As a lifelong Metro Detroiter, I’ve always been a Detroit Lions fan. If you aren’t a football fan, you might not know, but the Lions have never played in a Super Bowl. This year, we really thought the Lions would make it all the way, but at the time I’m writing this, they were knocked out by the Washington Commanders this past weekend. By the time you read this, the Super Bowl will have come and gone, and a team will be celebrating how all their hard work and preparation paid off.  

So what does football have to do with prospect development (PD)? Well, all the Super Bowl talk and news about the preparations in New Orleans got me thinking — don’t most of us have a “Super Bowl” at our organization? A main event that involves a lot of prep, requires collaboration and then (hopefully) involves post-game analysis before we start planning for next year. Even if your organization doesn’t have a “Super Bowl,” there are likely many events throughout the year that keep your team hard at work.

Most often, we see PD folks drafted to provide event bios. I remember the stress around preparing over 300 event bios for our annual gala at my first job. Countless hours of manually preparing paragraphs on each attendee, continually adding, removing and reformatting as the RSVP list changed almost hourly in the days leading up to the event. 

While at the time it seemed like that was the norm, industry perception around the preparation and use of event bios has changed over the last several years. I reached out to our PD community to get a sense of the different event bio playbooks at their organizations. The response was staggering — over 40 people responded to my request for information! They were largely divided into a couple of different teams, which I’ve summarized below:

Team Every Event, Every Person

The PD folks on this team produce an event bio for every person who attends every event, whether that person is one of the organization’s closest donors or someone completely unknown. Typically, staff outside the development department (deans, physicians, curators, etc.) are not included on the list of bios unless the staff member is considered a prospect themselves. 

Team Every Event, Some People

PD folks here produce bios for every event but for a limited scope of individuals. Often, these bios are only produced for people falling into a certain category, such as prospects sitting at the president’s table, with outstanding asks or high capacities or unassigned prospects. 

Team Some Events, Some People

On this team are PD folks who produce event bios for some events, for some people. The definition of “some events” was split about 50/50! Some organizations only produce event bios for their small events (parlors/salons), whereas others only produce bios for their large events. The donors selected for event bios typically fell into the same categories as defined above. 

Team No Events

These organizations were a much smaller portion of respondents. They either don’t provide any event bios for any events — except for a one-off request here and there — or the event bios are provided by someone outside the PD team, often a development coordinator or even the gift officers themselves.

There are so many differences between teams, and that’s even before we define what an event bio looks like. Thankfully, the answer to this question is much more straightforward. For the majority of our colleagues, event bios are either an automated report from their customer relationship management (CRM) platform or a Word template providing regular, limited information on each attendee. This can include the attendee’s connection to the organization, lifetime giving and simple biographical details. Very few colleagues provide a full profile for each attendee or capacity ratings as part of the event bios. For some, talking points are included — either provided to the PD team before the bio is created or incorporated after the list is complete. 

If you had to ask me who I’m rooting for, it would be (at best) Team Some Events, Some People. I think the return on investment (ROI) on event bios can be limited, and PD folks’ time is better spent on other tasks. However, I understand the benefit of ensuring an executive is properly prepped for an event where new faces or prospects who may need a little bit more attention before an ask is made will be present — though I think there are more efficient methods to prepare. 

Unfortunately, many of our colleagues shared that their leadership do not read all the event bios, despite requiring a full list. For those on Team Every Event, Every Person, I can’t blame them — no one has time to read tens of pages of event bios. If you work at one of these organizations, please know you are not alone. 

If you’re hoping to scale back your organization’s approach to event bios, I suggest that you track the amount of time you spend on all your tasks. Sometimes all it takes is having the concrete data to say that event bios take approximately 70 hours of your time in the two weeks before an event (a common story), and with that time, you could have identified 50 new prospects, completed five new profiles, held 10 portfolio review sessions — whatever makes sense for your job duties. You can’t truly calculate ROI until you know these fine details. Not every leader is willing to change the strategy around preparation for events, but having this data is certainly an important starting point.

In the meantime, best of luck preparing for your 2025 Super Bowl, know there is always an Apra colleague out there going through the same process as you… and cross your fingers that next year will finally be the Detroit Lions’ year to win!

Jennifer Moody
Apra Content Development Committee Chair 2024-2025