Welcome, everyone. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is pleased to present this online webinar. Having fun with major gift prospecting tips from the Trenches. My name is Anne Weller and it's my pleasure to introduce our speakers today. Claire Hughes, Senior Major Gift Officer, School of Social Work, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor is an energetic development professional who has successfully built major giving and annual giving programs for two schools at the University of Michigan. In her current role as senior major gift officer at University of Michigan School of Social Work, Claire has used her intrepid, cold calling skills in data mining to wind up hundreds of discovery visits all across the country. Clare has had 15 years of broad fundraising experience that includes plan giving corporate sponsorships, direct mail campaigns, local and regional events and volunteer and board management. Kelli North is a senior development research analyst, also at the University of Michigan, where she assists multiple academic units, as well as the Alumni Association and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Prospect Research, Data Prioritization Analysis and fundraising strategy. Her areas of focus are diversity, equity and inclusion, and next gen fundraising. As a first generation college student, she works to bring her social justice education to her work. Welcome, Claire and Kelli, Thanks to that great introduction and we're really happy to be here today. And I want to start right off by saying, when you think about prospecting for major donors, do you break into a cold sweat and freeze? You procrastinate or do you jump right in? You get a rush from mining for those little diamonds in the rough, or maybe you're somewhere in between. And Kelly and my goal today is to give you a fresh perspective on prospecting so that you can have fun with it and not be afraid of it. So let me just say something right now, Kelly. What would you do if you were in my shoes? Well, I would be very afraid. You know, I'm a researcher for a reason. I love looking at what makes people tick. But the idea of picking up the phone and cold calling someone is puts me in a bit of a cold sweat. But I do think that it's very interesting to help provide the context in the research that helps other people be able to do that. So that's why I'm in the role I'm in. And I think it gives me a bit of empathy for when any officer I work with wants information beforehand or is asking for more information. I can understand why because it's so anxiety inducing to call someone that you don't know and have to maneuver the conversation towards fundraising in a way that feels natural and not forced. Great. So let's go over what we're going to talk about today. First off, we're going to talk about prospecting and planning, and that's really how to use formal research, the type of research that I would request from somebody like Kelly in our Prospect and Data analytics group. Informal research, which is kind of my own DIY research that I do when I talk about what can the outreach do you do to prospect for prospects to actually secure a visit that we're going to get into the nitty gritty? What is it? What does it take to conduct an effective introductory visit so that you can actually capture the information that is going to be most helpful to them to talk about? How do you actually record information from that visit? Because that's really essential not only for you as a major gift officer, but also for follow up research. And then lastly, we're going to talk or Kelly is really going to talk about how can you really team up with your researcher and maximize all of their skills to help you do your work better. And one thing we did want to let people know about is maybe take some notes during the presentation. We have information on the slides, but it's pretty high level. So Clare is going to be giving you some pretty in-depth details and examples. So it might be to your benefit to take some notes and we'll try not to talk too fast so that you can, you know, have time to write things down and keep track of the steps that Clare is going to outline. Thanks, Kelly. That's a great example of my talking too fast, so I appreciate you slowing things down. All right. So we're going to kick it off and get into prospecting and planning and Kelly is going to start with what she recommends you do before your request research. Yeah. So Clare mentioned formal and informal research. And so the definition that we're using for that in our presentation is we would consider formal research to be those really structured prospect lists that you would request from your researcher as well as those biographies or briefings or research memos, whatever your institution calls them, that we create. So we're saying that that's formal. Informal, again, like Clare said, is what you do on your own. It's those Google searches checking their LinkedIn page, those DIY type things. So when I say that Clare is requesting for more research. She's requesting a briefing or a more detailed list. And when I say informal, something informal that I could provide her would be, you know, an email response with a few bullet points of information that will help her make that first call. And so the reason why we have a bullet for a before prospecting is because I think in the past many institutions had it as a best practice where the research team would just provide copious documents, all the information before you ever pick up the phone and call the prospect. In some situations that might be appropriate, but the best practice at our institution when what we're finding just in the in the industry of prospect research is you'll get a much better research result if you make that first call, make that first contact before requesting the research. And so typically what Clare will do is if she has someone that she's interested in exploring, she'll let me know and then ask me for a few preliminary pieces of information that might help her head that first conversation. And then once she has that conversation, so put information or communicate with me and then I'll create a more detailed briefing on that person. And and there are reasons for why we do that, that we're going to explain later. But just as a preview, the reason is that she can find these little breadcrumbs of information that will then help me create much better, deeper, more strategic research. So before you request research, talk to your researcher. Tell them with a person you're interested in. They can provide you with a few nuggets to get started. And then after you've talked to them and recorded your visit and taken down any pertinent information, more in depth research can happen. Okay. Thanks, Kelly. So when I'm talking about my own DIY research, that's after I've perhaps gotten a list of prospects. So in my role at the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan, I'm the only major gift officer. So I essentially cover the country. Our director of development also has prospects, but I'm really the one that's out there combing and looking for new leads. So oftentimes I'm asking Kelly for specific types of alumni donors, and most recently, the school did what was called a wealth screening of our alumni, a certain segment to say, all right, these are folks that we know have some kind of wealth, some kind of capacity to make a major gift, which at our school is in the neighborhood of $25,000 minimum. And these are prospects that I started working on before COVID. I'm still working on them. And there are people, again, who may not have been on my radar because they weren't loyal donors. They don't come to a lot of our events. They haven't been to campus. They're not someone who does things with our career offices. But again, we know they've got some kind of capacity. So when I get a prospect list like that and these are cold prospects or the toughest prospects to really try to reach out to and get business from what I do next is I rank them A, B or C, and I look for a variety of pretty area in doing my ranking and in prospect hits many of the things I'm looking for in reaching out to a key alum. So it could be I like the title that they have in their career. I like where they're located. I, I usually try to do some Googling and look at their LinkedIn profile. If they're someone who is involved in their community and it looks like they've been philanthropic. So sometimes I get to see leads because they attended a benefit or a gala and I can see some of the traffic, maybe not to the university of Michigan, but to organizations in their own community. I have to say that's one of my eight prospects. And also, if I'm traveling and incurring flight and hotel, I want them to be what I call my anchor visits that it makes my trip worthwhile. So the first thing I do is I take a prospect list, could be a 50 people with 75 people, and I start to rank them accordingly so that A is my income group. My B last is that they hit a few of the criteria. They look pretty interesting and worth learning about and they're the ones I want to fill in. Next, my C prospects are the ones that maybe in this case I just see that they have some well, I can see by looking them up on Zillow that their home has a high value, but I don't really know much more about them. And those are the folks that I would contact last. And they're kind of my, like I said, sort of my my last resort visits. But like any anchor list is the key group I'm going to really focus on. And one of the things I do is I try to think of myself as a detective is like, All right, what can I learn about these people? And as Kelly said, one of the things that I might do is look at that comments that she wouldn't really have access to that I might be able to find Googling. One of the things I've learned is that some of our alumni might be publishing papers if they have their own company. I look at their company website, I dig deep into whether they've made presentations and other tidbits of information like that, which may seem labor intensive, but as you'll see later, it really forms a basis for reaching out to them. Building my confidence and really securing that asset. And I think something that's also important to remember is when you're doing DIY, DIY research, DIY is always stuck. I think that's part of my role. Something to keep in mind is to let your researcher know what you have discovered. Like the tidbits that you have an example of how this might come into play, as if you're looking at, for example, the value of their house on Zillow. Many research departments, including ours, have different formulas for calculating wealth capacity depending on where they live. And the researcher will know this when they're doing their formal wall separating. But we always like to take this into account because, you know, a $1 million home in Minneapolis is not the same as a $1 million home in California. So when you are looking, just try to keep those things in mind and keep in touch with your researcher so that the wealth of information in the reading that you are applying can match the data that your research office has. Thanks for that, Kelly. All right. Now I want to dig a little bit deeper into that fear of cold calling, which Kelly already shared, that it's not something she would welcome. And I think it's something that a lot of people are afraid of. And first off, I want to address this because it can be a barrier to you really enjoying prospecting. Obviously, it can feel like you're going on a blind date with somebody which feels scary. Nobody likes checks and we all like hanging out with people who already know us and love us. But here's the rub If we don't cross that, then we're limiting our potential pool of donors. And that's our job, right? Our job is to be finding more and more folks who want to give to our institutions rather than going back to the same folks over and over again. So if you can flip the script a little bit and view prospecting through the lens of being a detective, I find it makes it a little bit more fun. I don't take it personally. I view this as one of a really important access aspects of my job and like I said, when I do my own research, looking at where they live, what they do, it helps me think about how can I reach out to them in a way that's going to make it easy for them to say yes. So again, it may seem like a small note, but if I'm meeting with folks during the day, I really want to think about what is it that their job involves. So, for example, I'm working with a lot of social workers. Some folks have a private practice, so they're booked all day seeing clients. If that's the case, I often offer a chance to meet with them during their lunch break. And take them to lunch or early in the morning for coffee. Or sometimes I'll even just offer to meet with them right after work. So I want to be sure I make it super easy for them to say yes. I also look to see obviously where they're located. And again, if it's someone who is retired, I think, okay, where do they live? Let me look at their neighborhood. What's a place that they can get to easily? Most people aren't going to want to invite. You went to their home. If this is a very first visit. So again, what makes it almost impossible for them to say no if they're interested in meeting is making it very easy for them to say yes. And so that's an example of using your research. The other thing is I try to just create a daily routine so that it's easy for me to say, Hey, here's the day I need to do three calls, here's a day I need to do two calls. And when I create a routine like that, it doesn't seem like something I am afraid of or that I need to put off. It's just another thing I do every single day, kind of like brushing my teeth and even if I don't like doing it, I'm used to it. And it's it's like a muscle memory, right? The other thing I think about is being persistent and being polite. Again, this is my priority to do these calls and to do this kind of outreach, but it's not their priority. So I just keep in mind that I also don't take no personally. Again, this is my job and it's my priority, but it may not be theirs. And then a way I try to keep myself going is I just celebrate every win. So every time someone replies to an email or I get them on the phone, that's a win. If I secure the visit, that's an even bigger win. So I just try to keep myself motivated every step of the way to conquer my fears of cold calling. Now I want to get into really the nitty gritty, because once you're feeling good about this process, there is a method to what you do. I've already mentioned using your research. Whatever you've gotten, especially from your research office as well as all the little tidbits you might have gained. Take that into consideration when you craft your email or craft your message. Obviously, you can have something that's a little bit boilerplate, but as I mentioned, think about time of day to me, location. If they're still working, I always say 20 to 30 minutes. I always say that because it seems like an amount of time that they can fit me in. If they're retired, I know they might have more time and want to relax and chat a lot. So I always make sure I leave a certain amount of time in my schedule for those kinds of visits. And then most importantly, what I tend to think about is the question what's in it for me? So my prospects are busy people and what would be interesting to them and worthwhile to them to visit with me. So a lot of it is, again, from my research, I've figure out something that would resonate for them. For example, are they involved in addiction treatment services? Again, working with social workers? Does the school have a new addiction treatment certificate program? Yes, we actually do. Do we have a student who is leaving something up in that area that might be of interest to them? Do we have an alarm who's actually created a mobile app for people who don't want to go to a 12 step program? Yes, we do. So I try to find nuggets of information that might be of interest to them. That might be a compelling reason for them to meet with me. The other thing I look for is could I get their advice on something? Everyone loves to give their advice. And is it something in their professional career right now that the school could benefit from? And in the case of the School of Social Work, we have a very robust continuing education program. We also have speaker series. We also have opportunities for what we call lunch and learns for our students to get to know about people and their careers as they're trying to choose what avenue they might go post-graduation. So I know I've got some opportunities to not only take their advice in a meeting, but perhaps give them a platform for sharing their wisdom with our students, maybe even faculty or others. So I really look to that in creating my messages. And one of the things I want to share with you is an example of an email address posted for one of my prospects. From the list I mentioned earlier. So I have been trying to look at prospects who have well, but not a lot of engagement with the School of Social work and probably in many cases I've never made a guess. So right now I'm going to click on a sample email. And actually before I do that, I might try a little bit about this prospect. His name is Jonathan. He truly is a John Doe of alumni prospects and why he popped on my radar is because not only did Kelly find out he had some wealth, but he was living in Napa Valley. Okay, So if you can afford to live in Napa Valley, you probably have some. Well, we did not have any data on where he works, but when I Googled him and found his LinkedIn profile. Turns out he's an executive coach and I went and looked at his website. He's got a Ph.D. from another institution. He's got an MSW from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. So we've got him in two fronts. But most importantly, it showed me that he had pivoted at some point in his career from being a social worker into being a high level coach of executives and many executives in the health care industry. And I knew right away that this is someone who probably bills at an hourly basis. He's used to dealing with C-suite individuals. And if he's going to meet with me, it's not going to be leisurely and it's going to have to be worthwhile to him because otherwise I'm taking away from potential revenue streams. And this is a lot different than meeting with a social worker with a clinical practice who may be billing insurance and have a little more lead time. For me, at the beginning of the end of the day, I viewed this person as a great prospect, someone I was going to have to be very clever in reaching out to him. So what I really raised is that he was really consulting with leaders of organizations, and the School of Social Work has a management and leadership track to train social workers who want to go more into administrative roles. And we were reevaluating our program and looking for input on each of our tracks, so to speak, from alumni in the field. So here's an example of the email I sent to Jonathan, and you'll see he gave me a pretty quick response. Okay, I hope everybody can see that and I will let you know right away. I use a subject line with the town in which he lives. I say Napa Valley alumni visit. So right away he knows, Hey, someone's coming to my area. It looks very friendly. I use the word alumni. And then I put Michigan social work in the message and I basically say to him, you know, who am I? Quick introduction and get to the point of why I'm contacting him. This is very essential. And I basically say one of my priorities is to get to know our alumni better that I'm going to be in his area. So that makes it convenient. I give them a range of time and I mention right away, I know something about you. I've seen your website, I've seen your LinkedIn profile. I see what you do. And guess what? We're working on something at the school that's very in line with what you do for a living. And we'd love to tap your expertise. So in a way, it's kind flattery, right? Right away. I know. I think we could learn something from him. And then lastly, I make it pretty easy. I say it's going to be a 30 minute window. I give him a couple of days sometimes, and then I say, I look forward to hearing from you. And obviously with the time difference, you know, I'm sending him very early in the morning. But within 5 hours he writes me back, happy to share my path to consulting. And then he gives me the date and time that works. And I think it's very compelling that he shows me he's got that specific window of time. Read a free 30. He doesn't just say 3:00, he says 3 to 330. So right away, I know he's a very time sensitive individual. And my instincts were right in terms of making it very easy for him to say, yes. Let me jump out of this and back to my other slide. Now, in terms of phone, obviously that's trickier than email. All of us feel more comfortable in email. We can impose our thoughts. We send it off, and then we know someone's got time to ponder what we've just said and reply. However, I will share. That phone is still a very good way of reaching people, especially if they don't reply to email. They may not recognize your name. The subject line might not resonate with them. They might just get a slew of emails all day. So when I pick up the phone, the first thing I do is a envision success be, make sure I have a very short script and see whenever I introduce myself on the phone. Often quickly say right after, this is not a fundraising call or I'm not calling to ask for a gift. I'll be in town meeting with alumni. I would love to have a chance to meet with you too if someone answers the phone was not the person I want to talk to. I have to do the same thing and say, Is that person available? Can you leave a message? If they're not available? I'll usually say something like I'll call back later because I don't want to leave it in there because, you know, to call me and I'll often say I'll follow up with an email and see if that works better in some cases when I so, so friendly and the person knows I'm not really calling for money, they'll even give me that person's cell phone number. If I don't have it on record, they'll often say, Oh, it's easier to reach so-and-so through their cell. Here it is. So it's a lot of playing things by ear, being flexible, reading cues and phone is still very effective. But like I said, you have to be a little more flexible in terms of how it sounds. All right. Let's get into frequency of contact. I think it's important to recognize that if you're using email or phone, you want to lay out a plan of action. And I want to share with you my system and I have found a lot of success with this is I have a rule of thumb where it's a three by three. So if I'm going to contact a prospect, I'm going to contact him three times within a window of time in which I want to meet the firm. So again, if I can say I'm going to be in your town this week and I have a period of time, I'm going to contact them three times. The first attempt. I do prefer email if that's more available and if I don't hear from them within a couple of days I will send another email. But I change the subject line and whatever the subject line was, I add the words trying again in front of my subject line and I find that that's a flag to someone like, Oh, this person's trying me again and I get a lot of success rate with that. If it turns out they don't reply to a second email, but I have a phone number that's usually when I make the call. And in the phone script I will often say, I've tried to reach you a couple of times by email, so glad to get you by phone. If I get a voicemail, I will say the same thing. Tried to reach you by email a couple times. Would love to have the chance to talk to you. And then I do leave my number so they can call me back. If after three attempts for a certain window of time I hear nothing, then I pretty much stop. If it's a location where I have to get on a plane and secure a hotel like San Francisco, I will often send them a handwritten note from that location so that they get post indicia from their town and say something to the fact like, I've really enjoyed my time in San Francisco. I might say something that I saw while I was there, or something about an event that took place and saying, I hope I have a chance to meet with you next time in town again, that kind of primes the pump for another round of contact. So again, I said I had a three by three, so that would be considered three contacts for one period of time. Well, I'm going to hopefully go back to San Francisco later in the year or the following year. I'm still going to reach out to that prospect. I didn't hear from. So I reach out to them again during another second period of time and then a third period of time. And at that point, if I have not, after nine periods of time gotten through to someone, I figure, okay, this person is just not interested. And then the University of Michigan's CRM, there is a way for me to tag that prospect is now response. So I'm not qualified as not a major gift prospect, but at least we know this is a non responsive person at this point. And that's that's very important to to note as well because it saves me time from trying to look at them later on or if I move off from my position here at the social work, the next major gift officer is in trying to reach out to that person as well. They see that the market is not responsive. And lastly, what I want to say is that there's many factors that play into your actually securing a visit. It's not just all about you and your messaging. There's many things you can't control. So that's why I say don't take it personally. Sometimes the day and the time doesn't work, people will often email me back and say, I'm at a conference, I'm busy, I can't see you. Then it's kind of a brush off, but I'll reply and say, hopefully next time or is there a better time? So I always try to have a follow up and sometimes they're replying very quickly like Jonathan did. I think I just hit all the right buttons. He was available and maybe it was just novel that he hadn't ever seen anyone from the School of Social work come visit him in the Napa Valley. All right. Doing a lot of talking here. Do you have anything to add? I have deep admiration for people who are able to do this work. And I do think a couple of things that you said are really important and link factor to research, which is that you investigated what he's interested in, not just what he does. So even though he pivoted from traditional social work, you were able to take the new thing that he's doing, executive coaching and leadership and connect that back to the school. So it made him feel like he's still in the fall of the profession and that he's still of interest to the school. So I think, you know, a lot of times we see people change in their career and we think that means that maybe they're not interested in giving to this particular area anymore. But I think it was really great that you're able to pivot his new interest and connect it back to the school. So I think that's great and that's definitely something that as a researcher, I would want noted in the scripts that I can point out as one of his interest areas, executive leadership, coaching, leadership development, because that could be an interesting engagement point later, maybe he'd want to come to campus and mentor or do a speaker series or something. So I think that's something that's really important to know. Thanks for that. Kelly Absolutely. That's exactly what he did. But COVID hit and we did it virtually. So I can follow up on that later. But let's get into the nitty gritty of conducting an effective intro visit. Again, you can maybe feel a little bit nervous. You think you've got everything in order. And I just want to walk me through some things that I think will reassure you that you can nail this successfully. The first thing is always have a goal. And in my world the goal is always to qualify, meaning either A Yes, let's continue to engage and continue to learn more about this person. They're interested or No, I don't. Not interested. Are they busy with other things? Do they not have a good experience at the school? Are they philanthropic to other organizations, or has their life changed in a way that actually they don't have as much wealth as we thought they had? So my basic goal is always are they going to be a yes, I'm going to proceed with them or no, I'm going to qualify them. As is not a major giving prospect. The other thing I do is I always arrive early to my appointments, at least 20 minutes early so I can feel relaxed, I can feel ready. It gives me time to not be rushing. The other thing I recommend is knowing that it's really on you to build trust. So they're coming into this meeting probably a little hesitant. Even if they're excited, there's going to be a little hesitancy because they know you're from the development office. Maybe they know you're a gift officer, but still they're going to be nervous too. So it's really up to you to to build that trust. And a couple of things I have found to be very effective is really after greeting them, thanking them for this visit, making some kind of small talk about the environment like their office. Is there a piece of artwork there? Tell me more about that artwork. It's just gorgeous. Or you see that they've got a picture of themselves in a sailboat. You know, talk about the sailboat or if you're in a coffee shop. And again, this is a new town for you. Ask them about this coffee shop or make note of the area in which it's located. Because once they start talking about something that doesn't have to do quite yet with the purpose of your visit, it gives them a chance to open up and feel casual and feel like you are interested in them as a person, as someone who lives in a certain community, as someone who has different interests, who have a family, whatever it is, just a quick touchpoint so that it sets them at ease and it shows you that you care about them as a person, regardless of their status as an alarm or as a present prospective donor. Because again, that's how we view them, but that's not how they view themselves at all. The other thing I do is state the reason for this meeting again, and I make it very clear, here's my role. This is what I do. Try to learn more about our alumni and then again restate it to learn more about your experience at the school. Learn more about your career path, or for example, about Jonathan. Say, you know your role as an executive coach, how you got there, and give us some insights into what we might be wanting to incorporate into our program. So that makes them very at ease. It's very clear what this visit is about. And then I always have a few key questions for those people who may be how can I say that's not as forthcoming? Some people dive right in and you can have a nice visit without barely having a lot of questions. But other people, you really do need to sort of interview them. So I always like to say, you know, why did you choose to go to the school of social work? So in your case, why did they choose to go to your university or why did they focus in a certain department or why they're major, you know, just get them talking about their decision making that shows you what I call affinity. Like, what's their affinity to your program or your school? Do they have feelings about it? Was it something their parent wanted them to do, or was this a career change or is this something they just fell into? Because I'll give you a good nugget of information about their fondness for your institution and how you might be able to engage them more. The other thing I do is try to listen more and talk less, even though I'm talking a lot to you right now and I am a talker, I tell people you wouldn't believe how quiet I am when I meet with donors, especially on Discovery. That's and one of the things I do to keep them talking is to use, you know, active listening. So when they tell me something that they're very passionate about or had a lot to say about, you know, I often say, well, tell me why that's so important to you or tell me more about how that came to be. And it's an easy way to keep the conversation going and getting deeper and that's where I really end up getting a lot of information, Like Kelly said, that you couldn't get out of researching, Googling or looking at their website or anything like that, and it gives her important breadcrumbs to follow later. You also have to be flexible. You know, this is really all about them, not you. And so they go off on a tangent. Just go with it. You do have a goal, but be flexible and honor them as a person and make sure they're having a good time. And as you know, you probably feel that people who listen to you a lot are fantastic because they make you feel heard. So again, that's really your job is to do use your active listening mirror back to them, let them know that they've been heard, and also to look for their verbal and nonverbal cues. If people are leaning in using their arms, smiling, talking a lot, well, that tells you they're having a good time. They have good feelings about you, good feelings about your institution. If they're leaning back and only giving you short answers and not engaging, that might be your cue to cut this meeting short, that maybe they just came out of a sense of obligation. Maybe something came up during their day and this was actually no longer a great time to meet, but they didn't want to cancel. So again, that's where you need to use a lot of your intuition and your personal, personal gauge and personal judgment. And like I said before, also be conscious of the time, respect people's time. Often I say to someone when it's getting near the end of one, I said, it'll be a 30 minute visit, I think. Well, know, it's almost been 30 minutes. How are you on time? A lot of people have allocated an hour and they'll say, Oh, I've got plenty of time. Other people will say, No, I've really got to wrap up. And that's my cue to kind of wrap things up. So I do want just share with you quickly that when I did meet with Jonathan, I met him at a coffee shop. And as I said, we got into a conversation very quickly about his path to not only the school of social work but to executive coaching. And it was during that conversation that he actually shared with me that it was very important for him to have a doctorate because he was working in health care and with doctors you got a lot more respect if if you could also be called doctor. So as a social worker, he was not called doctor at the minute. He got his doctorate in organization development. He said he got a lot more respect. So that told me a lot about who he is and what he values. And so that's something to just kind of talk in my back pocket. The other thing he talked about was how his social work degree really set him apart from other executive coaches. And he said it's because social work relies on helping people with so many of their interpersonal skills. And he said that's what leadership is all about and that's what executives struggle with. They struggle with their own blindspots, they struggle with their own insecurities, they struggle with their interpersonal communication style. They struggle with imposter syndrome. Am I good or not? I will be doing this job. So that told me that even though he's moved into this line of work and he's got a doctorate, a social work degree is still body rock for him. He still has a great sense that his education was a value. And even though I didn't get into asking him those questions specifically, like what do you value about your degree? How do you feel about your training? He was telling me that as he was talking. The other thing he told me was that he was thinking about winding down some of his work because his wife was retired full time and she wanted him to have more availability. He also told me she was a full time artist and that they had an adult son who they were supporting, paying for a house to live in and paying for all his expenses because this son had had some mental health challenges that made full time employment difficult for him. And I think by him talking about his wife being an artist, he just naturally went into sort of his family background. And again, I didn't even know if he was married. We had no data in our database that he wasn't either married, but right away that showed me something about his, well, capacity that even though he had well, now I've got to take into consideration what is supporting someone else full time, and I want to be conscious of that as I move through the process with him. And what I did was successfully ask him if he would give an alumni webinar because I knew he would come to campus that really comfortable to come from Napa Valley to Ann Arbor, Michigan very often. And he gave an alumni webinar during COVID all about how social workers pivot and go into executive coaching and leadership coaching, which is much more lucrative often than being in private practice. It was a great success. He felt great about it. We felt great about it, and now I'm in the position of trying to engage him again and hopefully going off to visit him in the next six months. So that gives you an example of just using those introverts effectively. And now I'm going to get into documenting key information because I can see that we've got probably 15 more minutes and I'm still talking. Kelly So I'm going to run through this and chew you up. But basically what I do after a visit is I just write everything down very quickly, stream of consciousness. I don't even edit. And I also try to at the heart of what was said. So if I sense some kind of emotion or hesitancy or something else important, I just write that all down. I just dump anything I learn about family, hobbies, things like that. They collect art, any other details that I can think of? And I do stream of consciousness so that I don't forget for anything. Afterwards, I organize it into a very clear template, which Kelly has told me she loves. I did it so I wouldn't forget, and she uses it to train other major gift officers at the university. So now I will hand it off to Kelly. Yeah, I mean, Claire really, that that process is so effective for several reasons. And I think the stream of consciousness approach really helps you get at the heart of their affinity, like she was saying, and not be married to this script. That's going to limit the types of information that you gather. So the template that she uses to put into our CRM and I say template, it's a format that she uses, not necessarily like a batch upload form, although we can create that is she has sections to the interactions that she puts in our CRM. So the sections are personal and family background. Reason for area of study affinity for the school career highlights. And then she puts next steps in. And the reason why that is so important to Section it is one for clarity so that anyone who's looking in doesn't have to read through five paragraphs of information to find what they're looking for. It's structured, you know, like chapters of a book, so it's very easy to follow. The second reason is that our institution has started doing text searching so our analytics director, Brett Lantz, has created a tool that he calls anchor, where it can search our entire crime no matter what field that's in. Just text search for keywords that have to do with what you're searching for. So if I'm looking for people who are interested in executive coaching, I can put that in and the algorithm finds words that are related to executive coaching in someone's record regardless of the section that it's in. And that's a capability that we did not always have and that we're still developing. But if Clare put something like he said he was interested in this or his wife does this, it helps us to find people that are interested in subject areas and not necessarily just programs. I think that we all know that campaigns are moving towards interdisciplinary type fundraising, so big ideas like sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion and so including these types of information in this format where it's easily searchable, easily findable, is really, really important for prospecting for those types of initiatives. You know, an example of that for school social work, their Centennial Fund is focused on fundraising around anti-racism initiatives and research. And so what I can do in our CRM is if our gift officers have put in great substantive interactions, I can search for people that are interested in that, that maybe don't have a social work degree, but this is where their passion is. So now broadening our constituency based on the great information that our gift officers are putting back into our CRM, I can't stress enough how important it is to not just put Matt So-and-so for coffee in San Francisco putting in that information, those breadcrumbs, those interest areas that can then turn into creating a broader constituency. Affinity based prospecting is so important. And like Claire said, we use her template to train our other gift officers. So anytime I get a new gift officer at one of the units I work with, I always show them the example of Claire's interactions and then explain to them why that helps them so that then later if they come to me and say, Hey, I need to fundraise for anti-racism initiatives, I already have this deep well of interactions on prospects that Claire has already qualified that I can text her. John So it's just very important to document that and to document when someone is not interested, because then we can put a prospect tag on them and that name doesn't keep popping up again and again on. Let's I'll say, Keli, really quickly, is that one of the reasons I created that format was so that I could quickly scan it the next time I was meeting with that person. Because again, I want to remember, is there a key thing about their family? Is there a key thing about their experience at the school, a faculty member that they remember or an event that they attended? So it really was for me what I could image more quickly and continue to engage them and have that consistency of knowledge. Because again, we can't all memorize everything. All right, Kelly, we're going to go on to maximizing your researchers capabilities, how we can team up with you. Yeah, we've put a picture of Devil Wears Prada on here because a lot of times when I tell people what I do, this is what they think of, Oh, so the person you work with is going to a party or an event. They need bios on the people that are attending. So, you know, we're just in the background whispering information into their ears and that is part of what we do. But I think that thinking of a researcher just in that way kind of limits what you can do together. It's really a partnership if you let it be. And both of our jobs are improved by allowing it to be that way. So there are some best practices that we like to institute at U of M for how we work with gift officers and how they work with us. We've already touched on some of that, which is, you know, it's better to ask for a few things that you can use in action in your initial visit, but really wait for that full, deep dive on the person until you do the introductory visit. Then you have all that sectioned information and I can take that information and do a better research deep dive into that. There are many things that I would not be able to tell from the internet. I would never probably be able to find that he that Jonathan had a child who had who is dependent upon him. I mean, that is very hard to find online and public information even in the databases we use. So breadcrumbs like that help me create a better research document for you. So we always say, here are a few nuggets of information that you absolutely need to meet with the person. Maybe we until you meet with them The first time that I can see the report that Claire wrote down and that I can create a much richer, deeper, better research document and the better the contact reports are, the better the research will be. If you have interests information, then I can really see, oh, he's he's interested in this particular area. Maybe he's given to external organization or maybe he's on a board for this and I can check to see how much those gifts were to get on that board. That's stuff that we always check for. But if I know specifics, I'm less likely to mistake. It's especially if he's doing something that's not directly pertinent to his degree, I'd be less likely to look for those things on my own. And so something that we do at our institution is we align our researchers with their interest areas or specialties. So that's an example that I myself of a University of Michigan School of Social Work law. And so I am the researcher who takes care of social work because I have that knowledge of the program. I have a knowledge of the industry, I have friends that are practicing. So as best we can with the researchers we have, we try to align them at least with their interest areas, right? Because the more you're interested, the better research is going to be. And so that's that's an example of a best practice before. But when you do ask another great way to use it as a partnership and not just a transactional relationship is whenever Claire asks me for something, I tend to respond and have a conversation with her about, okay, well, what are you going to use this list or this briefing for? What are you going to ask them about? If she asked me for a broad list for a regional area, what type of person are you looking for? And I think it helps to know the people you're working with. Right. Like, I know the format that Claire prefers to get lists and briefings and it's really helpful. Some people don't like Big Excel spreadsheet, so I'll do some editing and make it easier for them to filter through. Some people love that, so it's good to have a relationship so that you know what people refer because I never want to give people something that they're not asking for. I want to give them what they need. So it's good for me to know Claire well, so that I can work according to her working style and schedule. And that also goes for the size of a list or the length of a memo. Maybe Claire doesn't have time to read through this huge briefing, so I just create her quick one pager, and I know the things that she likes to hone in on, so I know what to include and what not to include. And you know, your researcher can really be much more than just a polar of lists or a biographer, right? We do a lot of things that can help your team. We can help you realign gift officer regions so we can do a market analysis for a particular area that you're looking at. You know, we've created slide decks for deans to make the case for why they should maybe think about hiring another gift officer. We've created a mock portfolio to show it could be supported, so we can do scenarios like that to help you with staffing needs or staffing alignment. We also help with campaign planning and forecasting at our institution, where we're working on gearing up for the next campaign as everyone is as soon as the other campaign ends. So I'm getting your research team on board early to help you build your constituency and see what's really possible for you, especially as we're talking about affinity based fundraising. Do you have a big campaign that has themes that are interdisciplinary? Your research could help you broaden your constituencies. They can think about maybe some nontraditional prospects that don't have a social work degree, but are interested in what social work does. And then another way they can help is Claire mentioned she has an, A, B and C group. Claire is very self-sufficient in prioritizing her own work, but not every gift officer is. So I have many units where I will help them do that prioritizing because they either don't have time to do it or maybe that's just not the way their brain works. So I've created a Google sheet document that I work on collaboratively with the Chief development officer for their team so that I can feed names into it, see their feedback, and then we can go back and forth and then document. So it's like a qualification worksheet. Some people need that to be supported. Claire does not because she obviously is an expert cold caller, but some people need it and your research team can help you do that. And then lastly, metrics and portfolio. Most research and development teams are the ones that are handling gift officer metrics. So if you need help with your engagement score or you need to build up your portfolio or drop people that can help you do that. And I already mentioned areas of specialization. You know, if you if your institution has those bigger and interdisciplinary things like next gen sustainability D-I, your research team can help you find prospects with those that are relevant to your particular area. And then the last slide, institutional knowledge for us, we have six or seven researchers and we have many schools, colleges and units within you event. So obviously we all have more than one school, college and unit that we work with. I myself work with between 20 and 30 gift officers at any given time and so utilize that institutional knowledge. You know, your research team knows what other units are doing and so it helps to know are other are other teams doing a project that you could maybe replicate at your unit? Are other teams thinking about campaign planning when you weren't talking about it yet? It's how is the level set and benchmark yourself with your institution to use that institutional knowledge? And Claire, I hope it's helpful to you. You know, we have a great relationship that I think makes us both better at our job. Yeah, absolutely. I just I just love that Kelli's the social worker and I'll just say she's got our back, she knows who we're looking for and she really keeps on top things. I love it when Kelli sends me prospects. I don't have to ask her. She's like, Hey, so this person thought you might be interested. Yeah. Your researcher is often sitting at tables that you are not sitting at. We sit in strategy sessions, we sit in a certain leadership team meeting. So if you have a good relationship with them, your researcher will advocate for you in those spaces. If there's a prospect that maybe people hadn't thought would be a prospect for your particular unit, they can advocate for you in that space. If you have that relationship and they know you well enough. All right. So we have come to the conclusion of our presentation. We hope you had fun. I wish we were in person. It would be a lot more engaging. We've done our best. We hope our means entertained you. I hope it went by fast. Well, just quickly to wrap it up, just to dovetail on what Kelly said, you know, team up. Don't do this alone. Use your research resources wisely. Ask for help. Like I said, you can reach out to people like a pro, get over your fears of cold calling, set a goal, make a plan, work the plan, don't take it personally. And then once you've had your visit, write everything down like crazy. I always like to pretend I'm a journalist, you know, like, what did I learn? Where might this lead? How can I document their story? That's just how I entertain myself, actually. And then, as I say, rinse and repeat. The more you do this, the easier it gets. Thank you so much, Claire and Kelly. This concludes the webinar. Today's program is Copyright 2021 by the Council Advancement and Support of Education. With all rights reserved for additional case on demand webinars, please visit w w w that case stored flash on demand.

major gift prospecting

building trust

listening actively

prospecting approach

personalized messages

effective communication

market analysis

identifying potential prospects

fundraising efforts