What is the industry standard for time spent on a report

Elizabeth Reiter

Hello,

If I've missed a thread that speaks to this question, please forgive me and redirect me.


I'm looking for industry standards on the time it takes to research, review and confirm an individual report to give to the Advancement Director.


I've been asked to produce 2,500 reports for the year, working on it in a part time capacity. Is anyone out there completing 2,500 verified reports in a year ? 

Last year I completed around 250, in addition to my other responsibilities.  


What is the industry standard?  How to know when to stop looking?  How deep is too deep?  


Any and all advice welcomed.

Thanks!

Elizabeth 

Elizabeth Reiter
Communications & Advancement Specialist
Sisters of St. Francis
ereiter@sistersosf.org
419-824-3667

Melissa S Graves

Um - Holy Crow.

2500 reports assuming 250 working days (2019 had 261 working days minus 2 weeks + 1 day vacation gives us a nice round figure of 250 but it could actually be less!) means 10 reports a day.  Assuming you did this FULL time doing nothing else that is still less than an hour (48 minutes) per report. Um No. The math just doesn't add up If you did it half time it would be 24 minutes per report. This is superhuman, impossible, fantasy land.


I can't say what the right number should be though because I have done research but never full time or even regular enough to consider it part time but I can't even do the simplest one in under an hour. The most basic one would be 1.5-2 hours for me and longer if they have a deep complex history or if I have to weed out a lot of false positive matches but I am not a professional researcher. If you go at my pace (and if you consider my pace average) and do it half time I would say 2-3 per day would be the max which is 500-750 per year.


Hope this helps.

Elizabeth Reiter

Thanks for the input Melissa!  I'm trying to gauge how slow I am and what I can do to speed things up - but the request for 2,500 seemed out of this world. 


I don't work on them every day and some days I catch up that's all I do. There are a couple of months where I am too busy with other projects to do any at all.  


A half hour is about what it takes me. When Research Point has given them a strong BL number, I always try to find a case to support the score. Because our constituents are, largely, in their 80's, their online presence is often nil or limited. So I find dead ends and have to give up. When I get an interesting one, it can easily take over an hour. The more tidbits I find the likelier it is the Director can make a connection with that individual. 

Thanks again and I'm hoping to hear from others as well.