It’s the best time of the year. Leaves are changing, holiday decorations are up, and pumpkins are everywhere.
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.
(Also, never use bleach or other chemicals on the pumpkin; those chemicals can kill wildlife.)
So how does pumpkin carving relate to fundraising?
Just like cutting a pumpkin from the top technically works, the way we use relationship mapping technically works too. But there’s a better way to use it.
Traditional Relationship Mapping
Most researchers are asked to find a pathway between a person, often a gift officer or an Executive Director, and a hard to reach prospect. We can use relationship mapping software to see what connections exist between them. With some vetting, we may find some real connections for that person. You don’t have to have fancy software to do it – but it does help.
Whether using software or searching independently, those pathways may not be as strong as the internet searches suggest. Even with vetting, the data may be overstating the relationship. For instance, we had a relationship mapping project where we were looking for a connection between the nonprofit and a prospect. Turns out that the organization had someone who worked there who had 100+ pathways to the person. But it was a dead end. It turns out that this person worked at a really big company in the C-Suite and did not know any of the people that the software recommended as connectors. Big bummer.
Plus we do not always see those softer connections – the family connections, long-term friendships (or rivalries) — things that aren’t easily found through company websites and LinkedIn.
It is a useful tool, but there’s a better way.
Prospect Identification
At Aspire, we’ve seen the power of using relationship mapping for prospecting. The idea is that you have someone who has a large network who is ideally interested in reaching out to their contacts. Often it’s a passionate board member or donor, or even someone within the organization like the Executive Director who is willing to connect your organization with people in their network.
Many places talk about how they ask a board member or top donor to name folks in their network but the blank page is daunting and they struggle to come up with anyone to contact. So instead of just asking the person who they know, Research can investigate who is in the person’s networks.
Ideally, armed with a resume, Research can explore business connections, board connections, and more. With the list in hand, your organization can return to the eager volunteer to help find out what they really know. It helps jumpstart the thinking and might find the best folks on that list or even people that the researcher didn’t find but helped prompt the idea to the volunteer.
Another option is to create that list of possible contacts and do brief research on them to find the most promising ones with wealth and philanthropy. Then you can take the list of the most promising folks and ask the volunteer for help.
While again, there’s only so much that we researchers can see online and through data aggregators, it’s a way to help an organization grow their prospect pool with people who are connected, instead of just cold calling people who might be interested in the organization’s work.
It’s not that finding pathways is a bad idea but there’s just a better way to do things with relationship mapping.
Sources
The Magic Rainbow of Prospect Identification l Jennifer Filla Blog, 2024
118: Sphere of Influence Research with Chris Mildner l Prospect Research Chatbytes 2024
Want Your Jack-o’-lantern to Last Longer? Stop Cutting a Hole in the Top! l The Wirecutter/NY Times 2024