Episode 183: The Importance of Trusting Prospect Management Team: Your Partner, Believe it or not
Today’s episode looks at the relationship between prospect management teams and gift officers. Why are their head winds and how to effectively compare and challenge the status quo. How to remove the implied hierarchy between the two positions to bring success to the entire team and more, the organization’s mission.
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community.
And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
It's another terrific day here on this edition of Around with Randall. Thank you for taking a few minutes to talk about fully inter-p and in today's particular subject matter, we want to delve into the relationship between prospect management and gift officers.
Over the last maybe six months or so, I've run into a number of situations as we continually hopefully try to evolve the processes that organizations are investing into make, believe they're possible at its highest levels.
Prospect management and research is becoming more and more important. And we're seeing as mergers occur in healthcare as universities become more sophisticated that we're adding more and more components of helping gift officers with managing their portfolio in the prospect management process.
The challenge becomes and I have done a podcast on this before about what from the prospect management side gift officers want. This one's in really aiming at gift officers saying, maybe there's a way you should be looking at this when it comes to prospect research and why it's important.
A few times over the last several months I have found gift officers incredibly hesitant to take the resident, the recommendations of prospect management or research infrastructure, database, a lot of different titles, but it's all about what they do to make gift officers successful.
I think a lot of this has to do with more emotion, the distrust, some of that comes from ego. I know best. Some of it comes from fear, I'm losing control. I think sometimes it's about power. I don't want to give up my autonomy, my knowledge, particularly if you're more senior and the new ways of looking at technology, which I struggle with, think about artificial intelligence as one major example, we're less probably accepting of because of the way we've always done it.
There's also a commentary I hear not as often, but I still hear it. Well, I'm a gift officer. I'm responsible for the money. I've done this for a long time. You don't understand what I do. You don't understand what I do, excuse. That's what we're hoping to get away from today.
The last is just a sense of the in terms of a challenge why it happens is hierarchy. Well, I'm a major gift officer. I'm a director of development. I'm a system vice president of whatever. I have authority. I'm higher up on the food chain. I make more money. I'm more important. All of this leads to the conversation about what really should be happening.
I want to bounce out of fully and through people for just a second and look at the world we live in when it comes to getting advice, getting help.
When you have a medical condition, even incredible doctors who have their own medical conditions go to other doctors because they need assistance, guidance on how to fix, heal, whatever that particular issue is.
When you have a legal problem, you go to a lawyer when you have a behavioral mental health challenge, you go to a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a counselor. And we're all, I think, incredibly happy and pleased that we're moving out of, we're not there yet, but moving away from the dark ages where it's not okay. It's, you know, you hide those things. We don't want to do that.
When we are in our careers, we look to mentors and we look at them and say, how is it you do, what you do, and what can I learn?
But I'll go just to the elemental. I deal with it every morning and I don't deal with it like most people do, but I find it interesting just as I traverse my way in the morning.
Traffic reports. You're trying to go from A to B. You might listen to radio station who has traffic reports because it will help guide you as to how to do this more effectively and what to avoid.
Whether it's medical, the law, mental health, professional growth, or just the idea of getting to work, we take advice all the time.
Guidance about how do we make whatever we're trying to do better?
And yet I feel this huge resistance in terms of gift officers when it comes to the idea of respect management and research.
So let's spend just a couple of minutes, not even quite that, the bigger picture of prospect management.
So I'm speaking to you gift officers. Maybe you prospect management people and infrastructure people pick up a few things as well.
Why they're so important is because they see things from a different perspective. They are looking at data and in particular, I'll start internally at things like static portfolios and they know that those become problematic. They look at metrics and are we meeting the metrics or the gift officers, meeting the metrics that they should be and how can they be helpful? We also know that there are fewer donors out there if you look at it and I talk about it all too often, not all too often, probably not enough, but I'm going to mention it here. Nathan Chappelle, generosity crisis with fewer people giving. So how do we get our gift officers in front of the right? We know that there are fewer people giving and larger gifts are driving philanthropic success. How do we not only get them in front of the right people that will give, but how do we get them into the smaller subset of people who are giving larger? And finally, how do we help them understand that the goals that they have are more easily met when there's a partnership and really what this is is increased dollars that are being put on in terms of pressure for metrics for money raised by gift officers. Part of that is because we have a change in our economic climate where nonprofits need larger dollars and they're looking to major gift officers. That's where the most dollars come from. There's also a side of this and I wrote one of the articles on it originally a little over two years ago or right at two years about pay and we're not paying our best fund razors the right money.
I did a podcast on it did the article on it. Well with greater pay comes greater responsibility. If we want to maintain a four to one five to one seven to one ROI for who we are for fund razors, if you raise my pay by $10,000, that means I need to raise 70,000 more to keep that ratio. And so all of these are the reasons why that the relationship, the work that prospect management research does is critically important. What they're trying to help you with. Then there's the what they do. So there's pipeline development. It's about the new people, the elevations, the navigations. This is more for healthcare, but they're about who should be your new donors are the best possible prospects. How do we know which ones to elevate? Meaning go up in dollar figures. And also the idea of those that intersect the organization we think about healthcare and navigation, I deal a lot in that. All of a sudden, there's a lot of interaction communication between the organization and a prospector or donor. How do we make with those in front of the right people to have the right conversations? Then there are the people inside of your organization. And I don't mean the employees. I mean inside the CRM
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who are already donors like those that are the larger first time gifts in somebody should pay attention to those or that they may be in a situation where they've given a number of years in a row, which makes them a prime candidate for plan giving, which is just a subset of major gifts.
May have a specialist who supports and helps, but or a team, but it's all about getting to the right people.
And then there are the ones who are donors and they go through some research components. And it turns out that their thousand dollar gift is just a minuscule option that that donor or couple or entity or organization has. They actually give much larger gifts and the question becomes should we be one of those larger ones? So it's about donor identity, donor acquisition, new donors and getting people in front of the right people. Getting gift officers in front of the right people. It's also about portfolio management.
So what they do is they're making recommendations on and this gets sometimes gift officers don't like this in particular about people that are sitting too long in a certain part of the moves management process. I either too long cultivation. Really what they're saying is there's too long between actions. What's going on? Or there's no contact at all.
One of my favorite stories in this area was running the last action report for a fairly large foundation. Actually, it was kind of a region. We brought those in and it turned out that some people hadn't been contacted according to the CRM in five to 10 years. And I was yelling and screaming literally. But what kind of prospector do you have if there's been no contact with them for five or seven years? Why are they still in your portfolio? The size of the portfolio becomes a conversation with prospect management. How do we get you down to a reasonable level? Done podcasts on that about the real number is much smaller than we maybe thought five to 10, 15, 20 years ago. And lastly, either a process or a conversation around automatically removing people out of portfolios because they haven't had contact. So portfolio management is a part of this.
So we have pipeline and identifying the most likely people to engage either in your portfolios or coming into the portfolio from a pipeline development perspective. And then there's portfolio management that comes about making sure it's the right size. So we've covered a little bit of the issue and the fact that we trust people all the time and the why they do what they do. These people who are dedicated to the prospect management research and what they do. And now we're to the final tactical piece. The six reasons the tactical why high you should trust these people. And if you do, what are the outcomes?
So the first thing is to realize is that any good prospect management or research individual or team. If you're a gift officer listening to this, they want you to succeed. This isn't personal. 99.5% of the time. They want you to win when it comes against your metrics, your bonus, your evaluation. You feel good about what you're doing every day. They are on your side. They want to help you map out strategies that are going to help you in your relationship building process. They are not against you. Heaven forbid they're on the same team.
I sometimes hear when I sit in a room and I did this recently with a client, prospect management was a room, the gift officers in the room. And it seemed like I finally had to stop about 20 minutes in and say, you understand you're all on the same team trying to get to the same goals, don't you? And they both just looked at me and I said, what's concerning to me isn't the details or lack thereof of agreement or decisions on what should be done. It's the fact you two can't even talk to each other in a way that realizes you're trying to accomplish the same thing. I love sports, coached it, played it, long time in my life, you know, through college. If you don't invest in the team, then even in individual sports like golf and tennis and gymnastics, they add into team values or team outcomes or team scores. So even in those individuals, but in particular basketball football across a field hockey, you name, you have to be a team.
Gift officers need to embody the understanding of realization. prospect management first is on their team. They're trying to help. Number two is is that they actually have process and procedures, learned experience, wisdom that gets them where they are as a professional. They're not guessing if they're doing their job correctly on what they're recommending to you. They're actually science behind this. I sometimes think that gift officers think, well, you know, they're just, you know, they sit over there and they look at, you know, this and they just get, no, they're at if they're doing it correctly. And if you ask them and we'll come back to come to this in terms of number five, ask them and say, tell me how you do what you do. Why is this a priority? They should be able to tell you and they probably can. Well, I looked at this, this and this and here's the reason why. Well, if they're on the same team and they have actual process and procedures, that means that information probably be powerful, which brings you to see they have tools, they've great tools that are part of this process and procedures. We live and die, unfortunately, by well-screen.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. One of the great resources that many have is access to something called Lexus Nexus that has such incredible detail on individuals when they do prospect management research individually, or they're using it in terms of totality to identify best pipeline opportunities. They have incredible detail inside of the screening mechanisms. I'm not just talking about a well screening, about donations that they've given in other places, prospects might have given in other places, or businesses are real estate. But the one thing that they have more than anything else actually isn't necessarily a technology tool. And I haven't even talked about artificial intelligence. They have focus. This is for the most all they're trying to do, or for your small shop, percentage of what they're trying to do. They're literally trying to help you. And they're focusing on that as a part of what they do every day.
So if we know they're part of the team and they have established processes and procedures and really great tools, including focus, this brings us to number four. We need to have a realization. I spent my life more on the acquisition side of fundraising, frontline conversations, donors, relationships, but they're not going to be perfect. I can't tell you how many times I think back and I think, well, you gave me this lead and it turned out to be terrible. They didn't do it on purpose. They're using what that have. Sometimes the data just doesn't indicate a perfect connection. I'm here. I've got a number of times, both as personally in terms of my work or the teams I managed. And now as a consultant where it gives us, well, I went to go see these person, they're a trailer parker. And the department complex because the research brought up information that they may have more value than they actually do because they don't individualize the individual condo or the mobile home.
It wasn't perfect. Our job as gift officers is to go out and talk with people and make calls and see individuals or couples, people who represent companies and have conversations. And if really two thirds of the time, we're not even going to make an ask. And then the ones that we ask and say, no, then we should never be afraid to make a phone call and go see someone and we don't care where they're at. Does that mean we go back for more cultivation? No, because they probably didn't qualify for if we work maybe as a major gift officer, principal gift officer plan giving that's okay. Those are the things we should be honing our skills on. How do I talk with people? How do I listen to them? How do I find their passion? What's important to them? What do I find that's important to them? You don't throw a quarter back under the bus for throwing an interception and think they never can do what they're supposed to. Bomb Brady, Patrick Mahomes, best of all time. Bomb Brady for sure, Patrick Mahomes looks like he's headed in that direction. They're thinking through interceptions. These Mahomes still does. You gonna throw them out? Baby with the bath water because he threw one? It's a mistake. Live with it, move on. Same thing is true here. Perfection is not in the cart. It's effort and a total of the work that goes into it that gets you more opportunities. Number five, have a conversation, and I mentioned this earlier, I call it the feedback loop. I've never met anybody in prospect management that doesn't want to have a conversation about process and data. Never seen it. But they wanted to be respectful and non-accusatory. Tell me how we did this.
Why did we do this? I just was on site with a client working with the prospect management team. What I do is consult particularly at the beginning of an engagement. I'm telling more about this and I get up on a whiteboard and I'm drawing because I like to draw and write and walk and talk. Do you do this and then is, okay, this is this? Now my clients, one of them just recently, first thing, put up a process chart. Here's what we're doing. I'm like, hey, hey, hey, they want to talk about this. They're willing to justify it, but you need to be respectful. When it doesn't go well, say, hey, this didn't go well. What happened here? Not accusatory. I'm not mad. I'm just curious. Well, how can I help you do what you're doing to make me better? The last thing that we need to appreciate about prospect management and research is that they see the force through the trees. We get so ingrained in our, well, especially if they're too big or in our metrics, which are always growing or in the challenges of the building the relationships that inevitably come. We don't hear from somebody. We thought we were further down the road and it's a hiccup. We get just enamored at the altitude of about one foot because we're looking at relationship issues. They're hovering at 10 or 15,000 feet looking at all the trees. They can see them that doesn't mean they're always perfect number five. But what I've come to appreciate from really good prospect management research, people and professionals is they see things. If we would listen, they could be helpful to us. Trends. You're making this many phone calls and you're not having success you used to when you're making them. Have we had a change in routine? You've had a trend of closing gifts at this level and that stopped. What's going on? They see things in more of a totality than an individuality. We as gift officers, my experience is we see individuality. We see the individual situation.
This higher level of altitude allows them to have a better perspective. Something they say might be helpful. So what is it you should do? These are the six as a reminder. Know that they want you to succeed. They're on the same team. Number two is that they have process and procedures that number three use great tools, including the most important. They're focused on this one thing. That number four, they're not going to be perfect. I don't know anybody or anything that is. Number five is is they want feedback. They want information so they can get better to help you. And number six is they have a perspective that's different than ours. All this comes down to a five-letter word. Trust. Are you willing to trust someone else? You trust your doctors. You trust your lawyers. You even trust the traffic reports. Why is it so challenging sometimes to trust those who are built, trained, and are professions? Who do their very best to be on your team? To trust the prospect management when they say, this could be a really great name you should do some outreach. And then realize it's not 100% guaranteed.
That's our job to go in and figure out what's going on so we can start building more transformational relationships, not a dollar figure, but emotional engagement about what people's passion is and how the nonprofit might help them and help the nonprofit align in terms of what they're trying to do. Don't forget to check out the blogs. Just 90 second reads at howlflantspe.com. You can get an RSS feed right to you. Two a week, writing all of the kind stuff about what I see, what I hear. Some of the philanthropy, some of it leadership, some of it just the world might be interesting something for you to think about on a weekly basis twice a week. And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast. To help. Philanthropy.
And by the way, share this podcast if you think it's worth anything. Two or three people let them say, hey, you might listen to this. There's a lot of content as we close in on 200 to come. Podcasts, 200 individual subjects. Don't forget that what we do is important. What you do is important. I love what I do. I get to coach and teach. For the most part, help build processes, get organizations where they want to go and you are most likely someone who's doing the same, but in a different way. Make your gift officer, CDO or member, who member. And in particular today, Prospect Management Research about how we help our gift officers.
What I'd encourage you to do is to realize that what goes on the world needs ask philanthropy fills a hole. And at the end of the day, my favorite, I close every podcast with it, my favorite, saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then they're those who wonder what happened. We are people who make things happen. We find others in the community who are wanting to do the same together. We're helping those people and those organizations that are wondering what happened. That's what makes a great community. And pretty cool life.
And I hope you'll consider the value that you do deliver, bring to the table every day. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time right back here on Around with Randall. And remember, make it a great day.