For my fellow researchers and fundraising professionals who have been tasked with growing corporate partnerships, one hundred days of one-hundred-degree-plus heat has given me a few extra moments to reflect on the work that has had the most ongoing value since the pandemic, and I hope you find the following recommendations helpful.

We continue to see significant growth and interest in corporate giving, employee guided giving programs, sponsorships, cause marketing, gift-in-kind, volunteerism and corporate grantmaking programs. We see local businesses stepping-up to include giving back into their mission and revenue goals.

During the pandemic, as our families, teams and industry faced unthinkable challenges, I was lucky to be given a simple one: find great new business leads and engage our fundraising teams to reach out. As events were being cancelled and companies were taking a pause to reconsider their giving programs, we refocused the lifecycle of our local businesses.

My home in Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the fastest growing economies in the United States. While I was identifying new leads, thousands of homes were being built around my neighborhood. I watched as the largest crane in the world started erecting the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s $40 billion fabrication campus. After a drive in any direction through the valley of the sun, it becomes clear that the potential generosity from local businesses remains largely untapped.

I found myself asking “how do we adapt our prospecting strategies to a growing and changing economy?” One way is to create a framework for identifying great new business leads tailored to your organization and giving your research and fundraising teams a fun challenge.

Developing a 90 Day Lead Generation Challenge:

1. Leadership is a motivating unifier. It is most helpful if your leadership team (who no one wants to let down) sets this challenge with clear parameters and is communicating with the team throughout the challenge. For example, give one month pre-launch time for the research team to prepare a framework to identify leads, and give 90 days for the fundraising team to reach out to 120 new businesses. Choose the best time of year to launch a challenge and schedule time during regularly scheduled meetings for the research team to present 40 new leads twice a month to the fundraising team and the fundraising team to share wins and challenges.
2. Listen to success stories and disappointments. Respect your fundraising colleagues’ time and experience in the field and gather insights to inform your new lead generation list before kicking off a challenge. It is incredibly helpful when everyone can acknowledge the difficulty of connecting with the right contact, and then bond over how fun it can be to dig into one’s connections to counter the sometimes unresponsive, cold call.
3. For the love of business! Build your business savvy. Understand the lifecycle of a business and why generous businesses and current donors give in specific ways. Ask for assumptions going into the challenge, capture and test objectively.
4. Research the economic landscape. Showcase the opportunity to your fearless participants through a motivating visual that quickly summarizes the number and types of businesses in your local and broader community. List notable characteristics for each of the 120 leads including if there could be a unique interest in your organization’s mission. Ask your local economic councils, chambers of commerce and business associations for tips.
5. Preview new prospects each week. Describe why each business is so interesting. Sell it! Ask teams to choose their own lead assignments based on interest and connection and to share their discovery wins.
6. Share what you hope to learn as a researcher. Let everyone know the types of questions you hope to answer at the end of the challenge — and beyond — that will help inform future work. How many new business leads do you need to grow? What is the most effective way to source new leads?
7. Rally. As with any great challenge, enthusiasm and incentives go a long way towards creating an environment that celebrates the gusto and persistence required to grow new lead generation avenues. Gift cards, ice cream, free car washes, high-five’s — it’s all good!
8. Survey and share results. Share the leads list a final time with successes highlighted. Consider sharing a snapshot of the discovery path taken for each lead and overall prospect metrics. It is helpful to also survey the teams for feedback about what to carry forward. 

At the end of this challenge, I found myself very fortunate to work with a spirited, entrepreneurial team who loves to pick up the phone on behalf of kiddos treated and cared for at Phoenix Children’s hospital. It was amazing how quickly we could narrow down and build consensus on where to focus our efforts and how the insights uncovered continue to help in my everyday discovery efforts.

Of course, this challenge was not intended to replace the critically important (and brilliant!) work of ongoing portfolio relationship management or the engagement work that fortifies the heart of our fundraising goals to strategically exceed them. It is a fun way to strengthen new business lead identification through qualitative insights, diversify your organization’s funding mix, bring in new gifts and help motivate your colleagues to do what they do best.

If you are looking for a collaborative space to connect on research related to public and private companies that often requires a unique perspective outside of individual giving strategies, consider joining the LinkedIn group Prospect Researchers for Corporate and Foundation Engagement (PR4CFE).

Jane Van Dae, MBA, CFRE
Senior Specialist of Foundation and Corporate Grant Philanthropy, Phoenix Children's

Jane Van Dae works with Phoenix Children's to advance hope, healing and the best possible healthcare for children and their families as a foundation and corporate grant researcher and writer. Jane joined Phoenix Children's in 2019 as a business development and market research specialist. Prior to that, she worked with Valley of the Sun United Way's fight against poverty as a manager of donor impact and prospect research; with Community Catalsyt's mission to transform health care for all developing national foundation grants and with Tufts University School of Medicine in donor and alumni relations. Van Dae recently joined the SWARO regional chapter of APRA as board treasurer.