Editor's Note: This article is featured in Best of Connections 2023. Read Apra Content Development Committee Chair Jennifer Moody's editor's message to learn more about the top articles of the year. 

 

For prospect development (PD) teams, data is everything. It fuels our work and is the key to unlocking new prospects and maintaining current relationships. But what if we used data to look inward and advocate for our own teams?

In 2019, the University of Central Florida (UCF) Advancement and Partnerships’ PD team sought to measure productivity, customer service and the utilization of deliverables and prospect recommendations by colleagues to understand the PD team’s impact on fundraising outcomes. We knew the ability to report the impact and return on investment of our work would be important to future conversations with our executive team related to promotions, increases in compensation and requesting new positions.

Over the next two years, the UCF PD team adopted a new tracking methodology that measured fundraiser activity in relationship to PD deliverables. The impact of this activity was visualized in a Tableau dashboard developed in collaboration with our IT business analysts. It focused on showing the impact of profiles, prospect lists, newly identified/research qualified prospect, strategy development, solicitation recommendations and grant opportunities distributed. After going live in 2020, the PD Activity to Impact dashboard reported the following on fundraising commitments in 2022:

• More than 300 newly identified and research qualified prospects, valued between $164M-$633M in estimated giving capacity. To date, $276K raised from this new prospect pool.
• More than 60 prospect lists supporting $3.1M in commitments.
• More than 1,100 profiles supporting $22.3M in commitments.
• Strategy development and recommendations for more than 400 prospect plans supporting more than $6M in commitments.
• New grant opportunities distributed supporting more than $2.4M in commitments.

As a result of demonstrating team and individual impact on fundraising outcomes, five full-time PD positions were promoted and one new full-time position was gained in the spring of 2022 by utilizing the Activity to Impact methodology and dashboard. But how did we get there?

The Challenge

Though the Activity to Impact metrics methodology and dashboard were implemented in two years, the foundation for this work began several years prior. Since 2015, we’ve tracked, measured and reported deliverable activities regularly, allowing management to understand productivity by individual teammate and by team overall, year over year.

Using an Excel spreadsheet to track indicators (e.g. number of profiles, prospect lists generated by college/unit, portfolio consultations completed and hours by deliverable), we gained basic insights into the team’s time management and productivity. However, this analysis did not highlight how the team was performing from a customer service perspective — meeting deadlines, fulfilling requests in a timely manner or if the deliverables were utilized by forward-facing colleagues.

In 2017, the UCF Foundation converted to a new CRM system, where the PD team began to track deliverables and other activities directly in the system through its research queue functionality. This offered a line of sight into all aspects of reactive and proactive prospect development work, in addition to administrative time and professional development, through the addition of related values in the various code tables available in the research queue.

From tracking request submission details to the number of days delivered early or past deadline, and use frequency of research tools, analysis of the research queue provided new insights into team productivity and resource application.

However, manual analysis was still needed in Excel. Though the team was able to understand additional aspects of productivity, the impact of the PD team’s work was not readily available. To understand the impact of PD’s work on the foundation’s fundraising outcomes, more advanced tracking, reporting and analysis methods were needed. 

Measure Like a Gift Officer

Understanding the impact of PD’s work on fundraising outcomes was done in two phases. Phase I began in late fall 2019. This included identifying:

• Key PD activities
• New prospects
• All profile levels and due diligence reports
• Prospect lists
• Strategy development and documentation
• New grant opportunities distributed
• Prospect alerts distributed

After determining the most efficient ways to code and track each activity in the CRM, the PD team applied a fundraising metrics methodology utilized with gift officers at UCF to determine the impact of each PD activity on fundraising outcomes. These metrics included tracking and reporting the number of interactions, number of visits, number of solicitations and dollars raised by fiscal year since the date of delivery to forward-facing officers.

Phase II of the dashboard, currently under construction, will introduce new metrics to the prospect management team’s work. This is intended to help accelerate gift officers’ progress toward achieving their own goals. The new prospect management team metrics include:

• Ensuring fundraisers have contacted 90% or more of their newly identified prospects
• Encouraging fundraisers to field qualify 30% of their newly identified prospects and assign to management
• Ensuring at least 90% of fundraisers maintain optimal portfolio volumes
• Ensuring fundraisers contact 100% of managed prospects at least twice within the financial year
• Encouraging fundraisers to solicit at least 50% of their planned asks by mid-year
• Increasing solicitation volume by 25% annually through recommendations made in portfolio consultations and pipeline potential meetings

Model Development and Implementation: A Partnership in Data Analytics

In early 2020, the PD team partnered with the business intelligence team and database administrators to develop a Tableau dashboard that would surface and analyze key PD activities and apply gift officer metrics methodology to demonstrate impact on fundraising outcomes.

The Activity to Impact dashboard was in development, testing and validation for two years (2020-2022); it collected data on key PD activities coded in the CRM and gift officer activity in relation to PD deliverables, in addition to subsequent gifts realized.

The dashboard displays data collected by the CRM research queue related to productivity and customer service key performance indicators, providing a dynamic management tool that analyzes overall team performance, functional area performance and individual performance. Figure 1 displays the Prospect Development Activity by Fiscal Year tab, which analyzes all activities and deliverables documented in the CRM research queue, comparing last fiscal year to the current fiscal year and quarter by quarter.

Figure 1. Prospect Development Activity by Fiscal Year tab

 

As a management tool, this tab displays an overall activity summary of hours in terms of:

• Research and administrative time
• Time spent on reactive and proactive prospect development initiatives
• Distribution of hours related to administrative type activities, including email, meetings and professional development
• Average number of days for research fulfilment by research type
• Average number of hours by research type
• Units served

The additional dashboard tabs display the number of respective PD activities by teammate and the impact of that activity through subsequent interactions, visits, solicitations made by gift officers and dollars raised in relationship to PD deliverables, to report the impact on fundraising outcomes. The sample widgets shown in Figures 2-4 are drillable to the individual constituent level, with constituent names redacted for privacy.

Figure 2. Dashboard tab displaying early dollars raised from newly identified prospects

 

Figure 3. Detail displaying prospect name and lookup ID linked to the CRM

 

Figure 4. Dashboard tab displaying fundraiser activity with prospect lists since the date of delivery

 

The Impact

For the UCF Advancement and Partnership PD team, the elevation of positions and additional resources were gained in part because of demonstrating team and individual impact on fundraising outcomes, and the potential of future fundraising results.

The demonstrated outcomes above, in addition to individual results, were presented to the UCF Foundation leadership team as a significant component in a request to promote each of the five full-time positions on the PD team, as well as add another full-time position to the team.

The process to request the promotions also included analyzing the 2021 Apra Salary Survey; ensuring existing and new job descriptions were well written; conducting at least two years of performance reviews; creating justification statements that showcased impact on fundraising outcomes; developing and maintaining a strong relationship with executive leadership; educating decision makers on the role PD plays in fundraising; and being relentless and politely persistent.

From a management perspective, the Activity to Impact dashboard has supported conversations among the team about productivity while providing visibility into usage of deliverables (or lack thereof in some cases), which has been more easily be addressed with gift officers and supervisors. This methodology is one approach to demonstrating the impact of PD’s work, and Apra and aasp have a variety of resources that address this topic as well. Some have been listed below for further reading.
 

Apra Greater Houston – Activity to Impact: Measure Like a Fundraiser to Ask for a Raise Join us as we share additional information related to this article and talk more about demonstrating return on investment of key functions in prospect development with the APRA Greater Houston Chapter in August. August 16, 2023, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. CT - https://apragreaterhouston.wildapricot.org/event-5290824

 

Recommended Resources

• Brown, H., Flaatten, C. & Williams, N. (2021). Apra best practices webinar: Understanding the Impact of Prospect Development. [Webinar] https://university.aprahome.org/products/understanding-the-impact-of-prospect-development
• Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). (2018). How Prospect Development is changing – and why it matters more than ever. https://blog.case.org/2018/11/15/how-prospect-development-is-changing-and-why-it-matters-more-than-ever/
• Fay, N. (2019). Precision Prospect Development. Precision Philanthropy, Lexington, KY.
• Flaatten, C. & Lee, J. (2021). Best Practices in Demonstrating ROI and Impact of Prospect Development. Aasp Best Practice, https://aasp.connectedcommunity.org/viewdocument/demonstrating-roi-and-impact-of-pro
• Grenzebach, Glier, and Associates. (2015). The New Metrics in Prospect Research. http://www.grenzebachglier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/GGA-Prospect-Research-White-Paper-The-New-Metrics-in-Prospect-Research-by-Kat-Banakis.pdf
• Lively, D. (2017). Managing Major Gift Fundraisers. Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Washington, DC.
• Williams, B. (2020). Best Practice in Prospect Research Metrics. Aasp Best Practice, https://aasp.connectedcommunity.org/viewdocument/prospect-research-metrics