Solid foundations are essential when raising money for capital building programmes, and a sound fundraising campaign often depends on finding genuine donors who can come up with the goods. Rachel Hunnybun explains.
The prospect of raising a large sum of money with little experience of major fundraising can be a daunting one for many organisations embarking on a capital campaign. Professional fundraising consultants are a must-have ? as are realistic and achievable targets, which should be complemented by a sensible budget and resource level. In any capital campaign, securing several major gifts may account for a large percentage of the end target. One American source suggests that 40?60% of the target may be provided by between six and eight donors. One of the first things that fundraisers should establish is from whom these major gifts might come.
Getting started
Where better to start than right on your own doorstep? Databases hold the key to a large number of people who already have links with the organisation: some of them will be friends and members, some will only have visited once, others will be volunteers or regular attenders ? but all of them might have the potential to make a significant difference to a campaign. The question is how do you know who they are?
The database is likely to contain:
? potential members of the development board
? major donors
? campaign champions, or people with links to celebrity patrons
? patrons happy to give help
? potential friends and members
? legacy potentials.
Large charities that are actively fundraising have whole departments dedicated to database fundraising and donor research. Teams of researchers use countless methods for identifying potential major donors to make sure that no opportunities are missed and that the most appropriate methods of communication are being employed. But where do you begin when you have a single member of development staff and a database running into tens or hundreds of thousands?
Potential targets can be easily picked from most databases. You may already have a group of supporters ? perhaps the top rung of your friends? association who will be the first to get things moving. Anyone who is titled is also a good start and should be easily identifiable by simply looking through your database. Don?t be afraid to draft staff in to help, especially those who have lived locally for a long time: it may be that they know someone you don?t! Look at postcodes where property is most expensive ? it is fair to assume that if you have supporters living in these areas they may be able to support the campaign, even if it is by way of introducing major donors to the cause.
Profiling
Once you have a group of people you think may be able to give you the boost you need, you need to start trying to find hidden pockets of potential! Never discount anyone ? a fair few millionaires won?t have got where they are by flashing their cash. Similarly, just because someone lives in a house worth over £1m doesn?t necessarily mean they are cash-rich. One way to distinguish potential donors would be to research everybody on your database, but without dedicated staff who can spend every day researching and running an effective campaign this is unlikely to be possible. A far more realistic route to take would be to look into some of the profiling tools that are available, which can provide fast and cost-effective information at varying levels.
?Wealth Profiling? started in America, where an overload of information available through the Internet had led to a need for a researched database containing verified information about wealthy and influential people. This could be applied quickly and efficiently to an organisation?s database to identify those supporters who had the potential to donate. This trend has filtered through to the UK and is available in various guises, from postcode profiling (identifying areas with potential) to identifying household income and shareholdings. However, probably some of the most interesting levels of wealth profiling are the databases containing actual researched data at an individual level. One such product, Prospect Profiler, combines three levels of researched profiling to identify those with wealth, high-share net worth and top-end property. The tool has been used on several capital campaigns at various stages, from identifying potential champions through to looking at the final push to see if any ?pots of gold? have been missed.
Hull Truck Theatre Company used wealth profiling right at the start of their campaign. The process unearthed a group of patrons who were identified to have the ability to give, or influence a large donation (£5,000 or more). Felicity Hulme, Campaign Officer at Hull Truck, says, ?I would recommend that one of the first tasks a charity undertakes when embarking on a fundraising campaign is to run a detailed analysis of their database. Identifying potential sponsors that already support what you do or are users of your service is half the battle won for fundraisers. We ran a very detailed analysis of our customer database and the results were astonishing. The list provided a variety of details on over 150 individuals who were either shareholders, millionaires, well connected, or listed in Debretts, all having booked tickets at Hull Truck Theatre. This is a great starting point, the fundraising board was then given this list and asked to identify individuals they knew or could arrange to meet.?
Horses for courses
There are different ways to use wealth profiling ? it is just as important to eliminate any significantly wealthy patrons from mailings asking for smaller donations. A millionaire will be happy to donate £50 and will then, more than likely, feel they have done their bit so you could thereby lose out on a larger sum. City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra used wealth profiling to enhance their already sophisticated segmentation system on their database, meaning that the profiling undertaken does not just help towards specific campaigns, but will also be able to inform future marketing and fundraising campaigns.
Mark Clancy, Sales Manager, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) acknowledges that ?Wealth profiling has provided us with an excellent opportunity to test a segmentation technique that we have been developing over the last three years. Most consumer databases pigeonhole customers into distinct segments, for example, mailing list and box office attenders. At CBSO we?ve taken this a lot further and have drilled down and cross-referenced types against each customer record to build up a unique profile that can be incorporated into tailored marketing campaigns. Needless to say, the results from Prospect Profiler have proved to be fascinating and have provided a new level of marketing intelligence that we could not have achieved without using this service.?
Cream of the crop
Quite easily, often within days, you can have the names of some top prospects for you to target. Obviously there?s no guarantee that these people will decide to help your campaign, but you will have all the tools to make sure you can approach them in the right way to give yourself the best chance of that prized four- or five-figure donation. The knowledge that these people are in a position to help can be enhanced by the information you probably already know about them. Different types of donations or ways of supporting may be more appropriate depending on the insider information that can be gleaned by booking history or personal insight. Remember, the right invitations to the right sort of events at the right sort of price, can go a long way to secure significant support from the right people. Just make sure you know who they are!
Rachel Hunnybun is Head of Data Marketing at CCR Data Ltd.
e: rhunnybun@ccr.co.uk;
w: http://www.ccr.co.uk;
w: http://www.prospectprofiler.co.uk