Prospecting For The Endgame: Week 1
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Prospecting for the Endgame: Week 1
As you may know from reading a previous blog of mine, I’m a bit of a Marvel fan. With Captain Marvel debuting and Avengers: Endgame around the corner, I thought I’d use characters from the Marvel Universe as a prospect pool to help people better understand the role of a prospect researcher. I’ll be putting out a blog each week until Endgame so make sure to check back as my research unfolds! MARVEL SPOILERS FOLLOW
Understand your Goal and Resources
First, I had to understand my goal and determine how many prospects I had in my portfolio. My goal was to figure out who to prioritize as potential major donors, who would be better to gear toward other forms of support, and who could be deprioritized.
In my portfolio, I came up with about 30 prospects:
I know for many prospect researchers a portfolio of 30 is low. Portfolios come in all sizes. The number of prospects you are researching greatly impacts the amount of time that you can devote to each one (and the amount of information you can glean). How many prospects does your team manage?
Know your Data
As with most datasets, I only had so much information to work from. Like most research, the available information could only get me so far. Tony Stark’s assets are pretty public, and he’s not exactly shy about showing off, but I can only imagine what a challenge it would be to do prospect research on the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D.. For those falling in between, I wanted to be reasonable about what a researcher would be able to figure out. Most assets aren’t public, which limits assessment, and there are a lot of rules about how what’s found should be used.
Two other factors were time and misinformation. Investigating a prospect shouldn’t take a researcher a huge amount of time, and I’m a self-confessed data addict. I always set a timer before I start digging in. Since I’m trying to research on the characters of specific movies, a lot of my knowledge on them is based on a personal history of being a geek. Any personal knowledge needed to be vetted, just like the rumored wealth of a real individual.
I’m sure there are plenty of fans who are ready to comment and tell me that my list is inaccurate by about 50%. I guess there might be a screening or two I need to run. Most organizations’ data needs a lot of work! You need to be sure what you have is accurate and clean up what can be addressed. What steps are you and your team taking to make your data cleaner and more actionable?
Join us Next Week…
Like with most research—what gets uncovered will hopefully lead to more information, but all that information will probably lead to even more questions (just like most Marvel movies)! Fun might not be something one considers when prospecting the fate of your social good organization, but I hope this does put a smile on your face (and help you understand prospect research a bit more). See you next week on the continuing saga of our prospect research hero.
While you are waiting, check out some of other episodes, I mean workshops, such as the OBP: Fundraising—Major Giving class.
If you Missed an Exciting Episode…
Here are the links to every edition of Prospecting for the Endgame!
Prospecting for the Endgame: Week 7
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5603
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 6
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5574
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 5
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5564
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 4
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5544
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 3
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5527
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 2
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5508
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 1
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5491
As you may know from reading a previous blog of mine, I’m a bit of a Marvel fan. With Captain Marvel debuting and Avengers: Endgame around the corner, I thought I’d use characters from the Marvel Universe as a prospect pool to help people better understand the role of a prospect researcher. I’ll be putting out a blog each week until Endgame so make sure to check back as my research unfolds! MARVEL SPOILERS FOLLOW
Understand your Goal and Resources
First, I had to understand my goal and determine how many prospects I had in my portfolio. My goal was to figure out who to prioritize as potential major donors, who would be better to gear toward other forms of support, and who could be deprioritized.
In my portfolio, I came up with about 30 prospects:
Thanos | Black Panther | Bucky Barnes | Drax the Destroyer | Star-Lord | Loki |
Peter Parker | Black Widow | Nebula | Tony Stark | Shuri | Phil Coulson |
Capt. America | Vision | War Machine | Thor | Nick Fury | Pepper Potts |
Bruce Banner | Groot | Mantis | Doctor Strange | Capt. Marvel | Ant Man |
Wanda Maximoff | Gamora | Rocket Racoon | Okoye | Sam Wilson |
I know for many prospect researchers a portfolio of 30 is low. Portfolios come in all sizes. The number of prospects you are researching greatly impacts the amount of time that you can devote to each one (and the amount of information you can glean). How many prospects does your team manage?
Know your Data
As with most datasets, I only had so much information to work from. Like most research, the available information could only get me so far. Tony Stark’s assets are pretty public, and he’s not exactly shy about showing off, but I can only imagine what a challenge it would be to do prospect research on the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D.. For those falling in between, I wanted to be reasonable about what a researcher would be able to figure out. Most assets aren’t public, which limits assessment, and there are a lot of rules about how what’s found should be used.
Two other factors were time and misinformation. Investigating a prospect shouldn’t take a researcher a huge amount of time, and I’m a self-confessed data addict. I always set a timer before I start digging in. Since I’m trying to research on the characters of specific movies, a lot of my knowledge on them is based on a personal history of being a geek. Any personal knowledge needed to be vetted, just like the rumored wealth of a real individual.
I’m sure there are plenty of fans who are ready to comment and tell me that my list is inaccurate by about 50%. I guess there might be a screening or two I need to run. Most organizations’ data needs a lot of work! You need to be sure what you have is accurate and clean up what can be addressed. What steps are you and your team taking to make your data cleaner and more actionable?
Join us Next Week…
Like with most research—what gets uncovered will hopefully lead to more information, but all that information will probably lead to even more questions (just like most Marvel movies)! Fun might not be something one considers when prospecting the fate of your social good organization, but I hope this does put a smile on your face (and help you understand prospect research a bit more). See you next week on the continuing saga of our prospect research hero.
While you are waiting, check out some of other episodes, I mean workshops, such as the OBP: Fundraising—Major Giving class.
If you Missed an Exciting Episode…
Here are the links to every edition of Prospecting for the Endgame!
Prospecting for the Endgame: Week 7
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5603
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 6
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5574
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 5
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5564
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 4
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5544
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 3
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5527
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 2
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5508
Prospecting for The Endgame: Week 1
https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/76/5491
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Organizational Best Practices Blog
03/13/2019 3:00pm EDT
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I will say I have trouble sifting through the mass-data side of analytics related to querying on these pieces and sorting them appropriately... Screening results are difficult to analyze in Blackbaud for me at this point. Would love a class on querying on those results and prospecting accordingly...