Whew! APRA Wrap-Up

Well, it's over. I'm at the Austin airport, exhausted and drained of presentation adrenaline. The above image was a gift from Stacy B., a member of my team, and companion at the conference. She gave it to me to commemorate my presentation. As you can imagine, I love, love, love it!

The presentation itself went really well. I talked too fast, which is normal for me. I've been working on this, but it's my perennial challenge. My friend Jess B. talked too fast in her presentation also. "That's because smart people talk fast," I told her. People alternately loved or disliked my use of historical charts, just as they alternately loved or disliked my very-enthusiastic presentation style. If you want to check out a similar presentation I did (with more historical charts than this one, and a more measured pace of speaking), you can find it here. And if you made it there in person: thank you! Thanks for attending, participating, and giving me great feedback (both overwhelmingly positive, and helpfully constructive).

I'm also pleased to report that the middle of my slideshow did not suddenly contain a million photos of my cats that I had to scroll through, as happened in my anxiety dream last night. But they are really cute cats!



The folks I talked to tended to have very positive reviews. On a local note, APRA-NW was out in full force. Represent!

There were two points of controversy this year: 1) the much smaller swag bags APRA offered (personally, I'm pro); 2) the appointment of someone who works for a vendor as APRA president. As you can imagine, this latter controversy was the more substantive issue. Word around the conference is that everyone has a lot of respect for Michael Quevli, the incoming president, but also a healthy dose of suspicion toward Blackbaud, the vendor-behemoth that has been buying up smaller vendors left and right, and which was the "gold sponsor" of the conference.

All in all, this was a great conference. I was really impressed with the quality of the sessions, and it's always lovely to be around my people, the fundraising nerds of the world. I also fell in love with Twitter all over again, and @amandajarman may just become active again. No promises though.

The Hardest Presentation to Blog: Data Visualization

Kwame Everett, Kim Priebe, and Emily Rowe from the University of Chicago are presenting on "Visualizing Data to Drive Change." This is definitely the session I most wanted to see at this time slot, but I'm a little nervous, since I'm presenting on the same topic in less than two short hours. I am hoping that I don't cover the same ground.

They are leading with a pie chart -- bold! The pie chart addresses reasons to produce effective reports: sensitive messages, communication, scope of work, historical record, justifying your work. The upshot: effective reporting helps to establish a culture of accountability, manage up, and expand your influence.

Start with a thesis, e.g, "We need more staff in California." Use this thesis to shape what you include in your report. Think about your audience as well: does your message match your audience? Use the visual that best fits your audience. The most important thing is getting someone to read your report. Experiment with your data and question your assumptions.

This is a challenge to blog, for two reasons: 1) it relies heavily on graphics, which I can't reproduce here; 2) I'm preoccupied with my upcoming presentation. The presenters are doing a great job, showing some great case studies of how they used data visualization to make your case.

And now the presentation veers toward much of what I'm going to cover. Uh oh for me! Again a pie chart! Will the presenter discuss the controversy over pie charts? Okay, no... Whew, looks like I am going to do something a little different. Man, I am self-absorbed this morning.

This presentation is doing a better job than mine will of actually showing data visualization applied to prospect management data. I do have some very minor quibbles -- 3-D bar charts are never a good idea in my mind, but I think this team has clearly done a great job of incorporating data visualization into their work.

Sorry I can't report back on this, but short of taking a photo of each of their slides, I'm stuck. As an aside, this certainly implies something about the utility of PowerPoint slides for most presentations. It was fairly easy for me to report back on all other presentations I've seen here, without needing to show you the slides. This begs the question of whether requiring a slideshow is really the right idea. (I am not trying to comment on the quality of the slideshows I've seen here, but I think one could make the argument that the presenters could have presented just as effectively without a slideshow, or with minimal slides.)

UPDATE: I heard from a lot of people who attended this presentation, and were blown away. Nicely done, U of Chicago! One attendee at my presentation used a great phrase: "high interest, low priority," and I think that's where data visualization falls for a lot of shops. Kudos to this team for actually making it happen, and for using data in compelling ways to make convincing arguments.

Clean Your House! Prepare for your Campaign

Susan Hayes-McQueen is presenting "Between Campaigns: Ready, Set... PREPARE!" The role of the research/analytics shop is critical in campaign planning. The key is to actually plan, rather than reacting to other people's plan.

Really important: write it down. (True confessions: I'm not always so good at this.)

The UW's campaign in the 90s looked very different from the campaign they did in the 2000s. Susan says, "Campaigns are a kind of fashion." She just referenced yesterday's excellent presentation by Rob Scott and Chris Pipkin, and noted that this presentation is geared more to the giant comprehensive campaign.

For a research shop, the "between campaign" period is very important. For frontline fundraisers, this period may be a little boring. At the end of a campaign, fundraisers are focused on closing gifts and stewardship. Researchers are focused on starting to evaluate what worked and what didn't work. This includes which prospects are left on the table. The question is, did we maximize our potential?

Susan is showing a chart from Rob Scott -- he analyzed whether fundraising turnover actually harms long-term relationship building. The data says yes. The more managers a prospect had, the lower their giving was. This is an example of the kind of post-campaign analysis that research shops should be leading. One might ask: Were our asks high enough? What behaviors did our best fundraisers do?

It's important to do this quickly. Once the campaign is over, interest in this kind of data wanes quickly.

After the campaign ends, it feels like a "lull before the storm." There's a lot of staff turnover among the fundraisers. This is the time for research to step up and start preparing for the next campaign while analyzing the last campaign.

Susan likens these "in between days" to a busy weekend day. You get a lot done while trying to recharge your batteries.

"Have a cup of coffee": reflect on the last campaign while envisioning the future.

This is a good time to make a to-do list. Susan mentions this is especially important because we tend to announce not only that we are in campaign, but surprise! We've been in campaign for the last 2 years.

This is also a good time for spring cleaning: database conversion (don't do this in a campaign!), clean up your data, buy new data.

Hire the help: recruit volunteers, young leaders, prepare for your feasibiity study.

Take stock of the pantry: develop your initial campaign pyramid, assess your pools (mapping, affinities, linkages).

Sharpen your tools: forms, policies/procedures, reports, accountability measures, scores, capacity ratings, research tools.

Stock up on prospects: screening (asset and peer), modeling, data appends, systematic proactive research. This might be a good time to form a principal gifts advisory council.

Get the kids out the door: it's time for some discovery work. Motivate the fundraising team. UW did a discovery challenge to help motivate their fundraisers. Susan says she does not have a magic bullet for this -- getting discovery accomplished is a challenge in every shop.

Pay the bills: find out if there's anything the research team is not providing to the management/principal gifts team. What exactly do they need to be successful?

Expired condiments: update those old profiles, capacity rating, and affinity scoring.

Talk to the neighbors: talk to your peers. What's fashionable in campaigns these days? Cruise vendor websites too.

Make sure the kids know what's next: communicate -- A LOT. Make sure the fundraising staff knows what you are doing behind the scenes.

When the campaign starts, keep track of institutional priorities. Do some fine-tuning to your processes, reactive research and stewardship reports. Be alert and ready to adjust to disruptive technologies, i.e. the next Google or iPad.

Make sure that you find a place at the table. Make sure the basics are in place -- your database, profiles, research techniques, ratings, affinity scoring, assignments and other coding.

Train, train, re-train, and train some more. Build your relationships with your fundraisers. Build your "emotional bank account" with them. Learn who doesn't know how to sort Excel, who will never open an email, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Learn about change management to help folks not freak out in the face of a campaign. Campaigns are inherently complicated, overwhelming, and scary. Research should deal with the big scary complexity, freeing fundraisers to get out the door and build relationships.

Somehow you have to carve out time to get the proactive work done.

A Fascinating New News Model

The keynote presentation is by Ross Ramsey, Managing Editor of the Texas Tribune. Ross leads off by describing the watchdog role of media. Nice quip: "Congressmen are less likely to twitter their tender vittles when we are watching." He also talks about our government as being like open-source software: designed to be hacked. And the decision-making process relies on research and information. Journalism is key to providing this information.

Now there is a technology question: what do we do with all this information? Ross talks about his 15-year-old daughter: "She's never going to get news off her front porch." This makes me feel a little better about my recent consideration of canceling the Oregonian. I have to admit: once I got an iPad, I simply stopped reading the newspaper. Now it shows up every day, I think about reading it, and then recycle it.

Now everyone has access to the resources that only journalists and librarians had. Instead of a "morgue room," full of microfiche and clippings, we now have "electronic stacks." Most news after 1995 or 1998 is now available online.

When they launched the Tribune, they made a conscious decision that paper and "12-year-olds with good throwing arms" were not the future of news.

Ross is talking about the bad format of government data. The Tribune is working to digitize public data and make it accessible. They transcribed everything said on the floor of the Texas legislature this year, and made it available 72 hours after the session ended. As a researcher, I find this to be an incredibly noble pursuit. In fact, I have posted here on this very blog about the poor formatting of government data.

Now Ross is talking about their business model: they created the newspaper as a nonprofit serving the public good, because they felt that the traditional ad revenue model would not be successful in this economy. They apply for foundation grants and ask wealthy people for donations. They sell subscriptions to premium publications, but then offer those publications for free later. They believe that leveling the playing field, and not creating special forums for the elite, is important.

The Tribune also allows people to republish their content, via a simple "republish" button on their website.

It's not enough to just tell people what happened, Ross says. It's important to tell people why it's important, to give context. "News is not enough," he says. Context and analysis are crucial, as is giving people the tools they need to do their own research and analysis, like databases, maps, charts, etc.

The Tribune's value proposition is that the decline of news is a threat to democracy. This is how they fundraise for journalism. They also disclose contributions when they publish articles about someone who has given to the Tribune.

Ross talks about the line between public and private. A lot of the work they do is in that gray area between the two. For example, the Tribune published a list of public employee salaries. One woman called and asked that her data be removed. The Tribune declined.

You shouldn't have to disclose why you want public information. "If it's public information, make it public."

What is out of line? Sex used to be off the table, until the Clinton/Lewinsky era.

Ross is mentioning the David Wu/unwanted sexual advances story broken by the Oregonian. Now any story will wind up on the Internet, and it's up to each reader to judge the provenance of the story. New York Times vs. guy in pajamas.

The speed of reporting is much faster now. It's much easier to gather data in the Google era. The critical role of the reporter is to analyze and provide the tools for news consumers to do their own analysis.

I had no idea what to expect from this keynote, and came away absolutely amazed by the Tribune and its business model. And I have renewed hope for journalism and the future. The decline of excellence in journalism, and particularly the lack of context for news, has long been a concern. It looks like the Texas Tribune has re-discovered the public good-oriented mission of journalism, and figured out a very interesting way to fund it.

"We're here to do journalism; we're not here to be business people," Ross said.

APRA 2011 by the Numbers

There are 830 attendees at this conference, with 33% being first-time attendees. This number includes 14 people from Egypt, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Next year's conference will be in Minneapolis. I'm sorry I probably will not attend, since this is a truly stellar conference, and certainly the best offering for prospect researchers and prospect managers. This year, I've been really impressed with each session I've attended, which is unusual for a big conference like this.

Managing Change with Kaizen

My first session this morning is Creating and Managing Change by Jennifer McCormack from the University of Washington. You'll notice that none of the sessions I'm going to are actually about prospect research or prospect management, which is appropriate since I'm no longer directly responsible for doing research or prospect management. I miss it sometimes, but the opportunity to be a change-maker in many aspects of advancement services makes up for it.

Jennifer's presentation is focused on kaizen, or incremental change. Jennifer manages 8 people, and she enjoys "channeling the energy" of her team to create change. Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy of small and continuous improvements, embracing the belief that a process can always be improved, even when it seems perfect. Kaizen doesn't end with a single decision, but rather involves constant analysis, feedback and change. Jennifer says this process makes a team "limber." It is important that kaizen be embraced by an entire group -- it cannot be practiced by a single person in a team environment. Finally, kaizen requires rigorous feedback and incremental change, which can identify small problems before they become big ones.

Kaizen was made famous by Toyota, and involved the idea that workers are closest to the manufacturing process, and have the best vantage point for identifying problems. Kaizen is also customer-centered: in a fundraising shop, there are internal customers (development officers who request reports from report writers) as well as external customers (donors). On my team, we call development officers our clients, so we maintain our focus on customer service.

Jennifer recommends process mapping to identify wasted steps or problems in a process.

Kaizen seeks to get at a root cause. A problem-solving method to get at this is the "5 Whys." This is a process of asking why something isn't working, and then continuing to ask why. Jennifer's example is really great, so I will just repeat it here:

New leads are not being qualified by fundraisers.
Why? Fundraisers are not keeping track of updates to the prospect pool.
Why? Fundraisers are not reviewing the quarterly new leads report.
Why? Fundraisers are not opening the email with the report attachment.
Why? Most emails sent to listservs are ignored.
Why? The email is not perceived as important if it's not directly addressed to them.

The change: send reports directly to fundraisers with new leads highlighted and follow up with email or a phone call as appropriate.

Jennifer says the "aha moment" generally does come with the 5th "why?," though it can take more or less. One attendee commented that this is very much like the thinking of a 2-year-old. Why? Why? Why?

A more complicated approach is to use a fishbone diagram, which evaluates people, technology, the environment or culture, and materials. I'll post a link to an illustration of this concept. This method overcomes a weakness of the 5 Whys, which is that it can be easy to miss things. Since the fishbone focuses on specific facets of a problem (e.g. materials), it can help to suss out issues.

Kaizen also assumes that each member of your team is an expert, and that ideas are equally valued at all levels. The idea is to "look for wisdom from 10 people rather than one."

Jennifer just mentioned the book "Switch," by Chip and Dan Heath. It is a great book about change! I gave it to my team as a holiday present last year.

Kaizen involves having "kaizen events." Gather the team; identify issues or needs; analyze (5 whys); define the change; take immediate action (if this is not possible, then don't make this part of your plan); evaluate through the feedback cycle (does this work, can we improve it?, what other issues arise). Rinse; repeat.

Sidebar: Kaizen is big on cleaning your desk to free yourself of clutter. This is a really big component of the Getting Things Done method, about which I shall post at some point.

Ask specific questions -- describe what is wrong, not why it's wrong.

Jennifer is talking about the Virginia Mason Foundation in Seattle. A couple of years ago, I saw their chief fundraiser present on their use of kaizen. It was really exciting! The entire organization implemented kaizen. The fundraising team used this to analyze whether it truly takes 18 months to close a major gift. They mapped the process of cultivation, and found that most of the 18 months was actually wait time. In kaizen, time is waste.

Virginia Mason changed their process, using a "pull system," which let the prospect control the pace of the next step. They employed "visual control" methods to see individual prospects' movement through the cycle. They were able to reduce their time from identification to solicitation from 18 months to 5.7 months. They also discovered that the type of prospect (research-identified, board-identified, and physician referral) made a huge difference in lead time and average gift amount. Physician-referred prospects made the largest gifts (average $455,000) and took the shortest lead time (2.9 months).

Jennifer points out that you can implement kaizen on a small scale. It need not be an organization-wide program, like it was at Virginia Mason. But if you are going to try to make change with a team, they must all embrace the kaizen method.

Jennifer brought kaizen to the University of Washington to identify opportunities for improvement in a between-campaign period. (Because as soon as you finish one campaign, you are preparing for the next one.) They looked at the new leads issue above. Jennifer split her team into three working groups to look at financial analysis (do fundraisers trust our ratings?), proactive/prospect identification (do we build a convincing case for new leads?), communication (do we communicate our work to fundraisers in a way that builds confidence in new leads?).

These teams talked to fundraisers to get feedback, and also talked to peers. As an example, the financial analysis group uncovered multiple concerns from fundraisers, including the age-old concern with ratings based on real estate. Based on this, they developed several "improvement commitments," including asking fundraisers for additional wealth information that would help to focus the rating. The proactive research group uncovered that the explanations accompanying new leads were often not sufficient, e.g. "alum with $1 million home." They addressed this by providing more thorough explanations, identifying what the ideal prospect for each school looked like so that they could measure each new lead against the ideal, and providing strategy tips, e.g. "This prospect would probably be interested in the Sustainability Lecture."

Jennifer is wrapping up with ten tips for implementing kaizen. My favorite: don't worry about being perfect -- start now.

Doh!

I just realized today's sessions start at 9, not 8:30. I could have slept for an additional 30 minutes. Doh!

Oh well, this seems like a great opportunity to review my presentation before tomorrow. I'm presenting on data visualization again -- Picture It: Visualizing Your Data's Story. Yes, that is a Golden Girls reference.

Project Management, or My Brain is Too Full to Think of a Clever Title

I'm at one of the sessions I probably most need: "Project Management: Making Life Easier," by Shelby Radcliffe. Project: A job that is done once. Shelby argues that we are all project managers. For those of us who work in fundraising operations, our natural tendency to create checklists, and even to put things we've already done on the list -- just so we can check it off -- is what has led us to our career choice in the first place.

The best projects work because of the quality of the planning. Investment of time in planning saves time overall. Project leadership involves: motivation, negotiation, team building, communication and decision-making. Consider, of these, which are your strong suits, and what do do to compensate for your weaknesses. Similarly, consider the project plan from project design to planning to testing to implementation, and consider which parts you are least likely to be good at. For me, it's definitely finalizing and maintaining the end result -- I love the planning, but grow bored toward the end of the process. Once it's been figured out, I'm ready to move on to the next thing.

Shelby is highlighting some of the common challenges in project management. Clarify issues of authority through negotiating your role. This is common for prospect researchers, who often have stellar management skills, but lack authority in the organization. Deal with confusion through defining roles. Address scope creep through project agreements. Change can be handled through mid-project redesign. Shelby does not recommend, "Who Moved My Cheese?" It's good to realize that if you are a project manager, you are probably comfortable with change, but most people are not. Morale can be bolstered by identifying success markers -- break the project up into milestones that can be celebrated along the way.

When deciding how much a project needs to be planned and documented, consider time, resources, partners, visibility, stakeholders. Bucknell, where Shelby works, uses what she calls the "Starbucks method": dividing projects into tall, grande and venti. Each project requires a different level of documentation. This helps to prevent her team from becoming overwhelmed by project management requirements. Shelby requires a project plan in writing for every project. Projects are much more difficult to change once they are underway, so doing thorough documentation up front can prevent major problems down the road.

Communication is also a key. Shelby points out that folks in the research world are very much relationship managers, but not with donors -- with our colleagues. We can also be a key bridge between the introverted I.T. staff and the relationship-oriented development staff. Also, the less fun it is to communicate... the more important it is.

Time planning -- however long you think a project will take -- double it. And, if you need five hours to do a project, block out five hours on your calendar. The key to time planning is to be "aggressive and appropriate."

We talked a bit about reminding project team members without nagging. Give context for the reminder, work through the supervisor if you need to, send out regular progress updates to create positive competitive pressure, use flattery where applicable.

Evaluate every project. You'll learn: how to replicate what worked in a similar project, team dynamics, strengths and weaknesses of yourself and other team members. You'll have something to brag about. People who come after you will thank you.

Resources for project management: Project Management Institute, which has also published a big old book. Consider working with I.T. and other departments to come up with a common framework for project management at your institution. Talk to someone who works in construction management (college campus -- talk to your facilities department) or your I.T. department -- you are likely to find solid expertise here.

Someone asked a question about using software. Shelby says, it depends on how much this is a piece of your job. Maybe it's a tool you use personally, but don't expect others to use. Consider using a blog to communicate about your project.

Re-thinking Campaigns

I'm at a session presented by Chris Pipkins and Rob Scott titled "Is It Time for a Re-Think of the Conventional Comprehensive Camoaign?" originally designed by Darrow Zeidenstein, who could not be at the presentation. This is a topic of great fascination to me, and I'm really excited about it.

The 80-20 rule became the 95-5 rule. Chris says, "We celebrated that arms race...Life in a campaign tends to be a bit sexier." It's true -- in a campaign, you have more funding, you can hire people, it's exciting, there are big gift "glamour moments."

Now we are in a constant campaign mode. New Presidents feel they must be in a campaign within two years of arriving, and we now have only a year or two between campaigns. Dollar goals and possibilities may conflict with institutional priorities, and may drive the campaign. Annual giving and alumni relations are in decline. Chris notes that alumni relations has an opportunity to be reinvigorated through promoting engagement.

Darrow asked VPs, is it time to call a time out on campaigns? Their message was overwhelmingly "no." Campaigns are still a great way to align constituents with university goals, drive investment in advancement, coalesce the university community around high-level themes, and compel donors to their largest philanthropic commitments. Disturbingly, driving investment was the top pick of VPs, and compelling donors to their largest commitments was the lowest pick.

There are some concerns related to campaigns: pressure to accept unacceptable gifts, obsession with campaign trappings, donor fatigue.

The question to ask: "Is it an efficient and effective way to achieve our broader institutional strategies?"

Institutional strategies (vision/mission/positioning and competitive pressures) and operational readiness (maturity and capacity of advancement operation, breadth and depth of prospect pool, and leadership buy in of operation) must be assessed prior to developing the campaign model.

Chris is quite funny. He got the audience to moo in response to discussing the "herd mentality" with which many institutions approach campaigns.

Somewhere between the comprehensive campaign and the marketing campaign is what Darrow has identified as an "area of innovation." This involves "strategic micro campaigns" and "income growth strategy." The micro campaign is targeted and short, and the income growth strategy focuses on growing your base.

This presentation is dense, and I know I'm leaving a lot out. One fascinating concept: what if we evaluated our campaigns based on funding completion rate (initiatives achieved) rather than dollars raised.

There's a great data visualization showing how all the pieces of development come together ("A Steampunk View of Development"), which may be the exact view I was trying to think of when Tufte challenged his audience to come up with the one big idea graphic. I'll ask Rob and Chris if I can get a copy of this to post here.

Apparently the new CASE standards are now referring to an eight-year campaign period. Holy cow!

Now Rob is talking. MIT has run three mini-campaigns since their last comprehensive campaign ended in 2004. That said, their mini-campaigns were $500 million campaigns. But they were very targeted around specific initiatives, with the last being for student support. In some ways, this is like returning to the classic capital campaign model, because some people (donors, program/academic staff) will be left out. This was especially true for MIT's energy and cancer research campaigns.

This has definitely got me thinking about how we might implement a series of "phased initiatives" rather than doing a traditional campaign. Susan Hayes-McQueen from University of Washington just asked what I was thinking about: how does this model look different from distinct pieces of a comprehensive campaign? Per Rob, it could look very similar, but did not require the same kind of campaign superstructure that a true comprehensive campaign did, e.g. volunteer leadership, campaign collateral, etc.

Someone just asked how to measure the impact of changing the logo and brand. Rob: "I have no idea." A discussion ensued as to the efficacy of doing this kind of work, and the amount of time often spent on logo design, vs. actually getting out the door and raising money.

Use a micro-campaign to create a buzz around areas of excellence for the institution, your institution's "big hairy audacious goals." This can be a great way to ask people we would ask anyway, but to give them the opportunity to join something big and great.

This can also be a great way to make sure the institution's priorities drive the gifts you raise, rather than having the gifts you raise drive the priorities.

There's an interesting conversation about whether this kind of campaign should include a "dual ask," for the annual fund and a major gift. This campaign model involves a smaller number of donors, so may not include an annual fund ask. This is interesting, as in general, campaigns have been conceived of as a way to elevate annual giving in perpetuity. That doesn't seem so much to be a feature of the micro-campaign, which is largely driven by principal gifts.

Marijana Radijc from Oregon Health Sciences University is talking about their experience following the mini-campaign formula. One challenge they've faced is constant planning for mini-campaigns, as well as continuing to fundraise for "core/evergreen" needs. Rob recommends maintaining core staffing for core needs, while adding incremental staffing for the campaign. There's also some question as to whether academic leadership has the patience and tenacity to a) hold off on their priorities; b) be in continuous planning mode. One political advantage of the comprehensive campaign is that a lot of planning can be done all at once, and everyone gets a seat at the table.

I asked Rob about the old saw that a comprehensive campaign elevates the baseline level of annual giving, and asked how this plays into that. Rob responded that this has more to do with increased investment in advancement, a revenue generator, rather than the magic of campaigns. In fact, he has seen institutions cut their staffing after campaign, followed by a concomitant drop in annual giving.

Rob now proposes a radical difference ("The folks on FUNDSVCS will probably skewer me"): do a total resources campaign, which looks at private philanthropy, sponsored research, and institutional investment ("Our skin's in this game; come and join us.")

Rob is a big believer in using campaigns to illustrate the efficacy of investing in advancement. "Give us a dime, and we'll return a dollar."

Is Anyone Else Tired of Social Media?

I must admit, I'm tired of hearing about social media. I know it won't go away.... And I like social media, I just don't like talking about it in the context of fundraising. It's like "fundraising in a down economy" was about a year ago. Over it. That said, I'm going to keep an open mind.

I'm at a roundtable discussion where Wealth Engine is presenting on research's use of social media. Most researchers use social media after using proprietary databases, to flesh out a profile with anecdotal information. There are also some concerns regarding embellishment on the part of prospects who post. Most researchers feel the need to validate the data obtained through social media because of this.

In my mind, the debate over "is it ethical to use social media" is largely over. Three to four years ago, this was a big topic at conferences. Now, not so much.

Tidbit: Folks age 45 to 65 are the biggest growth in Facebook users right now.

Not surprisingly, social media is useful for proactive research (who's talking about us?), as well as reactive research.

If you are not tired of social media, Wealth Engine will be publishing a white paper soon. Overall, I would say their research does look helpful for folks who are still fascinated by social media.

We're having a nice roundtable discussion about social media. Our conversation is focused on analytics. We're not sure exactly how to incorporate social media directly into predictive modeling... However, I did pick up an intereting tidbit. Apparently there is a service called Class Act which allows you to connect social media handles to your actual constituents.

SonarMe: location-based social networking based on Twitter and Facebook.

We're talking a fair amount about privacy concerns -- is it weird to have marketers do micro-targeting based on social network data? If you'd asked me that question three years ago, I would have a really different response. These days I'm comfortable with it -- companies are going to market to me anyway. They might as well stop trying to sell me mini-vans and start trying to sell me stuff that actually interests me, like tech gadgets.

A lot of participants agree that it's a matter of time before Facebook sells their data. LinkedIn already offers premium memberships that allow for greater data mining. The amassing and commercialization of data is certainly a major trend! Many companies are having success selling data that they originally collected for other purposes.

Note to self: must revisit Facebook privacy settings.

I just read a little mini-article in Wired about the difference between actually communicating with friends vs. building a personal brand. This was a big topic for our group. We discussed the difference between LinkedIn, which folks seem to know is for personal promotion, vs. Facebook, which some people just think is "me, talking to my friends."

Okay, so I started this post with a healthy dose of skepticism, but it turns out, I am at least somewhat interested in talking about social networking and fundraising. But don't try to talk to me about the "down economy."

This Award Presented by a Giant Column of Red Balloons

APRA is presenting awards to researchers. All I can see is a giant column of red balloons.

Scholarship Recipient: Kristi (shoot, I just deleted her last name! How embarrassing), Marquette, Michigan

Professional of the Year: Mary McLeod, University of Guelph

Margaret Fuhry Grant: Mary Feeney, Keene State College

Distinguished Service Award: Stephanie Jonescu, McMaster University

It's a Cloudy Day

Har... I'm talking about cloud computing. The first session I'm attending is "Is Your Organization Working in the Clouds?" by Cathleen Parsons-Nikolic. I'm always a little wary of "trend" presentations, but so far, so good.

Cathleen's university is on Salesforce, a database I would certainly take a hard look at were I considering a conversion. One of the benefits of cloud computing cited by Cathleen is that software upgrades and patches are handled by the software provider. This certainly sounds lovely, as this is one of the biggest pains associated with maintaining our database. This is a really crucial distinction that I did not understand about cloud computing -- our database is web-based, but it's not cloud computing, because we are still housing the data on on-site servers.

One resosurce that Cathleen mentioned as an example is Spideroak, which is like Dropbox, but with encryption. This could be promising, as security is one of the biggest challenges for using cloud computing in the world of fundraising.

Other concerns are privacy (distinguished from security, which is more about cyber-attacks, whereas privacy is more around ownership of the data); reliability (no Internet = no data); and usability (e.g., lack of customization options).

Most universities and other fundraising organizations are primarily using cloud computing in the realm of social networks. Cathleen mentioned the biggest concern non-profits tend to have: "What if people say bad things about us?" Well, they will anyway! So you might as well join the conversation.

One attendee asked how to get "buy-in" from management to make the shift to cloud computing. Cathleen's answer: "It's about the money." When Temple University switched from an in-house email solution to Google mail, they saved $2 million. Portland State is making the same switch right now, and everyone is excited about the possibilties. We have already made the switch to Google calendar and are considering all kinds of applications for it -- like exporting a list of communications and solicitations from our database, and importing them into a calendar so that everyone on our fundraising team can easily see the data.

Cathleen also talked about the ability to shift staffing resources from maintaining servers and upgrading database versions to actually creating innovations.

InsideCRM.com is a good source for comparing various constituent relationship management solutions. This is one of the number 1 questions I get asked by development colleagues, particularly those at smaller non-profits. I'm looking forward to checking this out.

Cathleen's university, Villanova, uses Banner as their underlying database of record, with Salesforce layered on top. This is an interesting model. They use reporting tools with Banner to do their analytics and reporting.

I am surprisingly pleased with this presentation. I'd seen Cathleen present before, so I knew she was a good speaker, but as I said at the beginning, I'm usually nervous about trend presentations. This one's given me a lot of food for thought. I don't anticipate us doing any sort of database conversion any time soon, but it's helpful to see The Future (read in movie preview guy voice).

The conversation has turned to "researching in the clouds," including reviewing social media content (e.g. Linked in), direct connections between your CRM and electronic screening (it appears that Wealth Engine is at the forefront of this -- our database, Agilon's ONE, has a direct link to Wealth Engine, which is quite nice), and electronically-generated profiles (I saw Rob Scott from MIT present on this about 3 years ago, in a presentation titled "Killing Me Softly: The Death of the Profile," or something along those lines. At that time, that seemed like a crazy concept, and now I think is becoming the norm).

Cathleen is talking about the balance between openness and privacy. She was not entirely comfortable with having contact reports, financial ratings and giving data available, as this is highly-sensitive data, and faculty members and other non-development staff have access to the database. Ultimately, their organization decided to import the data to Salesforce, and bring non-development staff in as partners in the process, of course with signed confidentiality agreements.

Some other implications of CRM are implementation issues (focus on goals, not tech; getting buy-in; put constituents first); data quality issues will become more apparent and pressing, especially if you do distributed data entry or have multiple entry points for new records; and the need for strong confidentiality policies.

Live-blogging APRA!

I'm at the APRA International (Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement) conference in Austin, Texas. I'll be live-blogging from the conference. Right now I'm crossing my fingers that the coffee I'm drinking will kick in. Listening to LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem helped too.

Since I am "live-blogging," my writing-style will be a little funky, and I'll have to add links later.

Looking for a curious cat to join my team

Are you naturally curious? Smart, analytical, with strong writing skills? I am hiring a Development Research Analyst. Check it out.

The resume, reinvented

Thanks to hot tipper Lan in Portland for sending along this infographic resume. On the one hand, I love it. On the other, will its non-traditional nature hinder the creator's job search? Maybe that's part of the point -- resume style as a filter.