What’s Ahead?!! Photo by Ellen Winiarczyk
One thing is for absolute sure: the past 18 months haven’t been boring. I mean that in a more global sense of course – I realize that interspersed with the scrambling and improvising there has been a lot of hiking, television watching, and finding creative ways to stay active.
But maybe you, like me, have taken some time at your workplace to evaluate programs, projects, and possibilities.
The primary thing we’re known for at HBG – prospect research – is the very best base any organization can have to be successful. My team and I enjoy our work, and we absolutely adore partnering with our dedicated consulting clients, most of whom we work with closely for at least seventy hours per month. Others request research on an a la carte basis, and that allows them to flexibly have profiles just when they need them without an ongoing contract.
A couple of years ago we also added on data insight services – helping clients identify prospects that are already in their database through wealth screening assistance, data analysis, descriptive and predictive modeling.
Hang on!
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I rarely spend time here talking about HBG’s services, so you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this. Just give me another minute – I have something really great I want to share with you!
Part of why I’m mentioning this is because a few weeks ago I was talking with a friend in the profession whom I’ve known for over 15 years, and she had no idea that dedicated consulting was our primary way of working with clients. Obviously, I need to do a better job of telling my friends what we do – and if you’re a frequent reader of this blog – well, honestly if that’s not friendship I don’t know what is.
The main reason I’m telling you this is because things are changing soon at HBG in a very exciting way, and I wanted you to be the first to know.
Our data insight team is growing by one, but the increase is going to be exponential.
In corporate offices, this work is called business intelligence. It’s the data engine that provides up-to-the-minute dashboards, statistics, projections, visualizations, and customer/competitor information to make sure that the company stays on track and capitalizes on opportunities.
Municipal offices need that work, too. The Mayor’s office of the city of New York, for example, needs a lot of information in a very quick, easy-to-digest, yet detailed way about, say, COVID-19 to be sure that services are being delivered where they are needed. They also need reliable information, projections, and easy-to understand visualizations about housing, so that the Mayor’s office can work with nonprofits to help people impacted by the pandemic so they’re not evicted from their homes.
Data science is critical work, helping ensure that resources are deployed exactly where and when they need to be.
In fundraising we need that same level of data detail to know how we’re doing…
- Do we have the right number of fundraisers to accomplish what we need to?
- Are they being deployed in the right way?
- Are the portfolios balanced right?
- Do we have a good sense of our donors?
- Who might be quietly raising their hand that they want more attention, or might be ready to make a major donation, or leave a legacy?
But with all of that, once the information has been found or the prospects identified, an organization might need more if they don’t have someone internally who can take it one step further. A partner to work alongside them to get more detail on the great new prospects found and point them to interests and capacity and timing. Or to help build a new prospect management system to handle the newly-rated donors.
And that’s us at HBG. We’re now seriously good data insight plus dedicated prospect research and prospect management consulting. Seriously good prospect research plus data insight. I’m practically jumping out of my seat right now with excitement because…
The new person joining our team is Steve Grimes. Steve just left the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York to join HBG as Associate Director of Data Insight! You may also know him for his time with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the ACLU, or his incredibly generous dashboard of free data sources.
I honestly couldn’t be more excited for this new chapter, my friend. Steve starts on October 4th. Here’s his LinkedIn page if you want to say hi – I know he’ll love to meet you, too.
