A Very Short Question-and-Answer Conversation with a Blackbaud ResearchPoint® Guru
Published
It's always instructional to hear from a ResearchPoint master! Margaret Williams with Avera Foundation shares how she gets the most from Blackbaud screening services: ResearchPoint, WealthPoint™, and Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution.
QUESTIONS asked by Katherine Swank, Principal Strategic Analytics Consultant with Blackbaud, Customer Success Services (Littleton, Colorado)
A little about Katherine: "Hello! The best way to describe myself is as a consummate learner. Not a day goes by when I am not learning something new. During my 18 years with Blackbaud, I have been listening to and learning from conversations with our customers because I know that it’s you—our clients—who ultimately power the passion that IS the third sector. We all know fundraising doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The speed of change in our industry is increasing, as are the tools we use. That’s why I sat down with our guest, Margaret Williams, to learn how she gets so much out of Blackbaud's research and data analytics tools."
QUESTIONS answered by Margaret Williams, Prospect Research and Strategy Officer with Avera Foundation (Sioux Falls, South Dakota).
A little about Margaret: "Hello as well! I have worked in philanthropy for the past 32 years. I spent 26 years in higher education development work and since 2019 in healthcare development work at Avera. In my first three years here, I helped conceive, strategize, and complete two successful capital campaigns exceeding both campaign’s goals. It was a high point in my career to be honored in 2015 when I was recognized as Professional of the Year by APRA. Like Katherine, I really enjoy sharing my experiences and often present at meetings on data analytics, campaigns, and prospect research. You may have seen me at Blackbaud's annual conference (a.k.a. bbcon) or at the APRA Prospect Development conference. I’m delighted to talk with Katherine about my experience using ResearchPoint to drive my daily workload."
Katherine: Hi Margaret, it’s so nice to get a chance to talk to you about ResearchPoint and our screening services. You’ve been using ResearchPoint, WealthPoint and Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution scoring for a long time. Why do you find these tools to be so useful in your day-to-day activities?
Margaret: Thank you for inviting me to chat about these products. I have a two-part answer to your question!
First, the Grateful Patient Solution is the cornerstone of Avera’s grateful patient program. On a nightly basis, we upload patient information from our select service lines for Blackbaud’s wealth screening. Each morning, we download the screening results and based on them, I jump into sorting them for our grateful patient introduction and solicitation processes. Our development team is quickly able to focus on patients with both the capacity and propensity to give. Since we began doing this, we’ve actually had to increase our grateful patient campaign revenue and donor number goals because we’ve been so successful when guided by the data we get from you (Blackbaud). As a second achievement, we’ve saved a lot of resources by not soliciting patients who are not likely to give a gift to our Foundation. Conversely, the automated process alerts me when a donor in a gift officer portfolio is in the hospital so that team member can check on him/her and offer any level of concierge service. It’s really a pretty cool and efficient daily process that’s streamlined my workload.
Second, I really like the fact that ResearchPoint gives me unlimited one-record-at-a-time screenings to get public data instantaneously from the WealthPoint data sources. It has become second nature to think of ResearchPoint as a “one stop” service where I can screen a prospect for biographical, employment, hard and soft assets, and philanthropic giving behavior all in less than a minute. I couldn’t do that with any other vendor’s product. So, I’m a big fan of these tools. It’s just me and one other prospect researcher at the Foundation and we have a database of more than 300,000 records! There’s no way we would be able to keep up with our work demands without ResearchPoint, WealthPoint, and the Grateful Patient Solution from Blackbaud.
Katherine: Margaret, I’m assuming that you have a sort of daily routine that you go through when you log into ResearchPoint. If true, can you tell me a little more about that?
Margaret: You’re right! We do have a routine. Every morning when we boot up the computer, the first thing we do is download the Grateful Patient Solution screening results. Our daily patient census is uploaded to the Blackbaud portal early in the morning from the day prior and when we get to the office (which for many of us might be our home office nowadays), we start with the results download. We look for anyone in a gift officer portfolio and alert the appropriate G.O. Next, we segment the list of patients by capacity factors and the propensity to make a charitable gift score into either an “introductory” pipeline or into a “higher touch” pipeline involving the gift officers. Then, we run a WealthPoint screening on those patients needing one and we also process gift officer profile requests.
Katherine: That sounds like a quick and efficient process. I wanted to find out what feature or features in ResearchPoint you find the most useful to your daily workload, above the other features that you also might like.
Margaret: That’s really an easy answer. While there’s so much we like about all of these products and services, the clear winner for us is the WealthPoint screening feature. It’s a huge timesaver and frankly, a lifesaver, as it makes it possible for the two of us in research to keep up with the active profile demand.
Katherine: How do you share the information you have available in ResearchPoint to others on your team? And, secondarily, is it easy to get a new team member acquainted with the information and tools?
Margaret: We sync the prospect information from ResearchPoint to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® when we are doing profiles. The ability to sync information between the two platforms is another timesaver. The gift officers can then access the information by opening the prospect’s or donor’s record in Raiser’s Edge NXT. Because the constituent record is so easy to read, we don’t have too much of a learning curve when a new fundraiser joins the Foundation. We give a quick lesson on the scores they’ll see and how to access those in a record or in their portfolio list and they are off-and-running, so to speak. It’s all pretty intuitive.
Katherine: If you could give just three quick pieces of advice to anyone new or less familiar with ResearchPoint what would that advice be?
Margaret: Oh, what a great question! It’s really simple:
Margaret: You’re welcome. It’s mutual Katherine – I always learn something new and useful when I connect with your consulting team at Blackbaud.
Katherine: Well, I didn’t expect to have the last word here, but since I do, I want to remind our readers that our consulting team is here for them too. It’s our honor to be considered an adjunct member of their development team. We’re here to help our customers use their Blackbaud analytics tool and to ultimately raise more funds for their missions. Thank you again Margaret.
Margaret: It has been my pleasure.
A little about Katherine: "Hello! The best way to describe myself is as a consummate learner. Not a day goes by when I am not learning something new. During my 18 years with Blackbaud, I have been listening to and learning from conversations with our customers because I know that it’s you—our clients—who ultimately power the passion that IS the third sector. We all know fundraising doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The speed of change in our industry is increasing, as are the tools we use. That’s why I sat down with our guest, Margaret Williams, to learn how she gets so much out of Blackbaud's research and data analytics tools."
QUESTIONS answered by Margaret Williams, Prospect Research and Strategy Officer with Avera Foundation (Sioux Falls, South Dakota).
A little about Margaret: "Hello as well! I have worked in philanthropy for the past 32 years. I spent 26 years in higher education development work and since 2019 in healthcare development work at Avera. In my first three years here, I helped conceive, strategize, and complete two successful capital campaigns exceeding both campaign’s goals. It was a high point in my career to be honored in 2015 when I was recognized as Professional of the Year by APRA. Like Katherine, I really enjoy sharing my experiences and often present at meetings on data analytics, campaigns, and prospect research. You may have seen me at Blackbaud's annual conference (a.k.a. bbcon) or at the APRA Prospect Development conference. I’m delighted to talk with Katherine about my experience using ResearchPoint to drive my daily workload."
Katherine: Hi Margaret, it’s so nice to get a chance to talk to you about ResearchPoint and our screening services. You’ve been using ResearchPoint, WealthPoint and Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution scoring for a long time. Why do you find these tools to be so useful in your day-to-day activities?
Margaret: Thank you for inviting me to chat about these products. I have a two-part answer to your question!
First, the Grateful Patient Solution is the cornerstone of Avera’s grateful patient program. On a nightly basis, we upload patient information from our select service lines for Blackbaud’s wealth screening. Each morning, we download the screening results and based on them, I jump into sorting them for our grateful patient introduction and solicitation processes. Our development team is quickly able to focus on patients with both the capacity and propensity to give. Since we began doing this, we’ve actually had to increase our grateful patient campaign revenue and donor number goals because we’ve been so successful when guided by the data we get from you (Blackbaud). As a second achievement, we’ve saved a lot of resources by not soliciting patients who are not likely to give a gift to our Foundation. Conversely, the automated process alerts me when a donor in a gift officer portfolio is in the hospital so that team member can check on him/her and offer any level of concierge service. It’s really a pretty cool and efficient daily process that’s streamlined my workload.
Second, I really like the fact that ResearchPoint gives me unlimited one-record-at-a-time screenings to get public data instantaneously from the WealthPoint data sources. It has become second nature to think of ResearchPoint as a “one stop” service where I can screen a prospect for biographical, employment, hard and soft assets, and philanthropic giving behavior all in less than a minute. I couldn’t do that with any other vendor’s product. So, I’m a big fan of these tools. It’s just me and one other prospect researcher at the Foundation and we have a database of more than 300,000 records! There’s no way we would be able to keep up with our work demands without ResearchPoint, WealthPoint, and the Grateful Patient Solution from Blackbaud.
Katherine: Margaret, I’m assuming that you have a sort of daily routine that you go through when you log into ResearchPoint. If true, can you tell me a little more about that?
Margaret: You’re right! We do have a routine. Every morning when we boot up the computer, the first thing we do is download the Grateful Patient Solution screening results. Our daily patient census is uploaded to the Blackbaud portal early in the morning from the day prior and when we get to the office (which for many of us might be our home office nowadays), we start with the results download. We look for anyone in a gift officer portfolio and alert the appropriate G.O. Next, we segment the list of patients by capacity factors and the propensity to make a charitable gift score into either an “introductory” pipeline or into a “higher touch” pipeline involving the gift officers. Then, we run a WealthPoint screening on those patients needing one and we also process gift officer profile requests.
Katherine: That sounds like a quick and efficient process. I wanted to find out what feature or features in ResearchPoint you find the most useful to your daily workload, above the other features that you also might like.
Margaret: That’s really an easy answer. While there’s so much we like about all of these products and services, the clear winner for us is the WealthPoint screening feature. It’s a huge timesaver and frankly, a lifesaver, as it makes it possible for the two of us in research to keep up with the active profile demand.
Katherine: How do you share the information you have available in ResearchPoint to others on your team? And, secondarily, is it easy to get a new team member acquainted with the information and tools?
Margaret: We sync the prospect information from ResearchPoint to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® when we are doing profiles. The ability to sync information between the two platforms is another timesaver. The gift officers can then access the information by opening the prospect’s or donor’s record in Raiser’s Edge NXT. Because the constituent record is so easy to read, we don’t have too much of a learning curve when a new fundraiser joins the Foundation. We give a quick lesson on the scores they’ll see and how to access those in a record or in their portfolio list and they are off-and-running, so to speak. It’s all pretty intuitive.
Katherine: If you could give just three quick pieces of advice to anyone new or less familiar with ResearchPoint what would that advice be?
Margaret: Oh, what a great question! It’s really simple:
- One: Use the WealthPoint screening tool – it will save you time in prospecting for donors and will better fill in the blanks on anyone you already know!
- Two: Remember to sync information in ResearchPoint to Raiser’s Edge NXT when you’re doing a profile. It’s a good habit to do every time you work with a constituent record in ResearchPoint.
- Three: Use ad-hoc queries focused on your custom analytic screening or screenings to find the hidden “gems” in your database! They are there. They are always there, and queries can quickly unearth them.
Margaret: You’re welcome. It’s mutual Katherine – I always learn something new and useful when I connect with your consulting team at Blackbaud.
Katherine: Well, I didn’t expect to have the last word here, but since I do, I want to remind our readers that our consulting team is here for them too. It’s our honor to be considered an adjunct member of their development team. We’re here to help our customers use their Blackbaud analytics tool and to ultimately raise more funds for their missions. Thank you again Margaret.
Margaret: It has been my pleasure.
News ResearchPoint™ Blog
07/29/2024 10:00am EDT
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Thank you Margaret and Katherine - I will bookmark this and be sure to share with my nonprofit consulting clients!