We are delighted to welcome back Michelle Leder, principal of the fantastic resource footnoted. Michelle last spoke for ShareTraining in December 2009 and a LOT has happened in the financial markets since then! Her last presentation got great reviews, and we can’t wait to experience the next installment of Examining SEC Filings For Director and Executive Compensation. In the meantime, we asked Michelle to give us a teaser of her presentation, and she had this to say…

With so much information available on potential prospects with just a few keystrokes, figuring out where to begin your search can often be daunting. Here at footnoted, we think one of the best places to start is with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database. And this time of year, when companies are filing their proxy statements (their more formal name is DEF 14A), is a particularly good time of year to dive into EDGAR.

A typical proxy statement has lots of good compensation-related information on what the top executives at a company (and sometimes even 1 or 2 former executives) are making as well as somewhat less detailed information on the company’s board of directors.

Whether you’re picking up a proxy statement for the first time or are a seasoned reader, the best place to start is with the summary compensation table. That will give you a quick run-down on the company’s top executives and how much they made last year as well as the prior two years, both in terms of their salary, bonus and other forms of compensation, like stock options and restricted shares. One quick word of warning, though: the stock compensation listed in the summary table may not be an accurate reading, due to the way the SEC makes companies calculate options.

But there’s lots of other useful information in the typical proxy statement beyond the summary compensation table and with many proxies running 100 pages or longer, it helps to know where to focus your attention so that you can find the most useful information quickly, with minimal stress. We’ll be talking about our best tips for getting through this year’s crop of proxy statements while they’re still fresh.

Join us with Michelle Leder on Tuesday, April 9, for our next great ShareTraining seminar!

We’re kicking off the New Year with a resolution to be more efficient searchers, and so we’ve asked the fantastic Sabine Schuller, Research Specialist at The Rotary Foundation, to help outline her best search strategies. Sabine reminds us that, even before we get down to the nitty gritty of the hunt for information online, there are things we can do to be  efficient. In this month’s blog post, we asked Sabine to give us a sneak preview of one of the tips in her presentation, and here’s what she shared…

So you’re feeling very pleased with yourself. You worked late three days in a row and finally finished that comprehensive research report on the Michigan apple industry. You analyzed GIS maps until your eyes bled, reviewed every Department of Agriculture report on record, and even estimated future price trends. You proudly hand your ten pages of triple checked analysis to the gift officer who requested the information. Her eyes widen as she says, “Oh, wow – this is great stuff. But all I really wanted was to know how to stop apple slices from browning.” At this point you smile and say “No problem” as you run back to your desk. Otherwise you’re afraid you’ll start screaming. As you do your calming deep breathing exercises, you wonder how things could have gone so very, very wrong.

This is one extreme example of what project management circles call the “Goldilocks problem.” Providing too little information is disastrous to your job security, but on the other hand you don’t want your work labeled TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read).  But how to strike that “just right” balance? Unless your workplace perfected its mind reading techniques, your most effective tool is what’s called a “reference interview” or an “information needs assessment.” A reference interview is a researcher led structured discussion that helps decide precisely what information is needed. Open ended questions like “How could I make the information I find more useful for you?” and “If I can’t find exactly that, what would be second-best?” will help your co-workers strategize. The reference interview process will help them decide what they absolutely need to know to move the potential gift forward. 

At this point, you may be wondering “That sounds like a great idea, but who has time?” Let me frame it this way: How much more time would you have to uncover new donors if you knew you only had to find a, b, and c? You wouldn’t be tracking down the entire alphabet! Think of reference interviews as the next level of cooperation between donor researchers and gift officers who both support your organization in their own unique ways.

Learn more advanced search strategies like this at the ShareTraining Live webinar Sharpen Your Search: Getting to the Right Places in Record Time

This month’s ShareTraining web seminar is being led by James Cheng, Assistant Director of Prospect Identification & Analytics at the venerable Dana-Farber Cancer Institute here in Boston. James is one of the key pioneers wielding this important market-research tool for fundraising, and this month he brings to ShareTraining a topic he’s been thinking about for quite a while: how to fix it when you’ve got too much – or too little – data to mine with. Here he shares a little bit of his thought process in developing this brand-new presentation:

Before Valerie Anastasio approached me to present in a ShareTraining session, I’ve never quite verbalized this perpetual “see-sawing” I felt while trying to create predictive models with development-related data.

However, after having some conversations with colleagues and seeing trending topics in threads from a data mining and modeling listserv, the way to explain this constant tension between worlds of extremes has finally become clear to me.

On one extreme, as a self-admitted “data junkie,” I find myself always thirsting for more information, begging IT with ever growing data requests, both in terms of frequency and the amount of data I ask for. “I need more!” I think. A desert…a dearth of information.

And yet there exists another extreme, deceptively more heavenly but equally hellish in reality.

Be it through wealth screenings, data appends, open access to open-ended responses, or a combination of all of the above, opportunities come up where I find myself swimming in too much information. Hundreds of variables that hold information related to hundreds of thousands of our stakeholders in the database! Instead of feeling like the parched Serengeti celebrating the end of the dry season by the incoming floodwater, all of a sudden I feel like I’m drinking from a fire-hose on full blast…..with a sippy straw. Deluge!

Given these extremes on the data dearth-and-deluge spectrum, our goal as data junkies is to strive towards a happy equilibrium, and seek to capture the most valuable information.  Once we have that, our work as data analysts is much easier.

 With this in mind, in the upcoming ShareTraining seminar, we will explore:

1. Ways to diagnose our databases to assess where we are along the data dearth-or-deluge spectrum
2. Treatment options that alleviate the symptoms of either too little or too much data
3. The various resources that can help bring us back from the brink of these extremes

Come join me as I help you diagnose and get ready for data mining adventures ahead. I look forward to our time together!

Around this time of year the ShareTraining team – consisting of Valerie Anastasio, Jennifer Turner and me – meet to finalize plans for next year’s ShareTraining seminar series and to talk about the previous season of seminars.

As usually happens when we get together, the three of us tend to get a bit…enthusiastic, and we start spinning crazy ideas, like…

…“well, why NOT ask Sal Khan if he’ll talk about venture capital and hedge fund compensation?” I said, “I mean, what’s the worst he could say?”

(well, “no,” as it happens. He’s booked solidly through 2014. But hey, we tried!)

Anyway, this time it was Valerie who had the crazy idea:

“It’s summer! We should have a little fun! Let’s make a video to tell the ShareTraining community all about our replays!”

Turns out it wasn’t crazy at all – Jen and I loved it! So here it is, our first video. It’s really short, but we hope you enjoy it!

www.ShareTraining.com

Oh, and while we were at it, we created a YouTube channel just for ShareTraining. So visit us there for the occasional video update!

Thanks, and have a great summer!

For our final ShareTraining seminar of the 2011-12 ‘school year’ we’ve invited Karen T. Isble, Executive Director of Prospect Development and Analytics at the University of Michigan to talk about prospect management systems that work. In advance of her May 22nd seminar, we thought you might be interested to hear Karen talk a little bit about prospect management and its evolution.

I began my career in prospect management in 1994 when I was a researcher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, before the field had been formally christened as such – prospect management was just part of my job. My tools and knowledge were basic and focused primarily on the mechanics of prospect tracking. When I returned to the field in 2006 after a seven-year stint in arts administration, I learned a whole new specialty within the research field had blossomed, and I was about to learn it crash course-style and introduce it to one of the largest, most decentralized and complex fundraising operations in the country.

During my first two years as Director of Prospect Management for the University of Michigan, I often likened my experience to standing in front of an iceberg with a dinner fork, trying to see how long before I could make a sizable dent.  Incredibly, nearly six years later, the iceberg is still there, but it’s more like an ice floe, perhaps, and the dent we’ve made is deep and wide. It’s hard to imagine where we started – no processes, an archaic database system, an old prospect coordination policy no one paid any attention to, and a severe lack of intelligence on the goings-on within the major gifts program across the institution.

In the intervening years, the prospect management team has grown from 2 to 5, we are well-documented, visible and sought after for the services we provide, and we have an active and robust, if not perfect, prospect management system with clear, measurable metrics in place. We have just taken a massive leap forward in technology and processes with the implementation of new enterprise CRM software – a brave new world for our organization that will have us feeling like we’re back at square one for a while. 

The prospect management team is part of a larger 19-member prospect development team, which includes research and the newest kid on the block, analytics.  We’ve spent the past 18 months working to turn three distinct specialties into an integrated, internal consultancy focused on providing the fullest available spectrum of prospect knowledge management to our front line and to management. The results so far, with the amazing team of professionals I am so fortunate to work with, have been quite stunning, surpassing anything I might have dreamt of back in 2006.

I am excited to think about what we will be able to accomplish as we prepare for our next campaign – the work we’re doing now to support campaign planning was non-existent at the start of the last one in 2000, and the intelligence and efficiency we are able to bring to the process continues to be a learning experience both for the team and for our organization’s leadership. What will prospect management look like in another six years? Who knows? OK, I have some ideas, but I’m mostly gonna roll with it and let it lead us towards success.  The most important part is believing that it can make a difference and bringing others along.

We’re delighted to highlight Jennifer Fry in this month’s blog post.  Jennifer is Director of Prospect Discovery and Information at Northwestern University and our May 8th ShareTraining faculty member. 

In preparing to present a ShareTraining seminar on Making the Most of Your Wealth Screening, I’ve been trolling listservs, blogs and other online discussions, as well as talking to colleagues and reading best practices and other literature, with a few questions running through my mind:  

• What do people know about wealth screenings?
• What are the most mysterious aspects of wealth screening for someone who’s looking to do one for the first time?  What about for those who are screening veterans?
• What part(s) of the screening process elicit the most questions? 

And then I start to wonder:  Are wealth screenings sooo 2008?  2005?  Are analytics scores a de rigueur part of any screening these days?  Do most people even know what “analytics” is?  It’s funny to think about anything associated with prospect research being “old-fashioned” (which for me conjures up images of butter churns, Conestoga wagons and other things à la Little House on the Prairie).  But with companies like WealthEngine, Blackbaud’s WealthPoint and their predecessors providing wealth and asset screening services for almost 20 years now — and given the trends and buzzwords that regularly ripple through the prospect research community (data mining, social media, analytics) — it’s fair to wonder if wealth screenings are still a relevant fundraising tool, or a fad whose effectiveness has been eclipsed by other more of-the-moment solutions.

Finally, what fresh ideas are out there for using wealth data generated by screenings — and using those results in conjunction with analytics, prospect management, and other prospect development techniques and systems to maximize a screening investment?

So, where did all these questions lead? 

I learned that wealth and asset screening is still a core tool for prospect identification and research, and for good reason.   According to organizational survey data gathered for WealthEngine’s recent Best Practices reports, the return on the average wealth screening is more than 400 times the investment.  With proper planning and timely implementation, wealth screening remains one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways for any organization to identify high-capacity prospects.

I also learned that the prospect researchers and other fundraising professionals who are discussing and considering wealth screening understand its potential.  They’re asking great, intelligent questions, as well as sharing inventive ideas about new ways to use and maximize screening results.  The questions, especially, center around verifying and reporting on results; I hope the examples and tips in the May 8^th ShareTraining presentation will contribute to the conversation.

Incidentally, I also learned that Helen Brown herself likes a seminar with “meaty takeaways” (see her November 23, 2011 blog post on ShareTraining’s Helen Brown Group sister site).  So, if you’re interested in delving beyond the “whats” and “whys” to the “hows” of wealth and asset screening, with some meaty takeaways, I hope you’ll join me on May 8^th for Making the Most of Your Wealth Screening: Strategies for Planning, Implementation and Beyond.