in a digital space. We talked about prepping your CRM and making sure that you've kind of got all the backend ready to go, clean and organized. We talked about working with major gift officers and your communications team, and specifically also working with influencers. And that was— was that 6? I wasn't counting.

Tony Martignetti
No, that's 5.

Jackelyne Briseño
That's 5. Let's see here. What else did we— All

Tony Martignetti
right, we'll get to it. Well, we'll do that. Yeah, it'll come to me. All right, so segmenting your audience, your audience and donor segmentation. Oh, I think leveraging influence, collaborating with— oh,

Jackelyne Briseño
oh. I think the influencers was—

Tony Martignetti
Comms and marketing.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure, yeah, major gift officers.

Tony Martignetti
I'm going by your session description. Okay, collaborating with comms and marketing was one, and then collaborating with major gift officers was another. Okay, so you did do 6.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, I was like, I thought I counted, but I wasn't sure.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, great. Okay, so segmenting your audience.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, so I think it's definitely something you want to do. One of the things that I talked about yesterday was It's not really creating 6 different versions of an email, like 6 different unique emails. It's really looking at— in this case, I'm going to use email as an example because I think that's where most people do it. But it's really looking at a whole email and figuring out where are those small little tweaks that you can make to segment your audience. And why we do segmenting is because we know that there's an increased ROI and conversion rates when people feel like the message is really targeted to them. And so again, you want to do it, but do it in a way that makes sense. Some of the things that I talked about yesterday too was looking specifically at like a CTA. And so you can segment donors by donor behavior, communication preferences, even geographical locations or causes that they've maybe given. Let's say you work for an organization that works across multiple countries. You could segment by countries and interests, right? For ANAIRA specifically, we segment by donor behavior. And so our segments are usually monthly donors, We're looking at active donors. We're looking at lapsed. We're looking at previous Giving Day campaign donors. They'll get their own version that's like, hey, you gave last year. You know that Giving Day is rolling around again. Can we count on your support? And again, just kind of going back to those CTAs. It could look very different for 2 people, but it doesn't mean that you're adding on more than maybe 5 minutes to your time. So a good example of that would be maybe your monthly CTA is, you know, thank you so much for your monthly support. Your additional one-time gift to today for Giving Day is going to be matched. Here's the kind of impact that you can have. Can we count on you? And so you're acknowledging that they're a monthly supporter, they feel seen, they feel appreciated, and they're given an opportunity to do more because you have that match. Let's say if you're talking to maybe a lapsed donor, they usually need a little bit more convincing in my experience. Sure. And so we'll usually lean a little bit more towards, you know, every single dollar makes a difference. You've been part of our community. We're so grateful you're here. Please, can we count on you today? And there's a little bit more urgency, a little bit more fluff, for lack of a better word. Um, but yeah, again, small little tweaks that you can do here and there to really make sure that message hits the way you want it to.

Tony Martignetti
When do you like to start the promotion for your giving day?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, we'll usually start with a save the date about 2 weeks before, and then—

Tony Martignetti
That close?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, it's pretty close. Quick turnaround.

Tony Martignetti
All right.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, and so I think giving days really kind of live in a digital space for the most part.

Tony Martignetti
Urgency.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, and so you don't want to kind of go too far before the giving day because people will forget. I mean, our attention span is not great, right? So you kind of want to start building momentum. Usually for us, it's about 2 weeks before. We also do a direct mail piece that kind of coincides with our giving day. And so people will get the save the date. And then a couple later, a couple days later in their mailbox, they'll receive a letter for our Giving Tuesday campaign. And then the week after, we're probably sending 2 more segmented emails to a smaller group to kind of get that momentum going. And then we'll do pretty heavy messaging the day before Giving Tuesday, day of. We're sending at least 3 different emails, 2 text messages, web pop-ups, social media asks. And then of course, we'll follow that with a thank you the next day with an ask for anyone who didn't give. So it'll include like a soft ask for non-donors.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Do you encourage gifts before the actual giving day? Absolutely. You do?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep, yep, absolutely. So we'll have matches. Shout out to our major gift team to secure those matches. So those will come in first. We're probably raising a good amount of money that day, and so you want to have some of those funds come in, especially if you're going to do a progress bar. No one wants a progress bar starting at zero. Zero. Right. You want at least maybe 12 to 15% in of that goal. So yeah, definitely encouraging gifts before, and usually that's done through the segmentation. So I would recommend thinking about messaging if you're going to want to get that progress bar started. I would send out an email to your monthly donors, to maybe donors that gave the campaign before or the year prior and say, hey, you get first access to our match. Like, here's an opportunity to make sure your gift is doubled now and start getting those numbers in.

Tony Martignetti
And then how do you message it around a giving day? I mean, so you're— so if you're starting 2 weeks early, you're accepting gifts for 2 weeks, but you're calling it a giving day.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure.

Tony Martignetti
So, I mean, my work is planned giving fundraising, so this is foreign to me. All right, so how do you message for 2 weeks around a single day But you're accepting gifts during the 2 weeks.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep. So for example, I'll use the save the date as an example, right? So we'll have the save the date, which is— it's really that. So there's a soft ask in there, like allowing people to give, but that's not the main reason for the email. The main reason for the email is keep a lookout, the date's coming up, here's some things you can do to prepare. So we're giving them an option to add it to their calendar, and that goes straight to any kind of calendar that they use. We'll format that calendar invite to include a link to our giving form, so when they see it day of, they know where to click, they know where to go. We'll also give them a chance to look at our toolkit if they want to start sharing for their followers on social or to their friends and family. And then we'll also give them the chance to start their own fundraiser and kind of have those tools for peer-to-peer if they want to start, you know, spreading the word sooner than later. And then give them other best practices like, hey, ANERA is going to be sharing. Make sure you tag us @anera.org. And it's really more like, let's prep for it. Here are some resources. But also, if you want to give, here years at LINC, and that's kind of a— it's a softer ask.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, I see. So maybe it's like an 80/20?

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure, yeah, it's a little bit of a softer—

Tony Martignetti
But 20% ask?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep, yep.

Tony Martignetti
If you want to do now?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, and then you have matches as well?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
You take advantage of the match, and then I'm assuming there's a match for the giving day itself?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yes, so we'll do a general match, and then we'll have power matches day of that will usually go live around noon and say, okay, now it's a 3-to-1, so every dollar you give becomes 3. Here's what that impact looks like. We'll do price points and multiply those price points as well. So if you're saying $5 does this, Now you're saying $5 turns into $15, which does this, right? And so people have a really clear idea of what that impact looks like for those matches and how they're able to, you know, make a difference. Even if it's just $5, everything adds up.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. All right. So I made you digress a little bit from segmentation. We were talking about segmentation. Anything more you want to add about the importance of segmenting?

Jackelyne Briseño
I think, again, just it's very important to do. Maybe also with your thank you email. So obviously every campaign you want to send out a thank you after. If anybody was a first-time donor, you want to segment for that. them a special message. If they became a monthly donor through your Giving Day, you want to look at those numbers too and make sure they're feeling seen and appreciated and heard. But rule of the game is you want a segment, even if it's basic, even if it's just by donor behavior. You definitely want to look at it and make it in a way that makes sense, right? If you're a one-stop shop, maybe you don't want to do 3 different versions. Maybe it's a small tweak here and there, but for sure do it because I think the ROI is there and it definitely shows that that effort is worth it.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Okay. I think it's Worth repeating, but I think, yeah, we've been talking about personalization and segmentation for lots of years.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
I think gamifying. What kind of games do we have here?

Jackelyne Briseño
So—

Tony Martignetti
Oh, your face lit up. Yeah!

Jackelyne Briseño
I love gamifying strategies. I find them so fun. So I've been talking about a progress bar. That is a really good example of a gamifying strategy. And what they are is just kind of, again, going back to that attention span. I mean, we have an attention span that is less than a goldfish. Like, we want to get that attention and make people give in that moment versus, oh, I'll come back later. So what they do is they create a sense of urgency, they create a sense of community. And there are multiple different gamifying strategies that you can incorporate. Some of my favorites are a progress bar. I was talking about a progress bar for matches. That's really good too. But another really great way to think about it is by impact. And so let's say you are delivering meals. You could do a progress bar for the number of meals you want to deliver on that day based off of funding. And so it's a really great way to motivate people. Like, okay, we want to serve a million meals before the campaign ends. We're at 500,000. Let's keep this momentum going. And it keeps people involved and feel like there's a sense of something, they're a part of something. Another gamifying strategy I really like and love to see when orgs do it are challenges. And this is really helpful when you have those major donors come in and say, okay, I'll give $10,000, I'll give $20,000. And you can find really fun ways to incorporate that. And usually it's like, If this happens, then we'll get X, right? So if Y happens, we'll get X. And what that could be is, um, maybe you send out an email and you're saying, okay, if we get another 100 donors in the next 100 minutes or something, then we're gonna unlock another $100,000 in funding. And so there are little challenges that you can do there. Um, I think they're really fun to do, but you definitely do need kind of that, that external funding there to kind of say like, here's a motivating piece, is we're going to be able to do so much more if we get X amount of donors, X amount of revenue.

Tony Martignetti
You need that donor support. That's all lined up in advance, obviously. Okay.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right. All right. Games. You're keeping, again, like time-critical urgency.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sense of urgency. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Let's get going next 24 hours. We've got this.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Anything else? Games?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah. So I also talked about price points briefly. I think those are a really great way to show impact. And those are, I mean, you talk to whoever you need to talk to at your organization to figure out the cost of doing whatever it is that you do, right? In our case for INARA, We deliver meals. We provide youth with access to education and resources. And so we also do a lot of health-related programming. So we'll do price points that kind of are revolving around everything. Because for us, Giving Tuesday is an unrestricted campaign. And so it kind of has to cover all the work that we do.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Jackelyne Briseño
And then the other thing I would say on gamifying strategies is you definitely want to layer them. And so if you're going to do— I would think about it like try to do more than one. So for example, you're doing a web pop-up. Okay, let's get a timer in there. That's another really good one that I love, is a timer for either a match or the end of a campaign. Let's do a power match if you can, and let's get price points in there. And so you're doing more than one thing, and they're all going to help you amplify that message. A little caveat on gamifying strategies, as much as I love them and as fun as they are to do, that's not what's going to motivate someone to give, right? They're meant to amplify your work and your message. They're not meant to motivate donors. You know, it's not going to be the thing that— Right. Somebody sees like a beautiful progress bar and they're going to think, oh yeah, that's like, I love the colors, let me give. Like, it's not that, right? But it's a really great way to kind of amplify that message.

Tony Martignetti
It's the love of your work.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. But you're, again, you're creating the urgency, you're having fun with it.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah. Yeah. You have fun with it, create a sense of community.

Tony Martignetti
Right. Yeah. Why wouldn't I give $25 or $50? Sure. Yeah. And especially if my $50 becomes $150.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of psychology behind them.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Organization or organizing your data?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, so I think it's really important to think about your CRM and how your CRM can work for you and doing a lot of prep work before. So I think about this in 3 different phases. The first is you want to make sure you have clean, reliable data. And this is specifically important if you are working out of a CRM and you have multiple outside sources of getting donor info. So like, let's say maybe you're using like GoFundMe Pro for your donation forms and you're using something else for events and you have a lot of things kind of funneling into your CRM. Yeah. It's a really good idea to clean that data before you run a campaign like this. Specifically when we're thinking about segmenting, right? Like you don't want to send a first-time donor email to a donor who's been giving for 10 years. So like it's really important that you're cleaning up that data, making sure that you feel confident about it. And the second is prepping. This will look very different depending on the CRM that you use, but you obviously want to create the campaign in the CRM and then get those unique identifiers. So are they source codes, general ledger funds, revenue streams? You know, what else do you need to do internally to kind of make sure all of that is set up? And then the final piece of that is your reporting and analytics. I would recommend you look at reporting dashboards within your CRM and kind of find ways to visualize the data day of. Set all those up before you even go live, and then day of, all you're doing is hitting refresh, and you can communicate that to your boss, to leadership stakeholders, to your team, whoever else is involved that kind of wants those quick day-to-day, minute-to-minute updates, and it just makes life a little bit easier and less stressful.

Tony Martignetti
And to your donors too.

Jackelyne Briseño
And to your donors, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
If you're doing progress bars and you can— You can do SMS with them.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tony Martignetti
Here we are, hour number 17, or, you know.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, yeah, I see the value of the, the how important it is to have accurate data, cleaned up data. Otherwise you're gonna, you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna missend people. Sure, yep. Okay.

Jackelyne Briseño
It's not a good look.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, and then you're doing a lot of apologizing.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Kinda puts a damper on your giving day.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure.

Tony Martignetti
Alright, maybe we could lump together, well no, you're the one who developed the strategies, who am I to say 4 and 5 go together? So collaborating with your communications and marketing team.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, we can lump 'em 'cause it's influencers and comms, and yeah, I think we definitely lump. So with major gift officers, I've talked about a little bit, but I think they're very helpful. If you're thinking about matches, which I would absolutely at least do one match for your Giving Day, because again, it's a really good motivator to get that momentum going, to get people excited. If you've never worked with your major gift officers before, maybe they're kind of a separate team entirely. I'm lucky at Inara that we're all one team and they know I need matches for every campaign, so we're good there. But if you've never done this before, I would recommend you talk to your major gift officers at least 6 months in advance, because these types of gifts, they take time and they have their own processes, their own pool, their own streams of different donors that they ask for what and when. And so you definitely need to give them some time to plan that out and look at their own portfolios. And then of course, collaborate with them in talking about funding. How much are you asking for? Are you asking for $10K, $20K, $100K? What is that match amount? Just kind of collaborate with them there. I will say though, one very important piece that kind of comes after the campaign is if you're able to communicate back to that major gift officer how that match had an impact during your giving day, Yeah. I think that goes a long way for their major donor. If you can turn around and say, hey, this power match that we published at noon actually generated 400 donations, and from, you know, X amount of different countries, all these people gave and they gave so much, and kind of make them feel good about it. Like, send a little blurb to that gift officer so they can report back and make that donor feel really good about being part of Giving Day and motivating other people to join the cause. Yeah. I think is a really nice stewardship opportunity. And working with your communications team, I think it's going to look different for every nonprofit just on capacity and structure, but off the top of my head, you want to make sure that you are working with them for your website and making sure that GivingTuesday is all over your website. You want to think about website pop-ups, homepage hero takeovers, publishing blog posts and stories. I also think it's really important to, as we think about capacity, is repurposing some of your content. And so if you are already going to do a save the date, you know, you could totally turn that into a blog post and they are publishing on the website and nobody had to do anything but maybe a couple small tweaks. But now you're increasing the visibility, right? Versus just your email subscribers. Now everyone on the website knows, oh, this thing's coming up and it's on there. And of course, I'll talk about it in a sec. But obviously working with influencers, I think, is kind of the day and age that we live in right now and would be really something to think about if you can for the campaign.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, we can talk about that.

Jackelyne Briseño
Okay, great. Yeah. So huge shout out to Michelle Rodriguez. She is our social media manager and I'm like so in love with the work that she does. She's phenomenal. We've done a lot of good work with influencers. Some things to think about when working with influencers is that you obviously want to find someone that aligns with your values. That doesn't mean though that they need to align with every single project that you work on, every single component of your nonprofit, knowing that some nonprofits are really big and do a lot of big things across the world. A quick example for us is obviously we do a lot of meal distributions, and so we'll work with influencers who will post recipes and are specifically focused on food-related content. And so it doesn't mean that that's all they do, or that's all we do, but that's where that connection is. And so when you can find that alignment, I think is really important. The other thing to note too is you want to make sure that they have the resources they need to post that collaboration or that content appropriately. So if you've got talking points, if you've got stats, if you've got other things that you feel like they need to share, or if you even want to send them branding materials, like maybe you want to send them your logo if they want to post their logo somewhere. Yeah. And kind of make sure they have those talking points and be a resource for them.

Tony Martignetti
Do you offer all that up or do you wait for them? Because you don't want them to think that you're trying to influence what they're going to post. Yeah, that's a good question. Do you offer it or wait for them to ask?

Jackelyne Briseño
We always offer. You know, at the end of the day, they're content creators, so they know what they're doing. But we'll always offer, like, we can totally write a script for you if you would want that, and we'll work that out as a team. Usually they'll say that they want talking points, and I think At the very minimum, you want to provide talking points and just kind of offer up, here are the 3 main things, here's what we're doing for the project, here's what we're raising funds for, I think is the most basic level stuff. And then some influencers are like, yeah, give me a script, and then they'll use that as a guide. And then others kind of say, no, I just need talking points and I'm good. And it kind of just depends on that relationship. But at the end of the day, you want to make sure you're asking and being a resource because they're posting content on your behalf, you're collaborating with them, and you want to make sure that there's alignment with your brand and your mission, but also giving them the flexibility to make it relevant for their audience too. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Is there a way to influence what the influencers say? Like, if you want them to highlight specific programs or something? I mean, you can include those in your talking points, but that's really about as far as you can go, right? Or can you say, it would be great if you could talk about our program in Gaza?

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah, absolutely. 1,000%. Yeah, 1,000%. I would approach influencers the way you would approach major donors. Like, think about it in that, in that way of relationship building. You are stewarding, you're cultivating, it's a partnership, you know, you're kind of working on this together. You're hearing and you're receiving feedback. You're also kind of guiding the conversation and guiding, here's what we really need to raise funds for, here's really the messaging of the project. It's all a conversation and it's not kind of a one-way street. I think it's, you're working on it together and thinking about them, you know, almost as an extension of your team during this campaign, as somebody that you can

Tony Martignetti
Okay. So segmenting, gamifying, organizing your data, working with your major gift officers, your communications team, working with influencers. That's the 6.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Makes it sound easier than— well, it sounds easy. Sounds easy. All right. So, The value of these, you know, you're trying to bring folks together, create that urgency. How— going beyond Giving Tuesday, I guess, maybe we already talked about this, but it feels like it's important because there are agencies that don't like Giving Tuesday. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure why. But you're empowered to create your own giving day. You don't have to participate in Giving Tuesday.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tony Martignetti
All right, all right. I just want to make that explicit. You don't have to participate. If you or your CEO don't like Giving Tuesday, that doesn't mean you're locked out of giving days.

Jackelyne Briseño
Sure.

Tony Martignetti
Create your own. Founders Day. Ideal, like you suggested.

Jackelyne Briseño
1,000%. Yeah. And a quick note on that too is I think, you know, the benefit of Giving Tuesday is there's already a lot of branding and awareness. It's a season of giving, right? Yeah. For us, we use it as kind of a kickoff to our calendar year campaign. And so for, for Inara, it just, it works. But there's also a lot of competition on that day. You know, a lot of nonprofits are sending out appeals, sending out emails. And so if you're maybe a smaller organization or you've never done a Giving Day before, it would make sense, I think, to have that conversation of, okay, do we want to do something in the spring instead? You know, and we're not competing against, you know, thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of different nonprofits. asking donors to give on this day and you kind of want a little bit more of a spotlight, for sure. Yeah, you don't have— you're not tied to Giving Tuesday, but I think if you're— if you have the capacity for it and you can jump on that bandwagon, there's a lot of benefits because people are in that mood. It's right after Thanksgiving, you know, and everyone's kind of like, okay, it's time to give back. You can kind of, you know, lean into that emotion a little bit.

Tony Martignetti
They also provide a lot of resources. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so what, do you just have one other giving day besides GivingTuesday at an era?

Jackelyne Briseño
Nope, just GivingTuesday.

Tony Martignetti
Are you only— Yeah, one GivingDay. Oh, okay. How come you haven't branched out to another day?

Jackelyne Briseño
It just seemed to have worked. I inherited the campaign as it was and— You got these 6 strategies.

Tony Martignetti
I know. You got the 6 strategies. Why don't you do something in Q2?

Jackelyne Briseño
We could. I think we usually have one major campaign every quarter. So again, going back to the annual calendar, like it just seems to work for us. But I mean, they're easy to do. They're not as complicated, I think, as some people make it out to be. And hopefully I didn't make it sound complicated right now. Oh, contrary. You know, they're totally easy to do, and I think definitely makes sense, but it's, it's a case-by-case. You kind of need to see, like, does it make sense for us? What day do we want to look at? But for Inara, they kind of work as that kickoff, and we'll actually get a lot of new monthly donors from Giving Tuesday too. So it's a really great way to kind of kick us off for calendar year-end and meet those really big targets that everyone's kind of racing to on the 31st.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. All right. So you're not a hypocrite.

Jackelyne Briseño
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Here you are advocating giving days, and then you only participate in Giving Tuesday. No, you're not. You're not. You're not. You've thought through it. Okay. That's Jackie, Jacqueline, Jacqueline Briseño, Director of Digital Fundraising at American Near East Refugee Aid, ANERA. Thanks very much, Jackie. Thank you for sharing.

Jackelyne Briseño
Thank you so much, Tony. This was great.

Tony Martignetti
I'm glad. I'm glad you had fun. Thank you. And thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. It's another Tales from the Gym. There was someone in this week, uh, visiting. He's only here for 2 weeks, and this guy was orgasmic about oysters. He just could not say enough about how much he loves oysters. Again, as usual, not saying it to me, but I'm overhearing it. This was, this was a conversation that started while I was on the elliptical, and then it continued to when I went over to do my free weights over on the bench. This guy, so he's from Gloucester, Massachusetts, born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts, but visiting down here in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. So he grew up on New England oysters, of course. Yeah. Right. And Gloucester is a big fishing community also. And also I learned Gloucester is suffering. It has been for many years because of just reductions in costs of fish that people can sell it for and overhead rising. And then also now gas prices for boats. Right. For commercial fishermen. So Gloucester has been challenged for years, and even more so right now, very recently. So, but that's an aside. The oysters, it's all about the oysters. So there are many ways to cook oysters, we learned. Raw, of course, which is his favorite. I did not catch his name. He did not— I think at the very end, he said his name to the guy who he'd been talking to for like 20 minutes, but I didn't catch their name. Yeah. So, but raw, raw is his favorite oyster, of course. You gotta shuck it and, you know, you gotta be careful shucking it, et cetera. The shucking is a very big deal about the shucking. Gotta have a sharp, a sharp, I don't know if they call them knives. I don't remember what he called it. Sharp, let's just say a sharp shuck. You gotta have a sharp shucker, shuck, shuck, shucker, whatever. But then also steamed. He likes them steamed, does it on the grill. You can steam them directly on a grill. Fried oysters, breaded and fried, of course. And also grilled. Directly on. So you take the meat out of the oyster, you somehow make sure it doesn't fall down the slats of your grill, but he grills them too. So he steams them on the grill. That's what you do that, of course, in the shell. Naturally, it goes without saying. That's steaming them in the shell. And there's somehow you steam them. There's got to be water involved somewhere. He didn't go into that. And then also grilling is just You're laying the oyster out of the shell right on the grill, and how it doesn't fall through, I don't know. So your Massachusetts oysters now, of course, your New England oysters, colder waters up there, of course. So your Massachusetts oysters, you're going to get a, you're going to get a more briny taste off those New England oysters versus your North Carolina oysters grown, raised, of course, in warmer waters naturally. Naturally. Goes without saying, you're going to get a more sweet oyster. It's common knowledge. Common knowledge. At least I learned it just this past week. So that's Oysters Orgasm. The guy was all about oysters. Oh, and the best place to buy the oysters down here, fresh oysters down here, is he goes about an hour away to a town called Beaufort, North Carolina. And I'll shout out Miss Gina's. Oh, yeah. That's where you get to where you got to go. You got to drive an hour to get good fresh oysters. There's nothing within an hour of, of here for high-quality fresh oysters. You, you just, you got to go to Beaufort. That's, that's all there is to it. So, oysters orgasm, that's Tony's take 2. Kate, did you love your orgasm? Did you love your oysters orgasm lesson? That, that was a lot to take in. He seems very, like, knowledgeable. The man grew up, he's born and raised on oysters. I don't know. I don't know if he eats any fruits or vegetables or anything else. I don't know. He didn't say anything. You know, this was not a full dietary conversation. It was related strictly to oysters. How they got on the oysters, I don't know. But that's all, that's all I overheard.

Kate Martignetti
Have you ever eaten oysters?

Tony Martignetti
Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Raw. Raw. And then there's another way he did not mention. The oysters Rockefeller way, which is they're baked with some cheese and herbs in the shell. They're served on half a shell. Oysters Rockefeller. But he did not talk about that. So that's why I did not mention that. But that's the way I've had them. Raw and Rockefeller. I'm not sure if I've had them other ways.

Kate Martignetti
I can't say I've ever tried oysters, but you're gonna have to put that on the menu. For this summer. That sounds very good.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, well, you'll have to see. Now, if you, you know, uh, raw oysters are very, uh, slurpy, and, uh, there's another word for them. I, I can't think of the word I'm trying to think of right now, but, uh, they're, they're, you know, they're watery, and, uh, you— I could see, I could see someone being grossed out the first time slurping it out of the shell. Have you ever had clams on the half shell? Cold fresh clams?

Kate Martignetti
No.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, slimy. Slimy is the word I was looking for. They're a little slimy in the shell. You might not like that. Uh, and also, I am not going all the way to Miss Gina's in Beaufort. We're gonna get— we're getting the oysters right here. We're not leaving the island going an hour to get oysters for, for, uh, especially if you think they're just slimy.

Kate Martignetti
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
but

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup but loads more time. Here is Biases in Prospect Identification.

Tony Martignetti
Welcome back to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference, where we are all assembled in Detroit. My guests now are Sarah Marcotte and Katherine Scott. Sarah is senior Data Steward at Sick Kids Foundation in Toronto, not far from where we are in Detroit. Well, like a 4-hour drive or so, but not far, not far relatively. And Katherine Scott, Director of Prospect Management and Research at Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, also Toronto, did you say? That's correct. All right, both Toronto. Welcome, Sarah. Welcome, Katherine.

Katherine Scott
Thank you for having us. Thank you.

Tony Martignetti
Pleasure. It's a pleasure. Your topic is How does biases in prospect identification broaden your pipeline and approach? Katherine, could you just give us an overview of the topic before we get into some detail?

Katherine Scott
Of course. So biases are something that Sarah and I have always been interested in and how they impact our work. We're both in prospect research fields where we're interested in how data is collected and disseminated and how we use it. And when we're building our pipelines and identifying new prospects for our organizations, all our tools are vulnerable to different types of biases that can impact the outcomes of our findings and our, ultimately, our fundraising activities. So we really wanted to look at different types of biases and how they impact and express themselves in different types of work that prospect researchers do, and then develop some mitigation strategies to help us find pathways forward to ultimately raise more money and welcome more donors to our organizations.

Tony Martignetti
Awesome. That's a great overview. Thank you. Let's turn to you, Sarah. I love Sarah Katherine. I don't know, you sound like Irish Catholic, Catholic little girls in an Irish Catholic school or something. Sarah Katherine, Marcotte Scott, we got rhyming, we got Sarah Katherine. Sarah, Katherine's good. Okay. Sarah, let's talk about some of these biases. Let's call them out. Let's identify them. Let's be frank. What kinds of biases are you two concerned about?

Sarah Marcotte
Well, I mean, like, the thing with biases is that there are so many. It's such a huge topic. We really needed to narrow in our focus. So what we focused on in the presentation was just looking at what we had found sort of is more common in when we're doing prospect identification. And that are the ones that we identified as seeing most strongly to affect the prospect identification and pipeline process is we looked at unconscious bias, ones that we can't really get away from, just things that, you know, that your brain naturally turns to.

Tony Martignetti
Like we look for people who look like us.

Sarah Marcotte
We look for people who look like us.

Tony Martignetti
Look like other prospects.

Sarah Marcotte
Look like other prospects, exactly. That's sort of all the way down. And things like confirmation bias. So again, that we're looking for people that we already know, that we know what they look like, we know how they act. We are looking for evidence that supports that. Our selection bias. So again, you know, if we're looking at—

Tony Martignetti
Identify selection bias for us.

Sarah Marcotte
Yep. So that we want a sort of a preset group, that we're going to look at that group and we're just going to keep on focusing on that group because they, again, they appear appear the way that we want them to appear, that we expect them to appear. Availability, this comes up for researchers in particular because, you know, we have a certain set of things that are available to us for our resources. And especially if you're crunched for time, you're not going to be looking beyond those resources. You're going to look at what's available. You're not going to be digging deeper.

Tony Martignetti
It's easier.

Sarah Marcotte
It's easier. So, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. That's how our brains deal with information. We have so So much information to deal with and to process every day, our brain takes shortcuts and those are biases. But sometimes that can be harmful when it's creeping into how we're processing our work and how we're finding our donors and our prospects, that we could be overlooking people or we could be approaching our donors or our beneficiaries in a way that is harmful. So it's just a way of stopping, thinking about it, and seeing where we can sort of pull back and think a little bit differently, because we're never going to entirely get get rid of any of our biases. We just have to be able to acknowledge where they are and where we can sort of get around them or mitigate them slightly or just call them out where they are.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Are these the sole biases that you focused on? Selection and confirmation and availability?

Sarah Marcotte
That was pretty much what we— yeah, we focused on those. But again, there's— you could have an entire presentation just looking at the types of biases

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Well, we'll focus on what you talked about. And how are these detrimental? Let's just stick with you for a moment, Sarah. Bad prospect identification, just make it clear how this is detrimental to nonprofit work.

Sarah Marcotte
I wouldn't say that it's entirely detrimental. It just really narrows the focus on what you're looking at.

Tony Martignetti
Well, we're not going to be maxing We're

Sarah Marcotte
not maximizing what's available to us.

Tony Martignetti
Fundraising, volunteering. Exactly. Calls to action.

Sarah Marcotte
Yeah. So if you are looking at something like the one thing that we brought up and we discussed was RFM scores, so recency, frequency, monetary.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you. Katherine comes in monetary.

Sarah Marcotte
Thank you. I appreciate that because I always get so used to just saying the acronym, I forget what the acronym means.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you. Well, we have jargon jail on Nonprofit Radio. Sorry. I would have called you out if you hadn't defined it. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right.

Sarah Marcotte
But that's looking—

Tony Martignetti
recency, frequency, and monetary.

Sarah Marcotte
Yeah. So that is looking at, um, it's looking at people who already are donating to your organization. It's a great marker of interest, and it's a great marker of being a prospect. Yes, we should be involving those people. But then if you keep that too narrow, if you're only ever looking at the recency, like the RFM scores, you're only going to be looking at those people who already know and love you, and they're not new prospects, they're not sort of branching out into other, you know, other communities, other ways that people can be involved. It's just, it's limiting your viewpoint in a way that, you know, it doesn't necessarily help you overall.

Tony Martignetti
Katherine, do you want to add to the potential impact?

Katherine Scott
Yeah, I think when we talk about prospect identification, we use a variety of tools as much as we can. And sometimes it's, you know, a do-it-yourself program of data analytics, and sometimes it's very sophisticated. But regardless, you're pulling information, you're pulling data from your— maybe your database or from an external database. And we know that there are biases built into those, and then we're using them to tell us things that we already know. And so we We want to make sure that we're pausing and saying, okay, we already know this. We're finding this other new thing. What are we missing? What can we look at to bring in other volunteers, other donors, other types of engagement? The other risk that we run into is that we— because we're using models or analytical tools to tell us things that sometimes we already know, is that we tend to ignore things that we don't know or that we disagree with, and then we don't act on those, we're not maximizing gifts. One example, again using recency, frequency, monetary value, is I worked at an organization and we discovered that in fact the date from first to second gift was quite short for many of our donors. So it was really important for us to take action and ask for a second gift quite close to the first gift. Okay. gift, which went against what many of us working in major gifts felt was the truth. Yeah. We thought, well, it takes 18 to 24 months to close a major gift. And in fact, what we were learning was that, no, we need to ask for that second gift right away. So once we do that, we're informing our own systems, which are going to again inform other analyses. And so we would have been missing out on a lot of money. Frankly, if we hadn't just, you know, challenged ourselves to look at our data in another way and challenge ourselves to question some of the assumptions that we were working on.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, Katherine, let's stay with you. What are— let's transition to some of our methods for stepping away from these biases, so start, you know, mitigate them as Sarah had said.

Katherine Scott
Right, so it can be quite daunting because if we start to think about all the areas where we might be missing information or we might need to address, we can end up being sort of paralyzed by fear. For example, if you're in a multilingual place, you might be missing out on opportunities to engage with donors and prospects and potential volunteers due to a language barrier. But maybe it's not feasible for your nonprofit to be able to operate in multiple languages. That's not a reason to give up. We just need to accept that there are some limitations, and if we mark those out in our documents and in our processes, and if we acknowledge them, then that gives us a chance to come back and revisit when there is an opportunity. For example, there are tools that are coming out using AI which allows us to have engagement in multiple languages much more seamlessly. That might be something you'll be able to use one day. For now, You just know that you're missing out on this part and you can address something. As a prospect researcher, my default language is often English. My default regulatory environment for myself is usually Canada. So these are all impacting my ability to do research, what resources are available to me, and what kind of output I'm going to give. Additionally, if I'm really crunched for time, I'm not going to be as thorough thorough, and maybe I won't have a chance to use multiple methods to verify information. That's confirmation— that speaks to confirmation bias as well. So I think that the important part is that we acknowledge where some of our gaps are and try at least one mitigation strategy, because we know we're already moving the needle and we're further ahead than we were before we started all this.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, yeah, like the first step to redemption is acknowledging Right, calling out, using your name, document, and ideally take a small step, but at least now you're conscious.

Katherine Scott
Exactly.

Tony Martignetti
You're at least conscious of your bias. Yes. Yeah, Sarah, you want to add more to— we have plenty of time to talk about mitigation, how to reduce these biases. Yeah,

Sarah Marcotte
well, I think, like I said, I think one of the most important things that you can do is to start just by acknowledging, is sort of looking at your organization and what you're And then also determining, is like, are we in a place that we can actually tackle this and look at it and, you know, devote the time to it? Because it is time-consuming. It is very daunting. And there's not always the appetite or the capacity to take it on. But it's an important conversation to have. It's important to start. So I think that starting and being thoughtful and being intentional is a great way to start. And just to start, you know, thinking about your data collection and what you have and what you don't have and who you're approaching and who you want to approach and just be aware of, you know, the people that you want to be engaging with. Are you talking to them? And if you're talking to them, are you listening? Because sometimes our donors are telling us things, but, you know, it doesn't fit with the narrative that we want, and so we don't want to engage with it.

Tony Martignetti
That's our bias again.

Sarah Marcotte
Again, that's our, you know, that's the bias that we're coming from.

Tony Martignetti
Your session, you had some polls and quizzes.

Sarah Marcotte
We did.

Tony Martignetti
What did we learn from the polls? Let's start with the polls. What were you polling about? Anybody?

Sarah Marcotte
We really wanted it to be sort of a way to get the attendees engaged, just because, you know, you go to a conference and sometimes you just end up sitting and you don't have an opportunity to sort of lend your voice to something. And so we just wanted to sort of understand where people were. One of the things that we asked was, you know, are you talking about biases at your organization? Is this something that your organization has appetite for? And it was split. It was about a third and a third and a third of being absolutely not, kind of, and yes, but we don't quite know what to do about it.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, well, they were— That makes sense. The last third is definitely in the right session. Well, all three are in the right session. Okay. Well, that's more encouraging than I would have guessed.

Sarah Marcotte
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Sarah Marcotte
And then there was one where we were asking sort of, you know, what does your organization need to tackle the problem? And, you know, the biggest one is always time. No one has enough time. We don't have enough time for everything, for anything really. You know, if we could make more time. But there was like, you know, but that was the main one. It wasn't that, you know, the organization isn't interested or, you know, we don't have that problem. It was just like, No, we acknowledge that we want to look at this, we just don't have the time for it. Sounds good.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Katherine Scott
We also found that when some of the questions and discussions came up after the polls, that people were kind of clarifying where they stood. And it seemed that sometimes the way we approach a data problem, just by switching our language around, can make it seem a lot more manageable. So we were talking about how important it is to reach out to new prospective prospective donors, especially for major gift officers, and people sort of saying, yes, but how do we, how do we do that? Because everyone's so busy and they want to do what's comfortable to them. And I suggested, let's stop calling them cold prospects. If someone has given to your organization or been involved in your organization, they're not cold to you. They're very warm to you. You may not have personally interacted with them, but for me, that's something I'm trying to do is step away from language like, that person's cold, that's a cold prospect, that's a suspect, to, these are prospective partners for us, or they might be eligible to upgrade their giving.

Tony Martignetti
Even prospect, I'm not too keen on that. I do use the word prospect, but I like potential donor better than prospect. I still use prospect. I haven't banished it from my vocabulary, but I don't know, potential donor just sounds nicer. And donor sounds better than constituent.

Katherine Scott
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
It's like dehumanization or depersonalization.

Sarah Marcotte
And that was actually one of the questions that came up was someone was calling us out on the use of prospect. She said if someone has given to your organization, they're not a prospect, they're a donor.

Tony Martignetti
Maybe they're a prospect for another level of giving or a planned gift.

Sarah Marcotte
But then that sort of takes you back. It took me a little bit aback because I'm so used to thinking about prospects in a certain way because our organization treats sort of everybody as a potential prospect. And it doesn't matter if you've already given at a quite high level, you can still be a prospect for more giving. And so then it's just sort of a question of, well, okay, then you have to take a step back and then talk about what the organization's expectations are. Like, what counts as a prospect? Like, how are you defining that and how are we talking about it?

Tony Martignetti
Anything more from the poll? Any other tools that you learned before we turn to the quizzes? Polling?

Sarah Marcotte
No? The polling and the quizzes were kind of mushed together. We didn't do that many. It would have been nice to do more, but we were— I wouldn't say limited in our abilities.

Tony Martignetti
You were limited in time. Limited in time, time and again. Yes, perennial subject. So, all right, well, what about some of the questions that came from From the audience, what did you learn, or what stuck— whether you learned or not, what stood out and folks were asking about?

Katherine Scott
We had some really good questions.

Tony Martignetti
Share some.

Katherine Scott
So one thing, we weren't sure who would be attending the session, if it was going to be fundraising consultants, major gift officers, people who work in fundraising, database administrators. I think we got a bit of a mix, so that was nice. That's partly why we wanted to have some of the polls so people would start engaging with us and we could find out a little more about them. Generally speaking, the audience was quite data-minded, I would say. They like to use their datasets. But all of us, I think our biases were revealed at some point in the discussion. Mm-hmm. And I'll say one of mine was very clearly as a Canadian. And it was actually quite an emotional comment. We were talking about being in healthcare organizations And one of the discussion points we had was that when we're in healthcare organizations, we have to be really mindful about what type of information we're capturing and keeping in our databases, and what's necessary versus what is a nice-to-have, and how we can have a plan for our data. So, for example, I work in a cancer foundation. Sarah works in a children's hospital. You know, people have different experiences with their care, and people have different comfort levels in discussing publicly what their care experience or disease experience was. And someone pointed out, well, what about when you're, you're potentially asking someone for a donation and they were personally bankrupted by the care that they received? And that caught us quite by surprise. And we realized— We really had our own biases as residents of a place with socialized medicine. And it had never occurred to us that someone could be bankrupted by their healthcare. So that really caught me off guard, and it made me realize that I was quite unaware of a quite significant bias in my own presentation. Well,

Sarah Marcotte
and I think too, because we were talking, we were saying how careful we have to be because we have different privacy laws. And so when we are, we're in the hospital sort of setting, we don't We do not get grateful patient data. We do not get that right from the hospital. So we learn of the connection and then we have to code it in a very, you know, we try to be very respectful in terms of how we code it. Like, we do not get the full picture. Whereas the question was just, okay, but you have to do a well screening when you get the grateful patient information because otherwise you could be asking folks who really cannot be asked. And I thought, whoo, that really made me step back. Right.

Katherine Scott
Sure. So yeah, we— but we did acknowledge that in all of us, all of our organizations will have different regulatory data. And then also our organizations— this came up in the question— our organizations serve different populations. So if you're in a healthcare organization, maybe your best prospective donors are patients and their families. And, you know, maybe when I'm looking at, say, racial, gender, or age biases in my own data, I want to maybe make— see that our volunteers, our donors are reflective of the communities that are served by our cancer center neighbors next door. That being said, if I'm working for an international humanitarian agency, the beneficiaries of the care are not going to be our prospective donors. They do not live in our country where we're doing our fundraising and are unlikely to have that kind of wealth. So, you know, maybe we don't need to reflect our beneficiaries, but maybe we do. And how we collect those data points is going to be really sensitive. And so we just have to be very mindful as we approach it and have a plan for our data and be quite honest about what we're doing

Sarah Marcotte
and how we're doing it

Katherine Scott
and what we're using it

Sarah Marcotte
for.

Tony Martignetti
Was there much conversation about wealth screenings?

Sarah Marcotte
There was. And one of the questions Well, do you say that we can't do wealth screenings? No, you can't get away from wealth screenings. You have to do something, and you have to do RFM. We're not saying you can't do the things that— these are the tools that we have available to us. They are the best things that we can work with right now. Just again, but just be aware of what you're using and how you're using it, and be aware of what kind of biases are built into it. So like a wealth screening, a lot of it is going to be dependent on Lots of

Tony Martignetti
assumptions.

Sarah Marcotte
A lot of assumptions, a lot of assumptions about what counts as wealth. You know, a lot of it is based on sort of your home value.

Tony Martignetti
Location.

Sarah Marcotte
And the location. And then we were saying, you know, in Toronto, the real estate market is out of whack. It doesn't make any sense. My home valuation is quite inflated in terms of what the home actually is. And so if you're only going through that, You would get a very different picture of me as a donor. Katherine has a pretty good example from—

Katherine Scott
From Saskatchewan. I have a house in Toronto, and I had a prospective donor in Saskatchewan, and our house values were tremendously far apart because my house in Toronto, which was my only house, individual's primary residence was in Saskatchewan, which is a rural, more rural province. It was in a rural area outside of sort of a mid-sized city in Saskatchewan. And so if we went by home value, and again in Canada because of our regulatory environments, we can't quite get to the household level wealth data that we can here in the US, but it goes by postal code, which is the equivalent of a zip code here. And because of that, He and I appeared very differently in a wealth screen based on postal code as potential prospects, but I was not the correct person to be asking for a $100 million gift. So with that in mind, you know, and then we also acknowledge that when we're working on wealth screenings, we're making assumptions about, you know, if we're looking at household-level data, we're looking at, you know, an assumption of what a household is. And then also So we know there are systemic and longstanding historical impacts on who lives where and which neighborhoods have the highest value that are, you know, we can't unpack them, we can't untangle them all in a prospect identification exercise, but we just need to be aware. And then we have to challenge ourselves so that when we are presenting lists of prospective donors for, say, our major gift partners to reach out to, that we have A variety of tools to say, no, I know that this didn't come up in the wealth score this way, but actually this is a really good potential partner for us, and we think you should reach out, and here's why. And it might not be easy to reach out to someone, or there might be a language barrier, or there might be a cultural barrier, or just an availability barrier, and it makes it harder to reach out to that person. So of course the major gift fundraiser is going to be biased towards— Someone else. Someone else is going to answer their call. But we have to tell them that, no, in fact, this is someone who could be an important philanthropist, and they might not look like what you imagined your best prospects would look like, but that's why we're here. We're here to suggest new people to you.

Tony Martignetti
I'd like to end right there. That's ideal. Yeah. All right. That was Katherine Scott, Director of Prospect Management and Research at Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. Foundation. And with Katherine is Sarah Marcotte, Senior Specialist Data Steward at Sick Kids Foundation. Sarah, Katherine, Sarah Katherine, thank you very much.

Sarah Marcotte
Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Tony Martignetti
Thanks for sharing. It was a pleasure. And thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, Confessions of Nonprofit Social Media Managers and Convert Your Member Website into a Thriving Community. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%. Go out and be great.