Walk into a meeting of Researchers in Fundraising (RiF) and you’ll be amazed. At least you will be if, like me, it has been a while since the last RiF meeting that you attended. We used to meet huddled round a corner table in a cafe near Piccadilly. Then there were four of us. Today there are more than 200 researchers and the numbers just keep on growing. Why is prospect research growing? And where is it going?

Excuse me, I’m the new researcher

Nowadays, serious fundraisers and development officers, even those working in relatively modest organisations, like to have their own researcher. From Aberdeen to Truro there are universities and hospices and NGOs with a prospect researcher on board.

Take Sheila . She has just been appointed as a researcher to a mid-size conservation organisation north of London. A year ago the organisation was debating whether or not it ought to have a fundraising manager. Most of the fundraising was done by a trusts fundraiser and the director and they found themselves at an organisational turning point. Either grow fast or stagnate comfortably.

Opting for growth, the organisation aimed at both revenue and large gifts for capital. It now has a vibrant fundraising manager whose first action was to appoint a researcher, Sheila, to support the trusts and large-gift work. If you had talked, five or even three years ago, about hiring a prospect researcher for the organisation you would have been politely shown the door.

There are researchers like Sheila in mid-size and large organisations everywhere who are now filling new appointments in an organisation where prospect research has never been done before. These researchers face special challenges.

Proving her worth

It is hard enough for a new fundraiser to prove her worth. Having shelled out thousands for their new hire, the Board wait expectantly for BIG results…and wait, and wait. Meanwhile in a corner desk behind a pile of files sits our researcher who must prove her worth by…well, what exactly? By finding Mrs Gloria Slee-Rich amongst the standing orders in the database? By uncovering Super Huge Foundation in an obscure directory? Or by producing a good invitation list for the President’s Birthday Cocktail party?

Measuring the value of research and valuing our researchers is a challenge in all organisations, but is a particular challenge where this is a first-time appointment.

Allowing access

Most new appointments in prospect research work may well find themselves being greeted by a filing system that has not been cleaned out for a decade. They are shown the database but not told that actually the Director’s contact list would be far more useful. And they are shown their corner with the hope that they will quietly get on with the job.

Lorna started out in just this situation. She came into a pushy, target-orientated development office in a leading business school. Nobody bothered to tell her that the database on which she was working was just one of many. The most interesting data was held on the PCs of her Development Director colleagues. They didn’t tell her, in part, because they were too busy to do so. Tidied away in her corner, separated from the mainstream of fundraising thinking, Lorna might have stagnated.

Thankfully she got angry. Her anger helped her overcome her natural modesty and she simply pushed and pushed at the doors of the Development Directors until they let her into their circle.

To function, all researchers must have access to the knowledge of the whole organisation. Everyone must help her find the in-house data and the obscure files. No-one can be too busy to see their researcher. Because if they are, their researcher will never be able to produce the quality of work of which she is capable.

Keep Ahead

The new cadre of prospect researchers, and their more experienced sisters and brothers, need training. And here is a gap. There is no professional qualification in prospect research. There are courses, and organisations like The Factary offer a range of training options. But that is not the same as a properly thought out modular course, with a programme of continuing professional development. It’s time for the profession to get a grip on this need.

And So Tomorrow

Unless the world decides to immolate itself, the trends that I outlined at the start will continue. What are the implications for all of us?

Making more of who we know

The key change is that we can now do more with the little we have. The old-style fundraising cowboys did a lot of churn and burn. They churned through rented direct-mail lists and burnt out donors. Fundraising researchers help people realise that their donors and supporters are one of their most valuable assets. By turning the microscope onto existing customers, rather than hunting out new ones, researchers help make organisations stronger and wealthier.

Anyone got a few bob?

Fundraising and development are marketing functions. Marketing means creating profitable products for markets, and selling them. That means understanding our market. And that implies Research and Development.

Bear in mind the implications of not having a Research and Development budget for marketing. It means haphazard decisions on research. It means no yardstick against which to measure research results. And it means that your researcher must struggle each time she wants to justify a new online source or a product trial.

Why not allocate 1% of turnover to R&D? That’s a modest amount by industry standards, but it should allow you the scope to develop new products, to get some truly valuable research insights into your existing donors, and give you returns, in the mid- and long-term, that a tiny or haphazard budget would not allow.

From Practice to Management

The new researchers will test the management skills of today’s fundraisers. Yesterday, fundraisers did fundraising. Today they do management. Research puts special strains on management. Above all, managers must be able to communicate.

Chris is a researcher. He works with a number of organisations. He is skilled at his job but like everyone else, he likes to be loved. So working with Peter is a pleasure because Peter is always on the phone, questioning, informing, updating. Chris not only feels appreciated, he is also in the loop. So his research is faster, it is more to-the-point and thanks to Peter’s constant briefings he knows the organisation well enough to be able to suggest clever ideas and new prospects.

David is just the opposite. He never calls. He never emails. The silence is deafening. Lack of communication means Chris does not know how to respond appropriately. Does he pile in with loads of new prospects who may be right but who may be completely off-beam, or does he stay schtum on the assumption that David will be too busy to deal with new research anyway.

Both David and Peter are excellent fundraisers. The difference is that Peter knows how to delegate and motivate while David doesn’t. Long term, Peter will get more from his research than will David. Peter will get more proactive research, more ideas, better follow-through. Long term, I’m betting on Peter.