Helen Brown Group

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Are you ready for analytics?

If you’re a regular reader, you know that each month we feature special guests writing about their favorite topics. This month we welcome HBG Senior Researcher and member of the HBG Analytics team, Tara McMullen to share her thoughts about one of her favorite subjects!
Vintage typewriter

Sometimes it’s hard to get started with a new program or type of technology because we don’t know what its power is. We don’t know what it can DO, so we stick with the old familiar way of doing things. But these days, doing things the same old way can leave your progress lagging and your program looking a little old-fashioned.

Sometimes the basic principles are good, they just need a little updating.

Maybe you are thinking about undertaking a campaign and aren’t sure if you have the critical mass or the right prospects to meet your goal.

Or maybe you are looking to create a prospect management system, and want a way to sort prospects into various stages in the pipeline.

Or maybe you are trying to find new potential volunteers for your board. [Read more…]

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4 Ways You Can Use Analytics To Power Your Fundraising Success

There are few things in fundraising or business that are associated with more hype and perceived barriers to entry than analytics right now.

The benefits can be remarkable and easy to see once you know about them, but lots of folks are nervous to get started because it seems like a jungle with a potentially expensive downside. crab trap abandoned

But it’s worth getting down into the weeds, even a little bit, to avoid missing out on the gold trapped in your data, waiting to be discovered. [Read more…]

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Analytics: 4 simple terms everybody should know

eggIn a world where computer processing power doubles every 18 months and disk storage density doubles every year, no matter what industry we’re in, we’ve all got a lot of valuable data sitting idle. It’s just sitting there inside that computer-shell, waiting to be discovered.

Even less-than-perfect data situations (a crummy database, or records that haven’t been updated regularly, for example) have important stories to tell us about what we’ve done well (or badly) and where opportunity lies. You don’t need Big Data to get big answers. [Read more…]

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Using Analytics to Pull Away From the Pack

raceHow are top-performing organizations pulling away from their peers? In many cases, it’s through an understanding and clever usage of analytics. This week we welcome HBG Senior Researcher and analytics student and practitioner, Heather Willis, to The Intelligent Edge. Heather shares some of the latest studies with tips on the most important things organizations should do to take advantage of the data available to them.

So: are you a Pacesetter or a Dabbler? What do I mean by that? As you probably already know, we are in the midst of significant change in how we deal with and use the massive amount of data that is being created and collected each day. [Read more…]

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Becoming what they’re interested in

Chances are good that you didn’t watch the Superbowl for the game. Me neither – usually. My team was in it this year, which was cool, but like most people, I was there for the ads.  Budweiser puppy

In fact, seventy percent of us usually watch the Superbowl just to see the commercials – those clever and frequently serialized stories that (they hope) grab us and make us talk about them the next day as we’re standing around in a group waiting for the Keurig to spit out the last little bit of our morning brews. [Read more…]

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BRICS are out the window; it’s MINT that’s growing now

Minted CaesarIt’s that rich time of year when you make a large pot of something hot to drink, grab a cookie or three, and settle down to read about the wealthy. The really really wealthy.

Out now are the Forbes Billionaires list (with a record 290 newcomers), and the 2015 Knight Frank Wealth Report, providing a global perspective on ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) and the variety of ways they hold assets.

If the collective wealth of these 172,850 UHNWIs – clocking in at nearly $21 trillion – was the fuel moving a private jet, the sonic boom would be so stratospheric that the astronauts in the international space station would be able to hear it. According to the K F report, an average of 15 people joined the ranks of the ultra-wealthy every day last year. But even that group doesn’t have money like some have money. K F say:

“Moving up the wealth brackets, nearly 1,180 people became centa-millionaires in 2014, taking the world’s total population of those worth over $100m to 38,280.” [Read more…]

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Coming Out (Again)

ResearchPride2

As you may recall, March is Prospect Research Pride Month.

It’s also Development Services Pride, Operations Pride, Relationship Management Pride, and Analytics Pride Month. It’s a time to celebrate each of us who work behind the scenes every day as part of Team Overhead to ensure our nonprofits’ fundraising successes.

Why?

Because there are still misguided folks out there who actually believe that the business of creating a better world can be done with donated chewing gum, dental floss and duct tape. MacGyver may have used that amalgam to fashion an escape from a sticky situation, but you never saw him pulling a million refugees over a border with them. [Read more…]

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Capacity Ratings, 747s, and Volvos

When Volvos dream

Mark Noll, AVP of Research and Development Services at the University of Rhode Island started a conversation earlier this week in an article titled “Why Capacity Ratings are Bunk and What You Can Do About It.” In the post, Noll discusses the difficulties of assigning an accurate capacity rating to prospects. There’s just too much we prospect researchers – and frontline fundraisers – will never know about the totality of someone’s assets and their liabilities. Noll provides a solid lesson on what actually goes into a capacity rating. And what is logically missing. [Read more…]

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International wealth screening companies

Window with a viewIf you’re like most mid-to-large sized charitable or educational organization, you have a growing number of prospects and donors that live outside your home country.

Researching international prospects can be overwhelming, especially if you have a number of constituents and very little information. It’s fairly easy to hit up against a brick wall. What’s the most efficient way to get a window on your very best prospects overseas?

While not perfect, a wealth screening [Read more…]

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Prospect identification: 5 steps to get action on the front line

Artist painting clouds

Prospect identification is a bi-polar experience for many prospect researchers and analytics professionals: it’s both pure joy and deep-seated frustration. Not all of the time, but mostly.

On the one hand, it’s creative. It’s super fun. (And at work, yet!)

Prospecting sure beats the heck out of doing profiles. Not because profiles aren’t interesting in and of themselves, but because prospect ID projects come from *your* heart. You dream them up, you make them happen. Sure, the project may be in response to a request, but how you fulfill it uses your own chosen palette to create the masterpiece.

But then, on the other hand, you pass off the list of names and what do you hear back?  Crickets. [Read more…]

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