All posts by Elisa Shoenberger

Review of Charitable Giving by Affluent Households – Part 2

January 4, 2024Fundraising Insightsaffluent donors, major gift, non-cash gifts, philanthropy, wealth, wealth report, women philanthropyElisa Shoenberger

What is this Report?

The 2023 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy report is the 9^th biennial examination about philanthropic attitudes, priorities, and more for affluent US households in 2022. It is written as a collaboration between Bank of America and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. It is based on 1,623 wealthy US households, defined as either a net worth $1M+ or annual household income of $200K+. The average mean income was $523,472 and average mean wealth of $31M.

The report was full of so much valuable information, we decided to split it into two blog posts.

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Review of Charitable Giving by Affluent Households – Part 1

November 29, 2023Fundraising Insightsaffluent donors, Bank of America, Black philanthropy, DAFs, donor advised funds, philanthropy, wealth, wealth report, women philanthropyElisa Shoenberger

What is this Report?

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Family Opportunities: UBS Global Family Office Report 2023

September 25, 2023Fundraising Insightscryptocurrencies, data tracking, ESG, family office, sustainability, UBS, wealth, wealth reportElisa Shoenberger

What is this Report?

The report is the 4^th annual global family office report by UBS. The report provides comprehensive research on family offices throughout the world. Participating in the study were 203 family offices, each with an average $2.2B net worth.

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Introducing Volatile Opportunity: A Guide to Cryptocurrency and Fundraising

August 27, 2023Fundraising InsightsAspire publication, cryptocurrencies, donor research, major gift, philanthropy, prospect research, report, wealthElisa Shoenberger

Buy Now

It’s been a bumpy road for cryptocurrency over the past year. In 2021, cryptocurrency did not seem to have any limit to its heights but in 2022, the crash came. Many predicted it was the end of crypto. But 2023 has been an interesting year with the price of Bitcoin rising again. The Giving Block, a full-service crypto exchange solution provider, predicts that over $1B in cryptocurrencies will have been donated by 2027. Boston Consulting Group forecasts that the crypto market will grow significantly by 2030.

What does this mean for the fundraising world? Opportunity! It’s a chance to raise additional funds, engage new donors who may not have been interested in philanthropy anymore, and find new ways of fundraising. It’s volatility and risks. But there are ways to mitigate and manage risk.

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Strategic Research for Transformative Gifts

June 26, 2023Fundraising Insightsdonor profile, donor research, HNWIs, major gift, net worth, philanthropy, pipeline, prospect profile, prospect research, transformative giving, wealthElisa Shoenberger

By Elisa Shoenberger

Asking for a major or transformative gift is a little bit like asking someone to marry you. You’ve (likely) been dating one another for a while and know quite a bit about your respective interests. Maybe you’ve discussed marriage; perhaps you haven’t. Ideally, you have an idea that the other person will actually say “yes.”

But timing is everything. You probably don’t want to ask your beloved to marry you when they are dealing with their dying father or in front of a crowd of people if they’ve told you that public proposals are not their thing. Maybe you want to ask their father and/or mother for their hand in marriage. The way you approach the proposal may say a lot about the response.

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Finding the Right Cheese for the Cracker: Using Research to Create Strategies and Tactics for Cultivating Prospects

June 1, 2023Fundraising Insightscultivation, donor research, major gift, philanthropy, profle, prospect profile, prospect research, wealthElisa Shoenberger

By Elisa Shoenberger

Most of us have eaten cheese in our lives. Some of us may have grown up with American cheese, string cheese, and cheddar cheese. Maybe you’ve tried mozzarella, spreadable goat cheese, and a bleu cheese. While all of those cheeses are delicious, it can be a little intimidating to walk into the cheese aisle or a cheese shop. Suddenly there are tens, even hundreds of cheeses in all different colors and shapes. So how do you figure out what goes best on a salad or on a steak?

That’s what it might feel like when you’ve met with prospects in your portfolio. You know something about them; maybe you even requested an Aspire Snap Bio on them before meeting them. But what do you do next? How do you cultivate them towards a major gift in the next few years or so? How do you fit the cheese to the cracker or side?

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Learning to Drive: Using Prospect Research for Early Cultivation Meetings

May 1, 2023Fundraising Insightsdonor cultivation, donor profile, donor research, major gift, profile, prospect profile, prospect research, wealthElisa Shoenberger

Remember the first time you got behind the wheel of a car? Maybe you had taken your learner’s permit test or not; maybe you had watched your parents closely as they drove. But when facing the wheel, pedals, and all those buttons for the first time, it might have been really daunting. I was frustrated the first time I got behind the wheel; no matter what I did, I could not get the car to go. I soon realized that no one had told me to push the brake while starting the car!

Naturally, if someone is getting a donor profile for the first time, it can be a bit daunting. There are lots of sections; some filled with charts and graphs while others have lots of information. And what’s with the “likely” and “possibly” speculation?

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Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 2

February 28, 2023Fundraising InsightsBlended Gifts, donor acquisition, donor advised funds, donor giving, donor research, Double the Donation, Dr. Russell James, Neon One, other assets, philanthropy, Planned Giving, prospect research, recurring gifts, wealth, wealth reportElisa Shoenberger

NeonOne set out to understand what individual giving looks like in the post-pandemic world. By reviewing many sources including academic journals, industry reports, blogs, and more, they have synthesized six questions:

Who are our donors?
What do our donors support?
When do our donors give?
Where are our donors?
Why do our donors give?
How do our donors give?

In Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 1, we focused on the first three questions. In this Part 2, we are focusing on the last three questions.

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Charities Aid Foundation World Giving Index 2022

January 31, 2023Fundraising InsightsCharities Aid Foundation, global giving, philanthropy, volunteers, wealth, wealth reportElisa Shoenberger

What is this Report?

The report is an annual report that looks at global giving focusing on three areas: helping strangers, donating money to charity and volunteering time. The report has surveyed 1.95 million people since 2009. For 2022, CAF included data from 119 countries, which was 90%+ of the total adult population on the earth.

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Neon One’s Donors: Understanding The Future of Individual Giving – Part 1

December 19, 2022Fundraising Insightsaffluent donors, Black philanthropy, donor research, first-time donors, major gift, Neon One, prospect research, volunteer, wealth, wealth reportElisa Shoenberger

What is this Report?

Who are our donors?
What do our donors support?
When do our donors give?
Where are our donors?
Why do our donors give?
How do our donors give?

Due to the length of the report, Aspire will focus on the first three questions. The second part will be published in 2023.

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