Empower your nonprofit to convert lead prospect opportunity customer for Nonprofit

How to create outlook signature

foreign hello hello everyone welcome I see lots of people starting to uh come in so we're just gonna give everybody a minute or two before we get started to get settled um and while we're waiting uh why don't you kind of pop your name and the name of your organization into the chat so that we can see where everybody's coming from I know we have lots of people uh attending today from kind of all over Canada and from the states there's always one it's got to start with one one person will put their name with their organization in the chat and then they'll all spirals this doesn't have a third time there we go the art oh Georgian Bay from Ottawa from Indiana welcome I love when we have a nice mix of our Canadian and American friends all together on the call okay we've got lots of people still coming in but we are gonna get this show on the road so first of all thank you everybody for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here my name is Meredith I'm keyless head of marketing we also have uh Stephanie keyless marketing specialist helping us out today on the tech side of things so you may see Steph in the chat um or answering some of your technical questions so feel free to say hello to her uh before we get started I just want to start the session today by acknowledging that keyless head office is located in Vancouver which is on the traditional ancestral and unseated territories of the coastalish people the muskriam Squamish and slaywatch youth First Nations and give thanks for their generosity and Hospitality on these lands and Waters uh if you're new tequila welcome uh Kila is a donor management and fundraising platform that brings together all of the essential tools and features that fundraisers need to succeed Caleb was also built by fundraisers for fundraisers I myself was a fundraiser before joining hula as were many people on The Gila team and we have a deep-rooted understanding of the nonprofit sector and have channeled that knowledge and experience into creating a platform that caters to your unique needs so on behalf of everyone at Gila welcome again today's session is going to be about 45 minutes in length plus a 10 to 15 minute q a session at the end throughout the presentation please feel free to write any questions you have in the chat box or in the Q a and we'll be sure to get to as many of them as we can speaking of the chat box please remember to select everyone when you type so that all of our guests today can read your comments and questions and finally the webinar is being recorded you will receive access to the recording via email before the end of this week and just before I introduce our expert speaker today I am going to quickly pass it over to Iman from Imagine Canada to introduce Grant connect thanks Meredith hi everyone my name is Iman Khan and I am the senior coordinator for client success and corporate citizenship at imagine Canada I am calling in from Toronto today which is located on the traditional territory of many nations including the mississaugas of the credit the anishinabe the Sone and the Wenda I am excited to be here with you all today to learn more about Prospect research for non-profits um before we get started I'm happy to take a moment to talk about imagine Canada's fundraising platform Grant connect Grant connect is one of Canada's oldest social Enterprises and it actually dates back to 1966 back when it used to be a big physical book called the directory drawing on more than 50 years of research experience to provide subscribers across the sector with high quality funder data our mission is to help Canadian Charities and non-profits find funders and opportunities that align with their work and their values and save time doing so we all know how much time it can take to find quality funding opportunities and Grant connect helps with that by offering data on well over 11 000 Canadian foundations over 500 corporations hundreds of government grant programs as well as many other funding sources including International opportunities as well Grant connect is a user-friendly platform designed for fundraisers development officers Prospect researchers non-profit and charity Executives as well as social entrepreneurs and social students entering the sector the platform is specifically designed to make Prospect research a seamless process for anyone working on their organization's fundraising portfolio so that's all for me today but if you do want to learn more about Grant connect or have any suggestions at all for making the platform more useful for you and your organizations please do feel free to email us at Grant connect imaginecanada.ca I'll drop that in the chat as well and thanks in advance to Meredith Stephanie Alex and Celine for this very relevant and what I'm sure will be a really informative webinar over to you Meredith thanks Iman uh so I am very excited to welcome our expert speaker for today Celine Herr uh Celine is the manager of prospect development at the YMCA of Greater Toronto she has taught for several years at Humber College at The Graduate level and previously at Georgian College as well Celine has also presented at several conferences with a focus on Prospect research fundamentals and is a board member of apra Toronto Wildlife Center and the past president of apra Canada so without further Ado I'm gonna hand it over to Celine thank you Meredith and just as we got started I couldn't get the slide to advance hopefully that's the the extent of my tech difficulties um thank you everyone for joining I can I saw based on the registration information and some of the uh chat um uh people introducing themselves that we've got a variety of attendees from all different organizations small medium large lots of different sectors from across Canada and even some from the US I want to give a special shout out to anyone in the Arts which is where I got my start and still hold that very close to my heart so today's session is geared towards people who are new to Prospect research you know get just getting started or you're just simply curious about what it's about and as well um major gift fundraisers who work in smaller fundraising teams who might not be fortunate enough to have a researcher to work with I have to say that it was a bit of a challenge to determine what to pack into the short webinar I've gotten used to sort of presenting this topic over a seven week course at Humber College so um it was a activity and trying to be concise and so I hope that you know my efforts will shine through and you'll leave us some good nuggets of information once I take you through some of the fundamental concepts research Basics and share some resources and tips so getting started we know that you know simply by opening the newspaper reading news online as we see posts on LinkedIn even just you know going to your own inbox or mailbox you know that we live in a very competitive environment where you know there are multiple Charities and worthy causes vying for attention and donations so in this type of environment it's the high performance fundraising teams that really come out on top and fundraisers enjoy a lot of Glory when they secure large donations and hit their revenue targets but more often than not there's a prospect researcher or a team of researchers that has helped to ensure that success and it's the facts and figures that are uncovered about a prospect that are combined with relationships and connections that help a fundraiser develop those meaningful relationships with the prospect who has since become a donor Prospect research really makes the fundraising activity more efficient and effective among many things so in other words all the bits and pieces of information compiled and analyzed through Prospect research Prospect development professionals it's all used so that the right Prospect is asked by the right person at the right time for the right gift and one of our goals is to prepare the fundraiser for all those right factors I want to emphasize that in today's session about Prospect research when I talk about major gifts I Define that as any donation of ten thousand dollars or more this can really vary from organization to organization depends on the size of the organization mostly so you know somebody who works in a larger University setting they might think you know ten thousand dollars is not considered a major gift in their in their organization but for us at the YMCA of Greater Toronto that's where we reset it um if you work for a smaller organization maybe a thousand dollars is considered a major gift um what's important is that you know your team defines it and you use it consistently and um and and there's yeah understanding about what what that is what you learned today can be helpful in researching organizations but I just want to point out that I will be focused more on researching individuals of course what you learn will be helpful but I can tell you that there can be a whole other webinar focused on Foundation research or you know prospecting for corporate donors I also want to mention that you might hear me saying Prospect research um as well as Prospect development professionals the two terms are interchangeable Prospect development professionals is a term that um was introduced more more recently because it acknowledges the fact that those of us in research we do oftentimes do more than just research we are involved in relationship management management of the relationships with prospects and donors we help to manage relationships with fundraisers amongst fundraisers we also get involved with campaign planning so it's a lot broader than uh just doing research on on a prospect um Prospect development professionals as I mentioned they really enhance the ability of a fundraiser to translate the fundraising priorities of an organization to the most relevant prospective donor so that you know nobody's time is being wasted you know the the prospects time isn't being wasted the fundraiser's time isn't being wasted by pursuing the the wrong leads on a long-term basis effective focus on major prospects and fundraising is really the way that we'll help an organization effectively and efficiently fundraise we are focused on people with the greatest wealth capacity um the philanthropic inclination that matches your organization's uh Mission and as well as matching that personal interest with your organization but so what does it take to be a good researcher off the top of my mind I think of you know someone who is curious who is persistent you have an eye for detail your systematic thinker you have the ability to go through a lot of information and synthesize it and interpret it for others you also have strong communication skills and your strategic thinker and the Strategic thinking part is important because Prospect researchers are are are considered strategic partners of fundraisers where when you work together with a fundraiser and you know share different perspectives and insights that is where you will see fundraising success some of the um some of the roles of a prospect researcher are enlisted here and as I mentioned it can go beyond this which is why we are often referred to as Prospect development professionals to not just focus on Research before I go further into what exactly Prospect research is about I want to um highlight the importance of understanding the fundraising cycle especially from a major gift perspective some of you might have seen this chart before or a variation of it it's a cycle starting from identification and going through to stewardship which indicates sort of all the different stages that you take with a prospect and when until they become a donor and I won't go through each of these stages in terms of uh you know what a fundraiser does but I can point out how Prospect research plays a significant role in each stage of the cycle so at the identification stage you know we think about who does the organization know who could support a particular project or a particular cause we look for new prospects this can be quite challenging depending on what you're trying to fundraise for if it's um you know a large Prospect requiring lots of large gifts you might go through four or five or eight prospects just to secure one gift if it's a unique project where you know there's a niche market you might have you know two or three strong or viable prospects that uh you you will have luck with so this identification stage the prospect researcher can you know prepare a list of names you know Source from the organization's database from donor lists of similar organizations etc etc I'll give you some more um ideas in terms of where you can start identifying prospects for your organization the next stage is qualification where um you know you've got a list of names now now what do you do right what what happens to these names you need to think about how to determine you know who might be a strong Prospect or not and that's where you can develop a system to rank or prioritize them um in a later slide I'll talk about Lai which is the acronym for linkage ability and interest which is one way of writing and prioritizing the prospects at this stage of qualification um you are looking for people who you know have a current or past link with the organization people who have the ability to give you know based on income disposable income um wealth indicators of uh different types as well as um you know just their their areas of interest and whether you know philanthropy is is something in that you can see in their history do they even have an interest in your particular cause is there a volunteer that helps your organization who might be connected to this particular Prospect and is there any information that the volunteer could provide you with because as researchers we are looking at publicly available information we we are we don't have that crystal ball we can't Source you know information from someone's head so we do need the help of fundraisers and volunteers to help with that second stage of qualification at the cultivation phase um you know that's where research can help as well as the fundraiser or volunteer you know starts building the relationship with a prospect they uh bring back information from a meeting that they've had and as a researcher you go through that those meeting notes and see if there's any further research that you can do to help the fundraiser this is where the relationship between the fundraiser and researcher is really important as well where you know if a fundraiser has completed a meeting with our team where we encourage everyone to write call reports so that they let the team know you know what they learn at the meeting and the information is shared for further research and more importantly you know the information is put into our database so that in the future we can see sort of the progression of the relationship and it's part of that institutional knowledge then we get to the oh and I should mention that that cultivation phase is probably one of the longest phases as you know those in in fundraising experience and fundraising know with major gifts in particular that cultivation phase can take up to two years then you have solicitation um which is you know sometimes the scariest part of of the relationship where the fundraiser finally you know makes that ask but if you've done your research and you've been cultivating the relationship well um then you should the fundraiser should have a good sense of what to ask for and whether the timing is right and if you know the right person is is asking for that donation where research can help is you know keeping an eye on on the news for example um has that person's business recently uh come across any challenges or is there a significant Milestone coming up um they might learn about life changes and uh related to the individual those are timing things that are important that might indicate to the fundraiser oh now is not the right time to make the ask right so there's a lot of um uh two-way communication between the fundraiser and researcher as you lead up to that you know the solicitation phase and then finally stewardship is uh in other words we call it you know you're cultivating that that donor for the next gift so you go through the whole cycle again and continue building the relationship and doing research where um you know it might help and before I dive into you know research techniques and and resources I I always like to cover ethics first sometimes when I describe my job to others even to you know some people in fundraising the first reaction is oh so you're really good at stalking people right and earlier in my career it's something I used to laugh off but now you know older and wiser as a professional researcher I use that opportunity to educate others about um you know what Prospect research is about and clear up misconceptions about what we do and how we do our jobs and I really encourage you to do the same to you know build awareness about what Prospect research is about and how it helps with fundraising Prospect research is not creepy it's not about stalking we use publicly available information from verifiable credible sources we definitely don't include information from hearsay or gossip we respect the prospects confidentiality their privacy and we are transparent about how we go about doing our work we don't sneak around or do anything illegal to obtain information Prospect research is about providing fundraising intelligence and I hope that I made it clear in the previous slide that we really enable fundraisers to do their best how how they can use their time wisely and not to waste the time of a prospect as well the community of prospect development professionals operates within a set of principles ethics and compliance which starts by noting that Prospect development professionals must balance a constituent's right to privacy with the needs of their organizations to collect analyze record and disseminate information and for further information I highly encourage you to check out those links to see what the statement of Ethics is about and the second link there has really great resources to various toolkits and other other sites that can help you so I threw in this slide because it always makes me laugh sausages and you know hot dogs it just uh you know we I think a lot most people enjoy eating sausages and hot dogs but we never want to know what's put into what's put into that bed casing right we just want to enjoy it and and you know be ignorant about the contents and so it I pull this up because there's a researcher at one point I saw somewhere online and I I can't believe I I can't remember the source but this person said research is like sausage Everyone likes it but no one wants to know what goes into it and it's so accurate because Prospect research you'll see in the next few slides um it can be a lot of work and it can be especially frustrating when you put a lot of time into it researching a particular Prospect pulling together a list of potential prospects um and yet you know you'll you'll come up empty you won't find anything on a particular Prospect or you know this Prospect doesn't get added to the pipeline for further exploration and you know it just sometimes it takes a lot of time to um find to produce nothing but you know you're checking out your sources you're making sure you've got all your bases covered and yet you still come up empty but I have to say that you know those moments of frustration or disappointment those are really balanced out by the team's successes and everything that you help make possible so I hope you'll keep that in mind every time you think you know that you've gone down the rabbit hole or you know you've wasted you know two hours and you've come up empty so getting into the meat of it we want to think about you know how do you start and um identify individual prospects I always start with a list you know I develop a list whether it's you know starting from scratch or going through a volunteer's you know LinkedIn net worth their you know their contact list you'll always end up with a list of some sorts and I have to say that this part this part of building a list which then helps to feed the prospect pipeline this is the creative aspect of Prospect research that I quite enjoy it's where you get a chance to you know think about how many different ways can we solve this problem right like how many different ways can we uh Source this list I'll I'll just mention that there's this uh there's this uh diagram of concentric circles that Hank Rosso has developed it's quite old uh I can't remember when it was established but it's called concentric circles of giving and it basically represents an organization's universe so at the center of the circle if you can imagine you don't sort of like a bullseye it indicates the people that are closest the nearest and dearest to your organization right so that can be your internal database of donors alumni grateful patients ticket buyers Etc As you move further and further out in in the levels of the circle they are also prospects in your organization's Universe it's just that they're further removed and they're less connected and um that's where you know you might start looking into you know other industries that are relevant to your particular charity it might be you know individuals who live close to your facility but aren't involved at all um it can go as far out as you know those top Rich 100 lists you know those most of those individuals are probably the furthest removed from your organization so I would say that the best place to start is really um within that Bullseye right those are the the people that are already known to your organization they know you they've supported you in some respect in the past or even currently so you know those would be your board members your volunteers your current and past owners people who have attended an event in the recent past these are the people that you would start with and then all those other bullet points are other just it's just a small collection of other uh places that you can start looking as you develop the list you also want to think about you know what's the best way to compile your list do you build an Excel spreadsheet do you start putting all the information into a database and I have to say that you know if you have a dedicated data entry resource or you know admin support then I would really encourage you to get all the information into a database you know into all the relevant fields um you know the name the title the person the organization addresses any other you know research bits of information the reason why it's good to get the information in the database in those particular Fields is that you can be able to pull this in the future more easily you'll be able to segment the information based on their needs and as well more importantly you know you'll have historical um tracking in terms of the types of activities that you've done people that you've identified in the past and you'll be able to know you know which prospects have been considered before and what's the status but if you have limited resources um such as myself I I am a solo researcher um I really I always start with an Excel list and then I determine what types of information to put into the database and in what format I unfortunately don't have time to populate all the specific fields in the database so sometimes I just you know copy and paste all my research findings and put it in a notepad within razer's Edge which is the database that we use I know it's not ideal but you know we make do with what we have uh but I I do make sure that I get into the database in some form or another you can also make the call in terms of you know maybe all the information lives in an Excel spreadsheet until um you know a fundraiser decides to take on that name or you know volunteer connection is found then you can put the information into the database for for the future tracking so it depends on your situation I would say and again it's dictated by the resources you know human resources and and time that's available once you have some lists uh you know you think about what's the next step right you can do some quick research to further qualify a prospect um and uh you can you know just pull together the the their title the company some of their recent giving information and you know where have they recently been involved as a volunteer um I would say that those bits of information are helpful so that you are validating for yourself first of all you know why why this name is on a list there's good reason for the name to be on the list and as well when this list is shared with others you can basically you know you have your case in terms of proving why this person should be considered right I think the most difficult part of pulling together this list is finding out who is connected to this particular Prospect and who is going to be able to help you know open that door and help the fundraiser book that introductory call with a prospect how do you take it from you know simply a name on a page a name on a list to that first meeting that's where you can get the help of volunteers and um you know the fundraisers and you you present the information in what I call Prospect review template and I use an Excel spreadsheet basically all the fields that you see here would be individual columns per Prospect and um this can be used just presented to whoever's reviewing the list in terms of a prospect review session you might present all this information or sometimes it just might be the prospect name title and Company it depends on who you're working with and I would like to say that um you know when you produce anything any research products for the team that you're working with or any volunteers you do want to get an understanding of how they like to work and how you can best support them so that's why you know some of those fields I have in Brackets because sometimes you know a particular volunteer just might want to see the name title and company and they can quickly say yes or no you know I know these people or don't and I'm willing to help other times volunteers will will want to see a little bit more information because that might you know draw their memory so if they see a prospect's name and they see that this person was involved in a board or they sit on you know a corporate board where they might have some connection that might help help make the connection as well so it varies from relationship to relationship with the volunteers and the fundraisers the the items below that dotted line are the additional columns that are specific to volunteers that I like to throw in so um you know it's information that you're getting from the volunteer or getting from a fundraiser so when they look at the the list of names and titles and companies the volunteer can say you know yes I know this person but they might not be willing to you know contact them because they might just know them but they don't feel comfortable enough or the relationship isn't there right but the second level is yes I know that person and I'm willing to contact them on your behalf and then the best is that third column the third category where the volunteer says yes I know them I'm willing to contact them or you know the fundraiser can contact them and I'm willing to come and attend a meeting with you that's that's the best part where you have that personal connection moving beyond that list of names on uh on a spreadsheet you might be asked to do a little bit more in-depth research and I have to say that I don't often it's been a while since I've had to pull together a profile with all these categories of information because um I found that especially as a solo researcher you know I could become that bottleneck right it can take quite a while you know sometimes up to two hours four hours to pull together all that information for a full profile more often than not I'm providing something that I call a snapshot which is sometimes it can just be you know five bullet points or it can be you know 20 bullet points with relevant information that you know fall into these categories and it's really um something to get the fundraiser going and something to prove that yes this is a viable Prospect and worth going for a discovery call worth trying to um you know work with a volunteer on trying to you know develop the connection and find that relationship so oftentimes I'm providing snapshots with with the relevant information the other reason why I don't like to pull together full profile because you have to remember that you know as researchers we're pulling information from publicly available in for uh sources and just like you and I you know Everyday People our whole lives are not on the internet right and it everything is not available so if I pulled together a full profile that just shows um but that just shows you know what's available out there it's not everything about a particular individual so when you pull together a full profile it could cause some preconceived notions about a prospect and sometimes they're unwarranted so that's why I highly encourage you to shift the team towards accepting snapshots things uh pieces of information that show that this is a viable prospect it's worth trying to develop a relationship and learn more about the prospect you know firsthand through a meeting with them as well you know when you when you're doing research on on prospects you can quickly get overwhelmed with information out there so I like to even though I might not be producing full profiles I like to have this checklist in my mind or you know side of my desk just to keep me on track and keep me focused on the types of information that I'm looking for and it's really easy to go down Rabbit Hole so when you start looking at these you know bullet points these categories it really focuses you on what's the point of finding this information and um whether it's relevant or not to include so for example you know why do we look at corporate directorships that's an indicator of where the prospect is connected it might help you find further connections how to reach that Prospect through you know first or second degree relationships um the career obviously you know based on uh the the workplace and job titles that can be an indicator of wealth and gifts to other organizations that's useful information you can get a sense of what the person's interests are whether they're philanthropic how philanthropic they are you know what giving levels are they at uh but again like I said before you can spend a lot of time and sometimes come up with nothing there's a lot of times where you know people prefer to give anonymously and just because you're not finding any information about a prospect doesn't mean that they're not supporting the community it just might mean that you know they they have most of their life uh offline and they like to give anonymously uh I should highlight that anytime I pull together research findings whether it's you know in a list format like the previous slide in the prospect review list or in a snapshot or a full profile I always add a watermark or you know footer on the document marking the document confidential you know whether the the document is shared with a fundraiser or a volunteer that's helping to fundraise I want to make it very clear that the document should be treated carefully and um that's that it's confidential information so you can even go a little bit further and add a one-line note about how the information was prepared with due diligence and gathered from publicly available sources and you know internal data from from your own database well I I just noticed that there's a bit of a time check there I have 10 minutes so I might go through the next few slides a bit quickly um like I said it was a bit of a challenge of thinking about how to condense seven weeks of information into less than one hour uh but I will do my best so this next slide is about Lai as I have mentioned previously linkage ability and interest so when you are doing research on an individual these are the questions that you should keep in mind these help you stay focused on the information you're looking for and as well help you uh prioritize you know how whether or not the person is a good Prospect or not or might be a stronger Prospect or a weaker Prospect so some of these questions are you know related to linkage who can provide advice related to this Prospect who can make an introduction who has influenced so that can be gathered from you know determining what boards the individual sits on who knows them um as well you know has the person been involved with your charity at some point in the past um you know have a have they bought tickets from an organization before maybe their their kids you know attended your organization's day camps in the past there's some sort of connection there right intra um ability is you know we're doing prospecting for major gifts right so great if you find someone who's made a lot of 100 gifts here and there but that individual might is probably not the right Prospect for you if you're looking for a major gift prospects so you want to look at donors that have made significant gifts uh in the recent past and use that to rank whether or not this person is a good Prospect or not for your particular purpose and then there's interest or inclination does the person have any interest in philanthropy at all have they been involved in the community have they made donations have they volunteered to causes that are similar to that of your organization um there are so many different ways so many other questions related to Lai that I can get into but this is just to get you started um and uh I will I'll provide an example of how you can use Lai to rate prospects um some example simple example could be that you know if you work for an independent Theater Company um and you come across a prospect you will take the interest category for example and on a scale of one to five you can rate the person who's made several donations of twenty five thousand dollars or more to you know Opera the art gallery and Symphony in the past three years you could rate that person as a four out of five in terms of Interest right so higher ranking Prospect in comparison you know you might find it another Prospect who's also been generous but their donations of 25 or more or twenty five thousand dollars or more has been directed to you know universities hospitals and maybe you know an opera donation that one you might rate more of as a you know two out of five not because you know they're they're not uh they don't have the ability to give or that they don't have um an interest in giving it's just that the causes that they have given to are not as well aligned to what you do at an independent Theater Company now here are some resources that can be useful to you I've got a couple of slides of free resources and ones with um that are paid resources and because of time I'm not going to be going through each of them uh one by one but um I would like to highlight a few and and I have to know that this is not and by no ways an exhaustive list that could go on for pages and pages but this is just to get you started and um with practice and experience you'll be able to build your own checklist of free and reputable resources or you know paid resources that you prefer to use I've broken this down in terms of categories that can help to distinguish the primary area of focus for a particular resource but definitely you know some of these resources can be used to to give you intelligence from multiple angles for example you know if you're looking at obituaries that can give you a lot of insight into the person's family connections their career and philanthropic interests um I would encourage you to check out your Public Library they have amazing resources online as well as you know hard copy and Librarians are always happy to help people research they are so skilled and and highly trained they're really happy when they get to talk to a researcher and they get to introduce you to some some resources so I highly encourage you to do that as you can see I've listed a few free resources that you can get that are you know paid by our own tax dollars um in terms of Google uh or DuckDuckGo which is an alternative the key is to use um you know the right keywords synonyms phraser phrases and uh check out the advanced search option so I'll leave it at that and let you explore it on your own um the second slide of more free resources these are related to philanthropic interests and someone's involvement as well as several related to wealth um for CRA for example um a lot of you have probably visited this the CRA site and searched for charities what you can find there aside from information on particular foundations and the directors and assets these can also be an indicator of family wealth um you know families have established foundations as a way to make their donations in a tax efficient manner so that's often how I I will just get a little bit more information about the family um the other ones uh Cedar and seti the last two items on on the list those I can tell you that they are there are specific webinars that you can sign up to dive into those details and it's really helpful when you do become familiar with the resources that are available there if you're looking into individuals who work at um uh publicly traded companies and then finally we have some online resources that are fee based and I encourage you to check out different vendors they often have free demos and free trial periods so you can take time to you know run a query on your own or you know look up a few names uh there are some vendors who offer lower subscription fees based on the size of your organizational budget as well so you know that's really conducive to smaller organizations who have limited budgets as a solo researcher I have to say that I've been a long time subscriber of Grant connect and iWave mostly due to my experience with them and personal preference with their their uh their their layout and how how I do searches on them you can connect with me afterwards if you'd like to hear more about my experience I always have vendors contacting me trying to get me to you know try out their tools their resources and I do try them out because it's always good to you know stay aware of what else is out there but I keep going back to Grant connect and Highway because it's what I'm used to and and I've been happy with what I've been getting through there and honestly as a solo researcher you know there are only so many resources that I can afford to cover and there's only so much time in the day that I can use them if you don't have a budget at all um you'll you know rest assure that you can still compile lots of publicly accessible information you know based on those few resources I share in the past two slides just know that you know it'll be a little bit more time consuming and uh to reassure people who have no or very little budgets I I always you know tell people that you will be able to find lots of information and um and even when I when I teach one of the assignments that I give my students is uh please complete this profile but using only free resources and see how creative they can get in terms of you know keyword searches and using the public library and all those resources that I mentioned before and you know as you get more and more experience you'll become more Adept at searching and it will take you less time as well and and you'll you'll end up developing your own list of preferred sources another great resource is Opera Canada and this this uh this textbook basically that Opera Canada volunteers put together a few years ago I have links there so please do feel free to check them out because this textbook is the primary book that I teach from if you know your researcher just starting off or even you know if you're experienced do check it out lots of great tips and and theory in there and if you're a fundraiser you don't have a researcher to work with this is really great um knowledge to to take in it will really help you um Opera Canada is a really good resource it's good for networking um you know going attending webinars that they offer there's an Africana conference every two years after Canada is where I got my start I you know first volunteered at a conference then I applied and you know received a scholarship to attend a conference the following year then I got involved with the board and you know it goes on and on and I have to say that it's been so beneficial for me in terms of you know networking learning and and giving back as well as as a mentor as I continue to do nowadays and Opera Canada's membership is only forty dollars a year per person there's also institutional rates available if you're buying more than one membership per organization and then after International is uh the the third link there apprehome.org that's the international body that's offers headquarters um check them out they've got lots of other resources and lots of different membership options as well and before we go into questions I just want to share something that I've been really proud of in in my career is this textbook case um basically back in 2018 uh we were starting to fundraise for this YMCA in the East End of Toronto on Kingston Road and I was asked to put together a list of prospects so I started looking at you know the donor list of organizations in the area I started looking at business owners and I I built a list and in the end came up with a solid list of 30 names that was presented to a group of volunteers of those 30 names we had eight names that were identified by the volunteers including one volunteer who was really Keen to make an introduction uh to the member of the Stavro family so um Stavro some of you might be familiar with the name Steve Stavro was a Macedonian Canadian businessman he established Knob Hill Farms he became a grocery store magnet um he he owned several sports teams became a director of the Toronto Maple Leaves and gone to um race race horse industry so this was the family that we were trying to connect with and basically I um developed a discovery profile for the volunteers first meeting with a member of the stavo family he had a really great meeting he was invited back for more so then I developed a more in-depth profile and the YMCA was invited to present a proposal to the Family Foundation there were further discussions between the YMCA and and this foundation and the family members and it resulted in one of the largest gifts in the YMCA's history at the time and this was funding to name the YMCA out in the East End which is called the Stephen Stalley Stavro Family YMCA and the most amazing part is that all of this happened within two months which is quite unbelievable because as I had mentioned previously most major gifts take about two years to come to fruition this was just a matter of you know right person right connection right time and the foundations you know giving decisions and uh I think the cherry on top was that through one of the meetings um we learned that Steve Stavro when he first came to Canada he relied on the YMCA to sort of get his feet on the ground so a really uh good success story that I always like to brag about and so that brings us to the end um and uh I just want to share a few takeaways um I would say that identifying prospects and doing the research is not necessarily difficult but it's the skills that you need that require some practice and as you can see it's uh time consuming and you need to be strategic about how you spend your time especially if you're part of a small team my second takeaway would be get to know your colleagues the fundraisers Prospect researchers and fundraisers are really driven to succeed to you know meet the same goal but we have very different motivational factors at the same time we have complementary skill sets and when you bring together those skills in different perspectives you can really enhance your fundraising efforts and frankly it makes the work environment so much more enjoyable when you get along with your colleagues and then finally third tip is that you should get inspired by best practice that is adapt right so be open to learning new ideas looking at best practice examples um go to webinars conferences and all that but don't get caught up in uh you know the fear of missing out you know you might see an amazing presentation they've got these amazing visuals and you know research results and all that but keep in mind that you know especially if you're in a small team um you know there's no need for you to go to that extent focus on your own organization's needs what makes sense what can you adapt to help your team do its best thank you very much okay wow thank you certainly there's so much good uh information in there I can tell by the the questions coming in that everybody is you know Finding incredible value in what you presented today so thank you uh we're gonna get to a couple questions and anybody that we can't get to Celine has put her her LinkedIn and her email there so feel free to connect with her uh but the first question that we got in is asking if there are any ethical or legal issues about using tools like political party donor lists for prospecting new donors political party list um I if it depends on how they're Source right if if the lists have been if those lists were compiled specifically for an organization where you know people have paid um to to do so and people that provide their information knowing that their names and information are used for certain purposes then you shouldn't be using the information like I would say the the most um comparable is for example yeah I I think most of you are probably familiar with like young president's organization right it's a closed membership organization they they pay fees to be part of that group if somebody who's a member says oh I can uh you know access our membership list and share it with you and you can check it out and see who might be good prospects um I would say that's definitely a no-go because people have agreed to share their information on that contact list for ypo's specific needs not to be prospected for other organizations okay great I see a lot of questions um coming in about tools and resources and things like that and we are going to share Celine slides as in the follow-up email so you'll get that before the end of the week so you'll get links to everything that that she was sharing so just for all those people asking questions about all the the incredible resources Lee mentioned today don't worry uh we will get those over to you but our next question is uh in a small shop with limited time and resources to get to dedicate to prospecting what do you think the most effective and efficient tool would be I'm sorry I was fiddling with my tech here can you just repeat the question again yeah of course uh in a small shop with limited time and resources to get it to dedicate to prospecting what do you think the most effective and efficient tool would be Google Google if you don't have any resources at all just get really good about you know using the right keywords try out that advanced search option um going to the public library as well you know like I said there's there's lots of resources available there um and DuckDuckGo was the the other sort of web browser uh search engine that I had mentioned and I'd like to point out that with DuckDuckGo it doesn't track your search history which can be beneficial because uh with with Google once you start searching with certain words again they obviously prioritize the results that are presented to you so sometimes you might miss something because Google is basically filtering it out for you you know thinking that they're they're helping you with your search right but you should try both actually you know do a search on Google do something on DuckDuckGo see which you prefer and um and uh and and with practice you know you'll you'll see which one is it gives you the best results okay great I think we have time for for one more before we close it out but do you have any suggested queries to start mining your database and identify prospects hmm um I would say one would be it's something called rfm analysis that stands for recency frequency monetary value so recency you know how uh when was the last time somebody gave right in combination with frequency how often have they given and in combination with monetary value you know what's the the giving amount right so it could be you're pulling this list and you're finding donors who have given you know ten thousand dollars a year every year on a regular basis and um that can you know that's a place to start I mean there are so many so many different combinations and you know variations that I can think of but Google it right rfm analysis and and that will give you some some pointers um you can also look at uh you know occurring your longtime members you know when do they first start becoming a member when did they first buy their ticket uh you can look at postal codes what are the wealthy postal codes and poll people who live in those wealthy postal codes see if you can find any connections to those people um if you track information like uh company industry or people's titles you can uh query you know all the VPS and up right and those are people that are more likely to have wealth than people that are not at that VP level um yeah I could go on and on so hopefully I feel like we could do I feel like we could do Prospect research part two webinar and then probably Parts like three four five six yeah yes um okay well that's we are at times so that does conclude the the session today thank you so much again Celine I hope everybody is leaving today ready to kind of dive into the world of Prospect research and again feel free to connect to Selena on LinkedIn or reach out to the tequila we're always happy to help uh before we go I just want to let you know that there will be a very short survey that will pop up right after the session it should only take you about 20 minutes or sorry 20 seconds not 20 minutes to complete and we would greatly appreciate hearing your feedback uh we also have our next webinar coming out next Tuesday June 6 with Julia Campbell called how to drive donations and get engagement using social media and Stephanie will be leaving the link in the chat to register for that webinar so thank you again Celine and thank you to everybody uh for joining today and we hope to see you at the next key Labs webinar thank you I look forward to hearing from some of you thanks everybody