Every March we celebrate Research Pride/Prospect Development Month, a time to reflect on and celebrate our profession’s growth and importance in the Third Sector.
It’s a perfect time to advocate for our profession by demonstrating that our work, done well, significantly impacts our organization’s bottom line and operational efficiency. Here are just a few ways we do this:
- We make a significant impact on a nonprofit’s fiscal success by keeping the focus on the best potential sources of funding. That description “best” may change from moment to moment, and it’s our job to figure out (or participate in the process of knowing) what “best” means at any time. It may mean the funders for a particular stage in a campaign, or yearly cycle, or specific portfolio. It may mean that we focus on parents, or board nominees, or most recent donors, or donors that have given consistently for many years. We may concentrate on local companies or national foundations or donor advised fund advisors. Our job is to be able to see what our nonprofit needs now and in the future through a wide-angle lens and be skilled on delivering the details that will help make that happen.
- We help frontline fundraisers build relationships. We do this by finding commonalities of interest between volunteers, staff, and potential donors. Or someone who has demonstrated a determination to fix a particular problem that we solve. Or by finding partnerships, friendships, and family relationships that can help us be introduced to someone who will mutually benefit from hitching their wagon to our star.
- We help build a pipeline of new sources of funding. We do this by paying attention to people raising their hands quietly – by increasing their giving annually, or posting their appreciation for our nonprofit on social media, volunteering to help out, or by making an unexpected donation at a “whoa” level without being asked. We may use analytical tools to uncover patterns, or services from an external vendor to build the framework of great lists. Our creativity capitalizes on multiple possibilities to strengthen and diversity our funding streams.
- We help protect our nonprofits from bad actors, bad relationships, and bad deals. Nobody wants to be the subject of a New York Times exposé on a nonprofit that didn’t do their homework vetting a gift from an individual or company. Prospect researchers develop a spidey sense in this line of work based on facts, half-facts, and no facts they find on prospective donors. Due diligence is a reputation-saver to avoid bad alliances, and it’s imperative for organizations that work with protected groups like children or where conflicts of interest would repel potential funders.
- We help our nonprofits stay legally compliant. Ten years ago, no one had heard of GDPR, and now organizations that have any kind of international constituency are fluent in its requirements. Who brought these to the attention of nonprofits? Prospect researchers did. We and our colleagues in Data and Records also stay up on compliance for HIPAA, FERPA, CCPA and all the rest of the data-protection alphabet soup of requirements.
- We keep the systems that support efficient fundraising well-oiled and functioning. Our goal is to make sure that frontline fundraisers have the right portfolios for each moment, and that those portfolios are constantly and dynamically changing, updating, and improving. It’s not an easy job, and it’s a lot like Tetris: pieces falling in quick succession that need to be put in place, and moved frequently so that there are no overlooked pieces or ill-fitting areas.
I know that there must be more ways that I’m just not thinking of at the moment, and if you’ve gotten to this article via LinkedIn, I hope you’ll go back there and add points in the comments that I’ve missed.
Research Pride Month is also a good time to recommit personally and as a profession to excellence in performance of our work; to passing down the best practices of the current time to our peers and the next generation of professionals; to advocating for ourselves and our profession to leadership; and to volunteering in service to our profession as chapter board members, conference speakers and track volunteers, and mentors.
Happy Pride Month!
