As we look forward to 2025, it’s easy to rush headlong into the year and forget to look back on successes and mistakes from the year past. Reflection can provide a deeper understanding of what works well and why – how to make things go smoothly.
To end the year of 2024, we’ve decided to think about the wonderful things that prospect researchers can do for their fellow fundraisers. So, with a touch of mirth and joy, we propose…
This year, articles abound about how we are carving pumpkins incorrectly. Like most people, I learned to cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin and then scoop out all the stuff inside. However, the word on the digital street is that it’s better to cut a hole in the bottom. You can make the hole larger to facilitate scooping the guts out and it’s less likely to cave into itself. This will help the jack o lantern last longer.
We’ve heard it many times before; fundraising is all about relationships. But it’s not just about the relationships between an institution and its prospective donors. It’s also about the relationships between fundraisers, like prospect research and gift officers. Having a good connection with gift officers will benefit everyone. Researchers can provide the right information to major gift officers who are best prepared to cultivate and solicit prospective donors.
Any parent of a toddler is likely to have seen the Disney film Frozen several times. As I was watching it for the 50th time, I realized that Frozen actually has a lot of lessons that we as researchers and major gift fundraisers can take to heart. Using the movie as a lens into creating a better more sustainable prospect management system, following are five lessons from Frozen about Prospect Management.
Finding new major gift prospects can be a real challenge. You do not want to keep asking for gifts from the same few prospects, but identifying and qualifying new prospects can be daunting. Sometimes it is hard to know where to even start. That is where prospect research can step in and help organizations find their best new prospects. But there are several misconceptions about prospect identification. Following are five of the most common misconceptions.
When I first heard of a family office, I thought it was a fancy way of saying a family business. Boy, was I wrong! Family offices are a way for families to manage their wealth – as if that wealth was a business. This can include managing family investments and companies, estate planning, education planning, vacations, and philanthropy.
When meeting a new prospect, it’s quite exhilarating to find out that they are philanthropic and have given generously to other organizations. But occasionally, fundraising professionals may find a gap between what the prospect says and what is publicly available. Why? This article addresses that question!
Corporate sponsorships – they are everywhere you look! The concept seems simple: in exchange for advertising and branded materials at the event/location, the company financially sponsors the occasion. It has been the bread and butter of the corporate world for decades. But if that is all you are asking for, you are only touching one piece of the big puzzle of corporate philanthropy. There is so much more to corporate fundraising than just sponsorships.
By Elisa Shoenberger
In the past few weeks, two big reports on donor advised funds (DAF) in the US were released. The findings are pretty fascinating and can help reorient your thinking of how to approach DAF advisors for your organization.
The 2024 National Study on Donor Advised Funds (NSDAF) undertook the largest study of DAFs in the US so far by working with 111 DAFs to parse their data from 2014-2022. One of the most interesting findings is that 81% of DAFs in the study were opened after 2010 with 25% or more opened after 2020. That is astonishing! That means that most DAF advisors are relatively new to having a DAF.
Read More »Review of 2024 Reports on Donor Advised Funds