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Richard Becker: Offline Drives Online
Multichannel engagement is essential. You know this. Drawing from multiple cases, Richard Becker reveals strategies to stand out from your competition for mindshare and have online engagement impact offline outcomes, like giving and volunteering. Richard is president of Target Analytics. (Recorded at Blackbaud’s bbcon conference).df
Maria Semple: Manage Those Expectations
Maria Semple, our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder, shares expectation management tips. How do you help staff and your board understand what prospect research can and can’t do?
Here’s a meme from APRA Indiana that got Maria thinking about misconceptions: 
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the itching and redness of dermatitis her peta for miss if it came within my ken that you had missed today’s show offline drives on mine multi-channel engagement is essential, you know that drawing from multiple cases, richard becker reveals strategies to stand out from your competition for mind share and have online engagement impact offline outcomes like giving and volunteering. Richard is president of target analytics, and that was recorded at blackbaud sbi become unconference and manage those expectations. Maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder shares expectation management tips. How do you help staff and you’re bored? Understand what prospect research can and can’t do for you on tony’s, take two throwback thursdays, responsive by generosity, siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks here’s my interview from bb con last year. This is from last october with richard becker welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of bb con twenty thirteen with the gaylord convention center outside washington d c in national harbor, maryland, my guest is richard becker he’s, president of target analytics, part of blackbaud and his session topic today is dr offline response with online advertising. Richard becker, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony appreciate it. That’s a pleasure to have you, um, explain what’s the relationship between target analytics and blackbaud case i i said it wrong. Yeah, target analytics is one of the four business units within blackbaud and we used data and analytic driven insights to create fund-raising solutions for our clients, affecting both their direct marketing dripping fund-raising as well as their major gift ribbon. Fund-raising okay, you probably know george durney then i do know george, director of sales at target analytics, right? He’s fantastic he’s actually looking for a job, you could tell him, i said that he wants to host a washington, d c morning show so he may not be your director of sales very much longer and that that’s, you don’t hear it from me back-up we’re talking about everything. Multi-channel yes, right online and offline. Why is a single channel and let’s take the more traditional offline no longer satisfactory? Well, i think the consumer preferences, they’re changing, particularly around the different generations, the traditional target for fund-raising are going to be your older individuals sixty, sixty five or higher and traditionally postal based direct mail in telemarketing have been great channels to capture those individuals, but as the newer generations come forward, obviously they’re in tune with social media, web based purchasing and web based giving and so there’s a new marketing mix, it needs to come together to achieve the type of response and conversion rates that direct marketers are looking for. What if we think our constituency is mostly sixty and over, or or or if not, mostly for the proportion that is sixty and over, should we still be used relying predominantly on the traditional male it’s a great question and our research and the evidence that we have with the solutions that we bring to bear, show that a significant portion of that older demographic sixty year older are in fact online and are, in fact influenced by email marketing, social media and online advertising. Do you have ah, any any stats on the penetration of of social media among the sixty year on over generation? Yeah, i mean it’s clearly not. Going to be as high as some of these younger democrats, but i do know it’s also growing, if you know the growth rate, maybe it is absolutely growing and it’s growing double digits year over year, okay, the key here, though, is really to understand the impact on some of these online channels, whether it be online advertising, email and the like and social media on those offline channels, because here’s the important thing it’s not that this older demographic is significantly migrating, they’re donorsearch hey, viewer or they’re giving to those online channels they’re not. But what we’re able to prove with some of the newer solutions and the technology that we have is that the brand impact of putting email in front of them, the brand favorability gained by putting online advertising in front of them winds up affecting they’re offline response, whether it be and increase the likelihood to open and convert that postal based direct mail piece or that outbound telemarketing call. So there’s a correlation between these online channels and he’s off line channels and a big mistake that a lot of the direct marketing and easy with the non-profits are prone to make. Is by operating and silos often times, particularly in organizations that are maturing, they’ll have an online group and an offline group. And what we’re showing our clients is that you really need to bring those groups together because the impact of online on offline is really the magic. Okay, well, let’s say a lot more about this, how do we start to integrate the two so that we’re getting the impact that that you’re talking about? Sure, we did have a really interesting use case today in our session, we showcase the university of indiana environmental defense fund care and ah, the example we uses is leveraging online advertising, and i’m going to take a step back and and we’ll talk a little bit first about the evolution of online advertising metoo for most folks, they think of online advertising, as i want to put my ads on a web destination where i think my constituents might be. So, for example, you believe that you want to go over older, wealthier individuals who are likely to give to your organization. So you may think i should advertise on the new york times or a site where that type of demographic might be attracted. The challenges that’s really akin to putting up a billboard on the side of the highway in the hopes that those individuals who who see her ad also have ah, philanthropic component of them let’s face it, not it not everybody sixty years or older with capacity is necessarily philanthropic. So it’s really it’s more of a mass advertising play the legacy way things are done. What most people don’t realize is the technology has really evolved considerably over the last eighteen months. And so, for example, with online advertising, what we’re able to do now is to actually taken input file of individuals based on name and postal address and target them wherever they go online and put online advertising front of them. So let’s think of the use case. In the case of the university of indiana, they wanted teo put together a program, a direct mail program targeting their alumni, and so our value proposition was essentially look, you know, before that mail piece just winds up showing up at their door let’s reinforce your brand and remind people about their affinity with the university of indiana so before they targeted those four hundred roughly four hundred fifty thousand alumni with that direct mail piece, we took those exact individuals, we found them online, and we served online advertising to them in the months leading up to the direct mail piece showing up at the door. And ultimately what the results show is for those individuals that we did put online advertising in front of us. It’s significantly outperformed the group that could have received online advertising and didn’t. So we have concrete evidence via metrics that show that you can receive, you know, response rates that air fifteen, twenty, twenty five percent hyre when you’re reinforcing your brand to the same exact individuals who will ultimately receive that postal base, direct mail piece or telemarketing call, all right, now, what do you need to have in place to take advantage of this? Typically, you know that. So in that example, we run campaigns in two ways. Typically a client wants to market to their existing crn be so they may be it’s a reactivation campaign, maybe they’re converting. Ah, part event participants to donors, whatever, whatever the gist of their campaign is, and we’ll take in input file out of their c. R m that’s one avenue in which we could run the campaign. The other would be the if it’s a acquisition campaign, we can create a list of qualified prospects based on the analytics that we’ve got in target analytics and say these are likely first time donors your organization let’s, target them at this point in time were typically looking for clients with a relatively sizeable file, as that is an input file for us to target. I believe the smallest file that we’ve processed in a single campaign would be about three hundred thousand or so constituents so it’s really oriented towards the mid to large market. Okay, what is the small and midsize shop and and recognizing that all the listeners are not blackbaud customers, what do they need to have in place? What? What kind of conversation do they need to have with their database crn provider to execute what we’re talking about? Yeah, i mean, so typically, you know, we even the smaller clients we say look, let’s, get to a volume that achieves your marketing objectives. So even if it’s a, even if they have a smaller house file, if they’re smaller clients fifty thousand a hundred thousand will say, look, we’ll take that part of your file will augment it with donor of prospects that look like individuals on your file to get to that minimum threshold, and we’ll run her campaign against the broader spectrum. There are alternatives, there are clients obviously, who were going to be on the small side and not be ableto afford to produce a file that size what we want, we might use a different medium, then i’ll give you ah, slightly different example, but keeping in the spirit of of these new emerging channels, we had a client who had a specific cause in the greater new york city area and a specifically wanted to target. Based on that geography, the affinity for their cause was in and around central park. So rather than using online advertising, we actually used a geographic based mobile advertising solution that we have that could pinpoint individuals that we’re using they’re handheld devices within a specific radius around central park, and we were able to target them that way, so there are different alternatives to get these very specific audiences. It could be again the folks in your serum a prospect. Cool folks in an individual of, you know, geographic area. All right, you got the data very, very many different, very finite, yes, okay. E-giving, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. E-giving cubine this’s. The way we’re hosting a party in my french nufer city, guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back. French is a common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed this story. Join us, a part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping countries. People be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Yeah. Dahna we were talking about advertising specifically, but weaken apply this to other combinations of online and offline. Absolutely, i mean the most predominant channel that’s been traditionally used. His email and that’s been used, i think, with mixed results, the allure of email, particularly around for a smaller midsize non-profit is that there are no limitations to the size of audience you, khun target, and in many ways it’s a free channel there’s not a whole heck of a lot of cost associated with sending him out. Email that’s the good news. The bad news is it’s not an unbelievably, you know, effective channel more often than not, because it is free and there’s so much competition for mindshare and ah, your email may or may not break through all the noise that’s in that e mail box, but similar to the online advertising solution that i mentioned, you have to look at email in the same contacts that it could be supporting other channels. So whether or not you’re getting click through and conversion buy-in email that you’re sending the trick is to understand the impact that email is having when that postal based direct mail piece shows up. For that telemarketing call shows up and i keep dwelling on that because there was an interesting statistic when we opened up bb kahn and i believe kevin mooney stood on the stage and i believe the quote that he used was that online is growing at four times the rate of offline channels or something to that effect true is that maybe the reality is eighty percent e-giving is still on these offline channels, and we cannot ignore them. And so the big mantra that we have is you absolutely have to embrace these online channels and they are viable, and they’re going to continue to evolve and become a greater of greater importance to the marketing mix moving forward. But as we sit here today, the real importance of those online channels isn’t necessarily the money you’re raising directly through them. But the impact those online channels are having on your legacy channels male and telemarket so crucial toe have coordination and just really accurate record keeping. Who got who got what? When so we can look at our at each individual organization, see what the degree of correlation is for our constituents. Absolutely that’s really what’s been missing up until this point is the measurement between these disparate channels. I think where we started, our conversation was too many of our clients will say, well, you know, we looked at the click through and conversion rates for online advertising, and the campaign didn’t pay for itself where we sent an email and it didn’t raise a whole lot of money or we set up a facebook page and we have, you know, five million followers, but we’re not getting a lot of donations. You cannot look at those individual channels and evaluate them stand alone, you have to be able to evaluate them and their impact across all of your channels and it’s really only been within the last twelve to eighteen months that we’ve been able to develop a system and a technology platform that can evaluate these various channels as they work with each other, the actual outcome on the other in the other channels, more traditional channels also takes a mindset change to recognize that the facebook page and the twitter stream or not the outcome? Absolutely, we call it a closed loop report where we’re closing the loop across all these channels where we’re looking at at what has occurred amongst them were looking at the commonality of who is utilizing them, the sequencing of how they’re using and then the ultimate outcome at us at the consumer household level. Did they donate? Did they participate? Did they take the action you wanted? And then we’re able to correlate that across all the channels and produce meaningful reports that really showed the return on your advertising? Spend the return on your marketing investment across all those channels and that’s really the big new thing, you know, over the last twelve to eighteen months, the ability to quantify that give a market or confidence that their marketing mix is either working or not. And it’s funny, you know, the the online advertising solution that i gave you, we have folks in the audience, he said, you know, will this work for me or, you know, richard, you gave him an example, but university and yet already has strong brand recognition or, you know, i’m a cancer related cause, but i know i’m not one of the top three or four i get why it would work for them, but i’m not sure it worked. For me and, you know, i often jokingly say to folks, i’ll tell you one way or the other, i mean, now at least you’re in a position that whether this campaign works or not, you have meaningful metrics at the end of the campaign that either prove you’re right or you’re wrong, that it was going to work, it wasn’t going to work it’s no longer guesswork and, you know, a true direct marketer doesn’t like to guess we like fact based elearning another case that you shared was environmental defense fund. What was the lessons there? What happened? Fantastic client and an example of a client who really gets had to integrate their channels. We spent some time today reviewing the specific campaign that they ran with us, and i’ll first talk a little bit about something that they do so well on that’s their creative it starts with the online banner advertising that they created all consistent, no matter which creative they used out of the portfolio of about fifteen different ads that they have, they used a very nice visual of a polar bear, and sometimes the polar bear was doing different things, but it’s always a polar bear the e d f logo displayed prominently in the call to action crystal clear donate here it was very simple, streamlined, colorful gets your attention that’s the first thing they did right, the second thing they do right where the wheels typically fall off for a non-profit is, they made sure that the direct mail piece correlated one hundred percent toe what folks were seeing online. So if you had those online impressions and we know that getting seven to fifteen online ad impressions per household per month is highly impactful for when that toe to make the action happen when the direct mail piece comes. So imagine you’re getting seven to fifteen of these ad impressions for, you know, thirty, sixty, ninety days before that direct mail piece comes in every time across multiple change, and it could be any site that you go to any site you go to, doesn’t matter whether you’re on facebook, new york times, we’re going to find you, and we’re going to put that out because it’s audience baste, not site based and butt your butt. Cdf is doing such a good job because it’s it’s it’s always the same. Visual and creative that you’re seeing, and then so what they do so well is when that direct mail piece comes. The direct mail piece is one hundred percent aligned with what you’ve been experiencing an online have already seen it. There wasn’t the same visual. I’m just able to hold it the same messaging, the same type of ass and you know, it’s it’s tightly wound up and what’s great is even the landing page another mistake, folks may hey, is if you do click through the ad or maybe you see the ad, you think about it or you get the dural direct mail piece and you go you know what? I don’t write the check. Let me go to the website the landing page exactly the same polar bear messaging. The same color scheme the same. We have statistics that show that just the slightest change. If they were to move from the polar bear to a seal or just any other color schematics, it could blow the success of the program, you know, completely the wrong way. But it was so good about aligning their online and off china line child together and have a true integrated multi-channel marketing strategy. That’s. Why? They see such great success rates and that’s. Why one of their they’re one of the leaders in the d m space? What kind of outcomes did they have? You know, they see what most of our other clients going to, you know, ten to fifteen percent lift in response and conversion rates for those individuals who are part of ah multi-channel strategy as opposed to a mano channel strategy. Okay. And another case you shared was care or what? Lessons there. You know, very similar. They have obviously a very compelling story and visual behind their mission, and they use it quite successfully, much like e t f really strong coordination across the offline and online channels and and their success and their strategy really mirrors in many ways what we see with the df. So another great example. Okay, we still have a couple minutes left. What more can you tell us about working this multi-channel strategies? Yeah. I mean, there’s, a lot of talk about multi-channel strategy. And really, at the end of the day where what we see is clients need help in, you know, bringing it all together and measuring it. I mentioned earlier that you know, the biggest challenge i see is that you have the old guard, the folks that are so adept at using, you know, postal bets, direct mail to dr results. And they continue to see challenges in the response rates that they’re getting in the conversion rates that they’re getting. Some of that is, you know, the headwinds of the economy. Some of that are changing demographics. Some of that, you know, increased competition for, you know, dollars. You know, and then separately, though, you’ll see the these organizations standing up a separate online group, and then they do them such self such a disservice. And even when they hire a third party agencies, you’ll have well, we have an offline agency, and then we have an online agency, and so immediately you see how the creative is not going to be linked together. The story that they’re telling is going to be different, the channel measure is going to be different, and so we’re seeing success with our clients are those who are having that ah ha moment they’re saying, look, this is really one thing, and we need a level of coordination amongst our online and offline marketing. We need measurement across them. We need standardized metrics across them. And i think once they get to that kind of epiphany that’s where it really comes together for them and they get an optimal outcome, okay, very key and consistent messages are consistency across andi now, the ability to measure what? What? I guess what created this revolution just twelve or eighteen months ago? Where? How come we come? We couldn’t do it then. Yeah, you know. I think there’s been some advances in technology, you know, going back to the online advertising, you know, the the ability to track someone’s online activity at a consumer household level and link that back to their offline activity. It didn’t exist eighteen or twenty four months ago, and they’re ah, our data partner. Oh, our our vendor partner for the underlying technology is a firm called data logics, and they’ve developed the secret sauce, if you will, that enables us to link online and offline activity and to be able to target online advertising at a household level they’ve had, you know, it’s it’s interesting if you go back a year year and a half ago, there was a big article right before actually, facebook went public that gm had pulled, like forty million dollars or something like that of online advertising budget away from facebook because they just didn’t think they were getting the type of return that they needed, and the reality was they didn’t know what type of return because there was no technology in place to measure that. And so data logics now aki partner of not only ours, but facebook helping them quantify and measure the type of impact those online impressions and there was this facebook likes and that facebook activity has on purchasing a gm car, purchasing consumer packaged goods off the shelf in a in a target or a food store, and they’re making that linkage and they’re helping us make that linkage for our clients on and the interactions they have with their donors. This is why we’re all seeing ads online for sites where we’ve been, but maybe we didn’t make the purchase decision or even i’m not sure i see them as much when i have made the purchase choice, but i know if i go to a resort or a hotel or something, and i’m just browsing around to see what kind of packages they have and what the rooms look like i’m going, i’m going to see that resort in my online advertising, so we’ve taken this step further. So what you described is re marketing, and i would say that remark, it’s probably been around, you know, two years or so that’s you went to a website, they put a cookie on your device, and now they’re following you around and placing advertising within your online experience attempting you typically to come back and taken action what’s interesting is, you know and that’s phenomenal. But that necessitated you go into the website to begin with and more than likely would have been helpful if you register registered there and offered your name and address so they could profile you and figure out, you know, what’s going toward you back. Okay? The solution i describe is you never had to have gone to the university of indiana website. You never had to visit the environmental defense fund website because we’re starting with name and postal address and using this kind of shared cookie poul that we’ve developed amongst, you know, thousands and thousands of web sites out there were able to identify you whether you were a former website, visitor or not, and will always know who you are and be able to link that back to create a rich profile. There are things there are people who think you’re the devil they might you know it. So let me give you the flipside of that, right. People get concerned about privacy. Everything we talk about is obviously compliant. Aiba, you know, internet advertising bureau compliant. The reality is, if you’re a consumer, and if you’re really thought about it, you’re going to get online advertising. You’re going to get solicitations via the mail, wouldn’t you rather they be relevant, then? Just random? This just, yeah, i would like to think i would, but there’s just something about being followed around the way i described when i had gone to the site and you said they place the cooking yet just when i when that ad pops up on the next site that i’ve been to it’s just something that feels unseemly about it, i feel a little violated. I feel a little compromised. We’re going to get philosophical here from wait a couple minutes, but we’ll keep labbate believe it this way. Ah, there may be a website you enjoy maybe it’s, maybe it’s, the new york times, maybe it’s, the atlanta journal constitution or whatever new site you go to, maybe there is, you know, social websites, you goto they’re free more often than not. You’re enjoying the benefit of content that they’re providing you oh, and not paying for it, but they have to make money and that money is going to come. Through contextual and behaviour based advertising, and so to keep the things that you want free, you’re trading off a little bit of your privacy, perhaps for something like relevant advertising. So i suppose we could move to a model where there’s no advertising or we could move to a model where advertising is totally random. But i think than the internet probably loses some of the no cost, low cost enjoyment that you receive, and you’d move to a model where you’re going to pay for one way or the other. Okay, what you want leave us with? Well, first, let me just say i appreciate the forum i thinkit’s a great richard, you know, this is fantastic and, ah, you know, the direct marketing spaces changing quickly and people could get intimidated by the wide array of options that are out there twitter, facebook linked in online advertising so many avenues to touch clients and i think it’s an exciting time when the technology finally catches up and allows us to embrace these channels in a way that can produce a tangible r a y for our clients so that they’re not just wasting money and we know that that’s more important for our non-profit clients and then any other vertical out there. So i think it’s exciting time. Richard becker is president of target analytics at blackbaud richard, thanks so much for being a guest. Thanks, tony. Been a pleasure. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of bb khan twenty thirteen, thanks so much for listening. My thanks, as always to everybody had become the show is so full that it’s taken me this long to get to use that that becker interview on de so, but grateful to everybody at blackboard and b b gone generosity siri’s you know them, they host multi charity peer-to-peer five k runs and walks if you’re using summer to plan for your fall fund-raising if you’re small and midsize shop that can’t generate enough activity to have your own five k event, think about generosity siri’s they have events coming up in new jersey, miami, atlanta, new york city, philadelphia and toronto. If you think a run walk might make sense for you, talk to dave lynn he’s the ceo tell him you’re from non-profit radio he’s at seven one eight five o six nine triple seven or generosity siri’s dot com we’ve got throwback thursdays on the facebook page we’re featuring past interviews that i think deserve your attention again. Each thursday on facebook last week was andrew noise he’s, the facebook director of government relations at least he was at the time, which is essentially lobbying, but he didn’t like to call it that. Um, yes, throwback thursdays on the facebook page every thursday. I remember when i used to have to say facebook dot com slash tony martignetti non-profit radio, but those were those were the old days four years ago. So check out throwback thursday for best guests from our archive and that is tony’s take two for friday, first of august thirtieth show of the year with me now is maria simple? You know maria she’s, a prospect finder, she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now exclamation mark she’s, our doi and of dirt cheap and free. You can follow her on twitter at maria simple maria simple. Welcome back. Hey there, tony. How are you? I’m doing terrific, lee. Well, how are you? Today? Oh, just fine. Thanks. Excellent. Excellent. And thank you again for joining me on the two hundredth show a couple weeks ago. Oh, that was fun. But as i said, i do expect to be brought in in person to enjoy the party in the studio next time. Okay, well, you know, i could have invited you for the two hundred. No, i didn’t. I guess i never think of it because you’re always i know you’re just over in jersey. I could have had you all right. There was there was nothing intentional. It was my was my oversight. I could have you over for sure. I’m just giving you a hard time right now, but i know i feel bad. All right? I’m over it. Um, we want to talk about some expectation setting you. You feel like there’s a disconnect between what prospect researchers do and what the world thinks they do. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, i thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about that today because i came across a very interesting mean on the internet on actually thie apra, indiana, which is the association of professional researchers for advancement on their facebook page and this. It was a name that was going back a long time ago. Back in twenty twelve, i think. And so it kind of had a six pictures, and one was a picture that said what my friends think i do what my mom thinks i do, what fundraisers think i do what my kids think i do, what i think i do and what i really dio and on that final photo, it’s a woman sitting in front of the computer, you know, pulling her hair out. Okay, so this guy this got you thinking right? So it got me thinking about well, you know, what do you know? People have a very big misunderstanding about what prospect researchers do, or even about what the role of prospect researches in the overall development cycle. And, you know, why do we need it? How can we benefit? Some boards are actually afraid of it, right? Because they think, well, we shouldn’t be, you know, snooping into other people’s business. And what if they find out? Yes. And we’ve talked about this before when it was in the popular press. I know it was at the new york times. Or maybe was the times that had an article about prospect research, you know, going back a couple of years. Yeah, i think i think there was and, you know, people continue to have this misconception, and even, you know, as you said, there was there was this article in the times, so even people who are in the business of gathering information, in fact, when i’m gathering information, i try and think of myself as an investigative reporter, right? Try and be as objective as possible about the data that i come across, not really pass any judgment on it or put any subjective spin on any of the information i’m i’m reporting in any of my profile. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I i do remember us talking about it. Uh, and then it came up again. I don’t think you and i talked about it, but came up again. Ah, sometime last year when there was a woman named ah, you jet clark and she had lived at new york presbyterian hospital for i think it was last fifteen or twenty years of her life. For some things, you just became a resident of the hospital, even though she wasn’t ill on dh. There were questions about what types of information the hospital gathered about her and how they gathered it, and whether you know meetings and things with her through these decades that that she was living there, and that that that brought it up again, too. And i blogged that, too, and i, by the way, i i thought new york presbyterian hospital didn’t do anything that a charity shouldn’t be doing with somebody who’s living in their facility for fifteen, twenty years, she was wealthy, and she was good. She was a good potential donor, right? Right? I mean, and then you think about some of the assisted living facilities, you know, extend that a little further, right there they are themselves nonprofit organizations as well. So yeah, i mean, you have to think about sensitivity of information. Yet if somebody is really using your services for that extended period of time and that engaged with your organization, whether they be a consumer or a donor over a fifteen twenty year period of time, certainly there’s a lot of cultivation and conversations that happen on dh. You know, they could have probably written donor profiles on her without ever sitting in front of a computer? Yeah, for sure. And and that type of information gathering not only does happen what should happen, they were i would say that they were negligent if they hadn’t. I mean, she lived there all those years. I mean, yeah, just she’s a wealthy woman on dh she’s lived she’s living there, benefiting from the work that you do you provide. Um, like i said, you’ve been negligent not to be pursuing her a za potential donor, but so what have you ah, you run up against this problem, like as a as a consultant in prospect research, if you run up against this with ceos, boards, you know them not really understanding what it is you do. I think the ceo have a much better grasp of it because they understand how important it is. They’re doing some sort of form of research when they’re looking at at grantspace research. So it’s sort of this natural extension that they would be thinking about their individual donor base, but i think it’s the boards that are a little bit more uncomfortable with it, depending on the sophistication of the board, they don’t really understand public data versus private data what’s accessible, you know, there’s a lot awful lot going on out there right now with ah people’s data being compromised and so forth, so they really don’t want to think that, you know, well, you know, are we compromising somebody’s data if we’re looking at what they’re home values are and what their stock holdings are? If there, you know, publicly reporting this information, so they get a little uncomfortable, how about back on the staff side? And we’re gonna have some time to talk about the board, not not leaving that topic for good, but just back on the staff side, is there a disconnect between what you can do and what, whether it’s a ceo or even fund-raising staff think that you can do sometimes there is again, it really depends on the sophistication of the organization and how much donorsearch research they’ve done in the past. So, you know, it’s it’s, sometimes i’ll get a call for example, from somebody that will say we have the names of five individuals we need for you to research for us, and we just need to know their networks, so just from that statement that tells me a little bit about them and how much they know who’s on that much they haven’t done that much because i can’t find out true network, right? You khun you, khun, provide lots of measures that we’ve talked about through the years from home values, tow boat values, you know, to places they’ve given and things like that and levels they may have given that you can provide lots of ah, data points. But you can’t definitively put put, put a number on net worth, right, right? And then, you know, it’s, an educational process where i let them know about what information i do have access to what i don’t have access to what’s public versus private, and then we have a strong conversation about, well, the number that you come up with the almost doesn’t even matter because you can find lots of articles, for example, on what bill gates networks is for warren buffet. But is he going to give what is going to get him to want to give to your organization? Are you already engaged in conversations with this individual? How? How accessible is this individual to you have they been giving and at what levels over the years, i think that’s a much more important conversation versus a number on a piece of paper. Yeah, and, you know, that makes me think of what i’ve heard a lot from clients, that they want to pursue certain wealthy foundations, and they’ll say, well, let’s, go after, you know, the names you mentioned let’s, go after gates foundation or, you know, others ford foundations because we know they’re so wealthy, but much more important question first does that foundation fund what you do there? All they all have pretty narrow worked that they’ll fund, and second, exactly what you’re saying, do they know who you are? You cultivated them at all. It doesn’t really matter how much they’re worth and how much thinking about every foundations, in my opinion, are the easiest group to research because they must report all their very transparent. They must report everything they file iris nine ninety, pfc, which are all publicly available, most foundations, even smaller ones today. Will it have some sort of a minimal website presence so that even if there has been a shift in focus from what a foundation has? Been giving to versus what they might be shifting and getting into maybe some new areas of focus. It’s, it’s all very public and easy to find versus somebody’s individual donor philanthropy is a lot harder to kind of put your finger on, so yeah, if they’re already having certain expectations of, you know, well, we can just go after that foundation because they’re wealthy. You can see how the the conversation could easily shift to then let’s go after all the wealthy individuals in our community simply because they’re wealthy, which is which is pointless. Well, that’s really a waste of time without without the right cultivation. If none of them are known, if none of them know who you are, you know i mean, you can get started, but you can’t solicit them right away. That’s that’s what i mean, but when i say it’s pointless, you can’t just ask them for money out of the chute. All right? So i guess if you wanted to tell staff, you sort of said it, but making explicit if you wanted to tell staff fund-raising staff new to prospect research. What? What it is you khun do. How would you? How would you sum it up so i would sum it up with what’s publicly available and what’s not so let’s. Focus on what’s not because that’s the least understood, i think bank bank account information, right? I do not have access to what anybody’s bank account data is all about. I have no access to credit reports, right? So i don’t know how much credit card debt they’re carrying. I don’t know how much they’re looking at in terms of car loan dead or even house debt. So the the entire debt side of the equation, i have no access to that information. Um also, if you happen to come across somebody who does own ah property in a trust, okay, well, at least that gives you a trigger that okay? This person has set something up in their state, planning a little bit more sophisticated. They’ve put their property in a trust, therefore, they may have ah, trust accounts somewhere else, but that trust account data is not publicly available, so you wouldn’t know, you know, you can’t go to a trust institution and say, i want to know the value of that trust and what the assets are in it because it’s simply not publicly available what else? Theo house and children information those air the hard pieces for me of the puzzle that are hard to find. And that’s where i think both staff and board who might be closer to that individual, could have some conclusions from information for me. In terms of, uh, how many children ages of the children so that’s very important, right? When you’re talking about the stage of someone’s life. And is this a really good time to solicit them or not? You know, for example, right now i have two kids in college. This is a really bad time. Yes. It’s solicit for a major gift debt equity ratio is very. You would want to know something like that about an individual so that the conversation can then perhaps flow in a different direction. Okay. We have a couple seconds left. Anything else you want to leave us with before we moved to the board? Yes. Stockholdings in salary information. Unless they’re considered insider at a public corporation, then i can indeed access data about salary and stock holdings. Otherwise, it’s not publicly available information. And you and i have talked a lot about insiders. What the definition of that is etcetera. Okay, we’re going to go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Maria, you now keep talking, but we’ll move it to the board. Conversation around your prospect research. So stay with us. Dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Durney have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. If you have big ideas and an average budget, tune into the way above average. Tony martin. Any non-profit radio ideo. I’m jonah helper from next-gen charity. Welcome back to big guy, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. How could you blow your own tagline like that? It’s. Unbelievable. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We know that, but i want to make sure it’s reinforced the idea. Okay. Maria let’s. Um, let’s. Talk to the board. What would you like to say? Anything different? Tio two aboard. I think for the board, my main goal really is to put the mehdi’s about what we find on and also how we protect the information that we do find. So wherever that information is stored at your organization, whether it be in a donor database, in hard copy files, whatever the case may be, let them know what you’re doing with the information so that they understand how we collected and how we protect it. I think that that’s very important and also what their role khun b in the development cycle, because prospect research is a piece of that. So how they khun specifically help to support identifying new prospects and also revealing current donors that we have in the database that perhaps could be elevated in terms of their giving. And as you have suggested, filling in gaps where information isn’t available or matter it’s very hard to find, for instance, like you mentioned family information that’s, right, that that’s also often very hard to find, but they might know that that person very well, perhaps they played golf with them or they know them through the chamber or something like that, so they’ve had some interaction with, um, whereas you as the prospect researcher or the maybe even part time room searcher on a staff, you’re playing some other role within the number non-profit fund-raising steph, you may not have access to that information because you’re not in in mingling and interacting with them, so yeah, they’re they’re often really great source of information for familial data, and i’ve often said on block this back-up a couple years ago, i remember, in fact, it was around the time when you and i first met first met online that i think some of the best prospect research comes from face to face conversations with people over over lunch or however you do your meetings, i happen to like meeting’s over meals, but face-to-face conversations you can learn so much about. Someone you absolutely can, but then the board needs to be educated about how that information needs to filter back to the non-profit right? So there’s got to be some sort of ah trigger or a mechanism or a processor, a procedure in place said if they are meeting with somebody, or maybe maybe the meeting was happenstance meeting maybe it was just just a meal and all of that in the conversation suede toward thie organization that that you’re serving on a non-profit board for and suddenly the prospect starts asking, you know, lots of trigger questions that would make you believe g, you know, they might have an interest in coming down and learning a little bit more about what the organization does you’ve got to be able to have them, i guess some train them to have a certain awareness, um, to look for this type of information so that it can be filtered back and that that together staff and board can then discuss well, is there somebody that we should be considering, you know, to make sure they’re at a future event or get on our mailing list or whatever the case may be? What? Are a couple of those things that board members could be listening for? Certainly they could be listening for the types of other non-profit that somebody is already engaged with. So if they the conversation turns toward, you know what, where they serve on board let’s say you’re a youth based organization, and you hear that this person is, you know, two counties over but very involved in certain youth based efforts in their neighborhood. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t know sara lee have an interest in knowing what’s going on in your neck of the woods. So i think that just understanding where somebody’s charitable, general family’s interests lie is very important also, if you hear them talking about corporate boards that they might serve on that’s very important, because now that tells us that if that person serving on a corporate board and if that corporation is public, then we know we can access an awful lot of information about that individual because, again, they’re reporting it to the sea, and we can find out a lot about what somebody stock holdings are, what their compensation is for serving on that corporate board, etcetera, even non non-profit boards. That they might serve on because that that would lead you to believe that they have a propensity for non profit work. Exactly, exactly so, yeah, finding out what their their interests are because of the various boards, both corporate add non-profit that they’re serving on, you know, be kind of interesting, teo, i think spend a few minutes at a board meeting showing them how they can use their own linked in accounts, teo, to proactively mind them to try and find other people who have similar charitable interests to what they have, for example, right? That’s a report activity? Yeah, what other board activity they’re doing, but also, you know, i mean, i mean, for your board that’s ah, that’s a good activity. Ah, lincoln training. I’ll lengthen training. Yeah, okay, wait, i’ve you know, i’ve talked a lot about lengthen that we can’t we don’t have time to go into it, right? But i mean, you could definitely right get on, get on the agenda for a board meeting and in a fifteen minute span of time, if you’re just able to get fifteen minutes in front of the entire board and do sort of live lengthen. Just showing them, if nothing else, showing them that advanced search feature a tow how they can mine it. That would be a very useful time spent on the agenda of the board meeting. Excellent. Yeah. And i was going to ask, uh, your way have this energy. Well, it’s not really synergy. I don’t know. It’s a mind connect. Yes, energy is overused. It’s not that, but i i was going to ask, you know, how would how would we get on the agenda of a board meeting? As as the person responsible for prospect research, whether you’re you’re full time job or just a piece of what you do that’s a great hook, they’re linked in. Um other you got another tip. Maybe in just our last minute for getting on a board agenda. I think if you can proactively identify through sources like guide, star and foundation directories and so forth, who the family foundations are in a community outlined the list of trustees attached to those family foundations and come to a board meeting asked to be put on the board agenda for the sole purpose of china identify who has connections to any of these. Trustees so that we can start approaching foundations in our community in a different way. Where it’s a person to person entree first, as opposed to going in with a blind letter of intent or a proposal, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much, maria. You’re very welcome. She’s, the prospect finder, she’s at the prospect finder dot com and at maria simple on twitter next week. Gene takagi is here. We’ll continue our two hundredth show discussion on partnerships and other joint ventures. Jean takagi, of course, principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. If you’re smaller midsize shop, remember generosity siri’s for multi charity five k runs and walks. Dave lynn theo seven one eight, five o six. Nine, triple seven or generosity siri’s dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is on the board is line producer. The show’s social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules are music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Hey! Co-branding dick, dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. Duitz e-giving thank you, cubine. Are you stuck in your business or career, trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? 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M on talking alternative dot com, you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems block a little? Help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking call.
