A Blast From The Past! 409

A Blast From The Past!

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The other day while I was in ResearchPoint pulling together some detailed queries, digging into the data available within several fields to find specific criteria, and I was thinking about how far the world of predictive modeling and wealth screening has come in the 20 years (this past March) I’ve been in this industry.

 

I remember starting out with delivering to clients large 3 inch notebooks full of lists of prospects with a couple modeling and wealth scores on them (one very large social services client with over 50 notebooks comes to mind!), along with a comma or tab delimited magnetic tape containing the results of a couple wealth and modeling scores for upload to their databases – that is for those clients fortunate to have one specifically for fundraising – and producing hand-typed research profiles on a few top prospects for each project.  I would dig into yearly purchased hard copies of Who’s Who in America, The Social Register, and Standard & Poor’s Executive volume, and several others, along with having a subscription to Dialog and doing Duns reports, and then starting a Word document of my findings.  Any electronic research was done using a dial-up modem from the phone line on a PC (not a laptop or anything mobile). 

Wow, we have come a long way!  This idea got me thinking about how great it would be to have Target Analytics Community members post their memories of days gone by on how they use to do prospect research, and share some interesting or funny stories, or just recollections of how data use to be gathered.  Makes me incredibly thankful for the tools and technology we enjoy today yes

Please share your memories!  It is only by looking at our history can we appreciate how far we have come and how we are able to produce more information to help our organizations realize their missions by producing information that helps us understand our prospects and donors, aligning their interests and aspirations with our own.
 

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7 Comments
I remember the microfiche and card catalogs too! This industry has come a long way!
I remember going to the James J. Hill Library in St. Paul, MN to do my research! All paper.
These stories are great! These postings are bringing back memories. It is incredible the amount of information that we can process now vs. years ago. Claire, I have so many old publications and past conference materials stashed away in my office as well. Keep on sharing folks!
Lisa Ukuku Lisa Ukuku Sep '15
I remember having several phone directories for different cities/states to look up prospect contact informaton.
Hello! Funny story, I was cleaning out my predecessor's filing cabinets here at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, and found a photocopy of an article that I wrote for CASE Currents in 1999! It was originally for the CASE Advancement Services book, and, guess what, I found the 1st edition. Going back even further in time, I remember going to The Foundation Center in DC to look at the most recent 990s on microfiche (I think that's what it was). I also went to the SEC office for reports. I think I had to submit a list of what I wanted to see, and they would give me a window of time when the materials would be ready, either that afternoon, or the following day if they weren't stored on-site. Dialog was such an advancement at that time! This is bringing back all sorts of memories now! And I think I still have training materials from the late 80s and 90s stashed somewhere at home.
I am fairly new to Prospect research, but I have worked in IT for a very long time and I am happy not to have to do batch files with punched cards and paper tape, or go to the massive tape libraries for the tape that had to be loaded on the wheels of the computer to run a job. :)
I know Randy Bunney has some stories to share!

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