Event Bios - Necessary Evil 2685

Event Bios - Necessary Evil

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Well summer is over and we all know that means that event season is ramping up!  

Whether it is for football, seminars, house parties or events at your institution this is the time of the year that they ramp up.  I remember having to create weekly bios for all those who accepted the "special" inviation to attend a pre-game football party and sitting at the Dean's table.  

These were potential or current donors who need cultivating and stewarding.  A necessary evil but so difficult at times to just create a few short sentances particularly with those where you could have create a short novel.  

Obviously the name of the donor and giving to your organization are key but what are other factors that are important?  

Assets definitely can be helpful but what can be great information to ensure you can have a meaningful discussion with the attendees?

This can also be an opportunity to maybe try and confirm some information on your constituents.  

Highlight anyone who is a private company top executive who you are unable to confirm their percentage of ownership.  This can be a strategic time for a gift officer to see if they can get the donor to talk about their company and disclosing vital data.  This can also be a great time to review all the Larkspur data you have and see if any of that can be confirmed.  

In the Wealth Indicators fields there are so many great pieces of information such as luxury car owner, pilot, investor, wine and gourmet and great topics that can be used to help further the relationship and discovery on your donors.  Confirmed Who's Who data can also be a great way to help build relationships with donors.  It can be amazing what they report especially looking at hobbies or interests.  

Aside from creating these event bios you can also possibly use the wealth screening data to help strategically place people at tables together.  For instance using the SIC code in the D&B data to help seat attendees by the type of organizations they are affiliated with.  

What are you currently putting into event bios and how have they been strategic for you in uncovering more data or building on that existing relationship?  

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We go very basic - Name, Spouse name, Professional title/company for each, relationship to our organization (had relative in one of our housing sites, relative cared for in our long term care facility, Life Member, major donor to one of our funding areas, etc). It's more to provide information to aid our leaders and gift officers in speaking to event attendees, than to provide information to determine who should be spoken to. We may dig up other useful information in the creation of the bios which we might share outside of the bios relating to assets and such, but we don't actually put those in the bios (given the broad range of people who will get these).

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