Prospecting For The Endgame: Week 1 5491

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:
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
 
News Organizational Best Practices Blog 03/13/2019 3:00pm EDT

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17 Comments
Thanks for sharing. I like the idea of having a smaller, more nimble portfolio to allow for deeper relationship-building. (I think I'd pass on Thanos as a prospect though... too much bad press surrounding his image. Not good for our org's PR to align with his moral makeup...) Research around here is "as needed," though I'd love to make it a regular part of my work.

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...
I love to see the prospect research posts - thanks Matt!
Knowing 'the database' so key.
Thank you Sauntel Richardson‍! I'm glad the series was helpful. I know that stress of MGOs hoping for information that will never be there well.
First, I LOVE the Marvel angle that you are using - its GENUS, and timely. Secondly, as a prospect researcher I love the tip of using a timer. I've heard it before, but still haven't implemented its use. I work with about eight major gift officers and sometimes just want me to dig and dig and dig because they've "heard" this and that about a prospect. I have to remind them that if its not publically available or has been shared directly with you, then we may not find that tidbit of information at all. Anyway, I look forward to catching up on this blog series.
Adrienne Baumann‍ Yes! As a researcher local media of all sorts is especially helpful. 
As a data addict, do you include any media research on your prospects to look for new acquisitions, business ventures, or as in the case of Thanos, hostile takeover of assets?
Lots of good information, thank you!
Lynn Jones Lynn Jones Mar '19
Great way to think about researching prospects.
Great information, thanks for sharing.
Dan Snyder Dan Snyder Mar '19
Thanks for this Matt, I was looking to expand my knowledge of prospect research and you have provided with a bonus of adding to my Marvel knowledge!
Love this! 
This is awesome! Very excited for the upcoming content
Thanks, Matt.  Love the Avengers theme.  I use Game of Thrones when we do examples! And thank you for the great tip about the timer, I'll have to use that one so I don't go down the rabbit hole.
Love the tip about setting a timer to research data.  I am borrowing from your brilliance and trying that tip!
I'm also looking forward to the last installment of the Avengers movies! Great blog, Matt
Thanks Matt! Fun blog with some great information! 

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