Prospect Research with Celeste Davies

Celeste Davies:

I’m Celeste Davies, director of Prospect Management and Advancement Services at MLK Community Health Foundation.

Lisa Baxter:

Celeste, thank you so much. I’m a big fan of you. I’m a big fan of prospect research. Can you share with me and with our listeners your definition of what a prospect researcher does?

Celeste Davies:

I look at us as the tenacious, curious, nosy, fundraising team member. We know everything, or if we don’t know everything, we know where to find everything. We are the catalyst. I say we ignite, we make things available. We look at data. We are the spark in fundraising.

Lisa Baxter:

I especially love the word catalyst because you all do make a difference. Prospect researching is such an integral part of working with gift officers, but it also helps to impact the success of a nonprofit in a very specific way. Sometimes I’m very surprised at what a prospect researcher is able to come up with the information that is just out there. It can be both scary and awesome at the same time. And I’m sure you’ve experienced that.

Celeste Davies:

I have.

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. And I love the word strategy. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I sometimes feel like folks in nonprofit don’t think about it in that way.

Celeste Davies:

Certainly. I say to researchers, get a seat at the table, the prospect, you know the suspect, the donor, you know the individual, you know the foundation, because you’ve done all the reading, you’ve seen the data, done the analysis, and it’s all about how are we going to get Lisa Baxter to our table? How are we going to get Lisa Baxter to believe in our mission and our vision and to be generous to give a gift? It’s about building relationships.

You can have a billion dollars and if you’re not interested in my mission, you’re not going to come to my door. So relationships are, I believe the most important thing in that fundraising process of strategy. Who do we know that knows you? How do we get you to our door, to our table? Volunteers, board members, physicians, hospital staff, community leaders, community members. Who has the relationship with you? And it’s really those degrees of separation. You’ll be surprised. I can do a profile, a research profile, and I find, oh my gosh, look, this person went to college with Lisa or they go to the same golf course or beauty salon or whatever it may be, because social media has opened the personal lives of a lot of individuals now as well. So it’s always about those connections and building those relationships because at the end of the day, data is just numbers. Good numbers, but we have to have those relationships. It’s what’s important.

Lisa Baxter:

Right. It’s almost like an elevated form of stalking, but not stalking.

Celeste Davies:

Okay. You’re going to meet Celeste Davies. Well, okay, Lisa, here’s everything you need to know about Celeste Davies. You may have gone to a university that maybe your brother went to or so you have something in common to start building those relationships. You’ve given to organizations that you may be familiar with. So that’s part of the strategy. It’s how do we get to Lisa? How do we get her to be interested in what we’re doing and how do we get her to be philanthropic?

Lisa Baxter:

Yes. Absolutely. And I even recall those small pieces of information are like gold because I remember there was this one prospect that we were working on, and I found out that she taught at my alma mater and I didn’t know her from Adam. And that piece just made the conversation so much better. And we did end up getting funding from them and all that. But when you say the word catalyst, it really is.

Celeste Davies:

It’s the capitalist.

Lisa Baxter:

Small piece of information and it’s amazing to me how far a relationship can go on just that. You guys are also finding little pieces of gold along the way. So it really makes a difference.

Celeste Davies:

We are the sparks. We find those sparks and then we say, “Here, nurture it. Here’s the spark. Go make it bigger. Make it into a fire, bonfire, what you need to do.” And Lisa also, I’m glad you mentioned us working together. It’s very important that prospecting researchers build and maintain relationships with the gift officers that they work with. It is so important, as you know. And I say all the time, what I do … Because I also do management and tracking, and it can seem punitive and it is not. I’m here to make you look good. How can I make Lisa look better best? Because you win, we all win.

Lisa Baxter:

That’s why I say the prospect researcher is the heart of a nonprofit and frontline fundraiser success. And I’ve shared that with you many times as well as the impact you’ve had on my career when we work together. And that is super important. It’s like the heart and lung. It’s like we’re working together to create some magic. Why do you think that the prospect researcher role has not been given more respect and viewed as strategic partnership?

Celeste Davies:

Because the prospect researcher works in an organization where the importance of their role is not recognized. It depends on where you are as a prospect researcher and who your leadership, who you report to. Your role is so important. And you may have to be the one to be a teacher. This is what I do and this is how I do it well. The fundraisers, chief development officers, heads of advancement services, fundraising departments, they know the importance of prospect researchers. So if you do find yourself in a situation where you have to stand on your soapbox, tell the stories, show how important our role in your organization is, the different roles and hats that we wear, the importance of having accurate data, importance of due diligence. We don’t want an embarrassment on our wall or on a donor honor roll or something like that. We don’t want Lisa F. Baxter, we want Lisa J. Baxter, that kind of thing. You don’t want your chief development officer going and embarrassing his or herself asking a prospect for a million dollars when they really can only do maybe a hundred thousand. So your role is important. I think we do have to be our own heroes.

Lisa Baxter:

Be our won cheerleaders. Because there is a lot of intention and diligence that goes into whether you’re doing a profile or whether you’re doing a deep dive. And I’d love you said be a teacher and a storyteller because you are. You’re educating the nonprofit, the gift officer, you’re educating a lot of folks. Even board members on who this person is, or you’re telling them a story. Right now we’re talking a lot about storytelling and shifting narratives, but I love that point that you made about also prospect researcher being a storyteller. Can you just dive a little bit more to that?

Celeste Davies:

Of course. Because you are a biography, you are your career, your nonprofit associations, what boards do you sit on? You are a family member. You are probably involved in the community. So when I do a profile, I am giving the reader your story from available resources. I also have to be a gatekeeper. What do I think is pertinent? What do I think you should know? What’s important for Lisa to know? Lisa needs to know that this prospects mom was a nurse when they lived in The Bahamas or that a parent was an engineer or an architect if you’re in the educational environment, things like that. You tell the full story. It could be a brother who sits on the board of name your favorite organization. But we have to give that full story because this is where we get connections and strategy happens with the story.

Lisa Baxter:

Being concise is very important. Gone are the days, the 40-page profile. I just remember when I used to get those and I’m like, “When am I supposed to read this? I need to be out there meeting with the people.” But like you said, you have to pick out the most pertinent information so that that gift officer can be on their way.

Celeste Davies:

Exactly.

Lisa Baxter:

You serve on the board of directors for the California Advancement Research Association which is the largest single state chapter of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement or known as APRA. So what are some of the biggest challenges prospect researchers face in the current climate?

Celeste Davies:

I think one of the biggest is data. Accurate data. Both internally and externally. We all have a fundraising database and we depend on that data to do analysis of what our donor pool looks like, our prospects. Who do we have in our data that can become a major gift donor, leadership donor or a planned giving donor. And we need to have accurate data. There are probably a dozen or more, Lisa Baxter’s across the country. How do I know that this is the Lisa Baxter that gave to a Boys & Girls Club is the same Lisa Baxter that gave to Howard University? So we always have to depend and verify the data that we use and we depend on having accurate data.

And then I think the second challenge, really due diligence. I think I mentioned earlier, we don’t want an embarrassment up in lights on our walls or that would be an embarrassment to your organization. And I think due diligence, basically meaning verifying that this person doesn’t have any political, criminal, anything that’s going to be an embarrassment to your community, to your leadership, to your, in my case, my patients, my community. And it’s also should be done early, I think in the fundraising cycle. We shouldn’t wait until we’re in late cultivation to figure out that, “Oopsie. Lisa. Oops. Can’t do it that way.” So I think it should come early probably in the discovery part of what we do. But once again, that’s resources and having the software and data to verify this information that we don’t have any criminal records, any political history that would be an embarrassment.

Lisa Baxter:

So accurate data and making sure that you’re doing your due diligence.

Celeste Davies:

Due diligence. Yeah.

Lisa Baxter:

And most of the time it works and sometimes it may not be because that piece of information may be old or may not be accurate.

Celeste Davies:

May not be accurate.

Lisa Baxter:

Like you said, if you do your due diligence and it happens very early on in the process, then you’re not going to have to be apologizing later on. And it is a lot of pressure. I can imagine. Do you agree with me?

Celeste Davies:

No. It can be. I’ve worked in organizations where we’ve had to backtrack on some prospects. It happens. It’s more common than you may realize. And it’s also very important that we as prospect researchers, we work closely with our advancement services department, whoever’s overseeing our database, that we have procedures on the accuracy of the data that is entered into our fundraising databases. We depend so much on that information.

Lisa Baxter:

It’s always this love hate relationship as it’s like we need it but as a front life fundraiser, all the information that I gathered, all the moves that I made, I have to put it in the system so historically we have something. When somebody asked me what was the hardest part of being a fundraiser, I would say that part. But you just want to get onto, let’s cultivate and steward this person so we can get that gift. But you have to write it down. And so you’re also like, “Hey, you got to do this. You got to sit down and spend some time.” So that’s another-

Celeste Davies:

Yep. Let’s meet on Friday after lunch and I’ll help you with this. Or let’s train your executive assistant or whoever your support staff person is to help you put that information in the database for you, which is what we do in our shop. I have a data integrity specialist, Dora, and the gift officers know they can go to Dora to help them enter contact reports and update information on their portfolios and stuff like that. We find ways around it.

Lisa Baxter:

You’re an accountability partner. Because it’s like, okay, you’re doing all of this work, but if it’s not captured, if you’re not showing all the work that you’re doing, all the moves that you’re making, all of that, then it doesn’t mean anything in the end.

Celeste Davies:

Correct. And like I said from the beginning, my job is to make the gift officer look good because you report to a chief development officer or a VP or president, and when they say, “Okay. What does Lisa’s portfolio look like? Can I get a report? What’s the pipeline looking like?” And I’m like, “Hey, Lisa, this is missing from the reports. I need you to do this before I send the report up the line.” That kind of thing. “Oh, yes, Celeste is going to make me look good, so let me meet with her on Friday after lunch so that the reports look good on Monday morning.” Voila. Job done.

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. And it definitely helps. And yes, having that thought process, this person is helping me look good, for me I was like, “I can’t let anybody down. I can’t let Celeste down because she’s doing all of this work for me so I have to spend some time and upload all this information and do what I need to do because it’s going to help everyone.” We need to listen to our prospect researchers and update that CRM. Take some time out once a week to do it so you’re not being reactive to it because it does make a difference.

Celeste Davies:

Does make a difference. And what I find when we build these relationships with the gift officers, it’s reciprocal. Because you go out and you have a visit and email from your prospect and from your donor, and you garner information that’s not in the public domain. And then you come back and you go, Hey, Celeste, exciting news. I just found out that Julie’s on the board here, or she has a home in Utah or that kind of thing.

Lisa Baxter:

What do prospect researchers need from their nonprofits and leaders to do their job well and maximize their talent? Because sometimes I find that there are some nonprofits that are ready for prospect researchers and there are some, not so much.

Celeste Davies:

I need to have my voice. I need to be at the table to say, “Hey, here are these …” Whether it’s reactive or proactively. Like, “Okay, I did this. I found this information on these individuals that you asked for. Let’s go through them one by one.” Or, “What is it you’re trying to do? What do you need this information for?” Have a voice in the strategy. Ask for my input. I have the information. And until we have that dialogue, I don’t know what you want all the time as a gift officer, what you’re looking for. So that as I move forward with you or with the team, I know, okay, Lisa’s really into capacity, but Julie’s really into relationships and maybe Kelly is really into what doctor knows who. We need the synergy with the gift officers. So that is why I think prospect strategy meetings are important. We look at portfolios. We make sure that we have movement at all levels in portfolios.

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. The meetings definitely help. Again, going back to being an accountability partner, because it’s like, “Oh, okay, I can see from the last time we spoke, you’ve made progress.” Or maybe this is not making progress. Let’s talk about strategy. And like you said, not being a silent partner or a siloed partner. Because I know for me sometimes especially, and maybe other gift officers would agree, sometimes so in the weeds that you need somebody that’s 50,000 feet up to say, “Okay, but is that strategy really going to work?” And you’re like, “Oh, but you know what? When I’m thinking about it, it’s not.” So that’s where I’ve seen the value in terms of prospect researchers working together with the gift officers as well.

Celeste Davies:

Yes. And it’s also important that prospect researchers know and have become familiar with the volunteers in your organization. Board members, any circle of friends, committee members, all the volunteers, because that’s how we make connections until we make relationships happen until we make the sparks.

Lisa Baxter:

Absolutely. You need to know everyone. You need to have a voice, a seat at the table. So I hope that the nonprofit leaders that are listening to us today understand the importance of that. Some nonprofits get it, some nonprofits don’t but you’re hearing it.

Celeste Davies:

And also with your team members, the advancement services department. Prospect researchers should be best friends with whoever’s in charge of the database if you’re not doing it yourself. Or the stewardship and donor relations department. It’s a puzzle and we are a team. We have to work together. That synergy is so important.

Lisa Baxter:

And I just remember because the team at MLK is one of the best and just, oh, remember, you need to look over the stewardship letter, make sure everything … The whole team is literally working together. Or Lisa, did you look this … Oh my gosh, yes, I’m going to do it. So really, like you said, it does make you look good, but the gift officer needs to remember that they’re helping you to live your best fundraiser life so we need to remember that.

Celeste Davies:

And I don’t want to forget also the events team in any organization, prospect researchers, when we have to do those little mini bios or event bios they call them and who is whom. And that relationship is also important because there’ll be times when we have to get a deadline or we have to push a deadline, and you want to have that relationship so that your prospect researcher doesn’t feel overwhelmed or like I’m always the last person to know. No, no, no. You have to have that really great relationship. Build it. I always take doughnut holes or cupcakes to my staff in other departments just to say, “Hey, remember me. Okay. Over here. I have the information. Let’s share. Make you look good.”

Lisa Baxter:

Absolutely. And I like the fact that you brought up events because sometimes we can be putting together an event and it’s like, what is the point of this event? And your prospect researcher will get you straight really quick. “Why are we doing this? What is the outcome?” And then sometimes you step back and you’re like, “I don’t even know.” So doing events for the sake of events so that’s why it’s so important for your prospect researcher to have a seat at the table. All they’re thinking about is the success of the organization advancing the mission, and we need to listen to them.

Celeste Davies:

Yes. And I always say, so your attendees came, your RSVPs. Who are they? We have to do a debrief. Involve your prospect researchers in that debrief of those events because those event participants become prospects and then they become donors and are continuous with us.

Lisa Baxter:

I think right now there is a shift from the transactional to transformational when it comes to donor relationships. If you’re advising a nonprofit on prospecting, what would you advise them to do? Can you just break that down in some steps for our listeners?

Celeste Davies:

Start with who you know. Have a database. We want the recurring donors, the donors that give frequently. Steady donors. They may not be the largest giving donors, but they give regularly. They respond to your email blasts. They are annual donors. We start there. And it’s about thanking them, stewarding them, keeping them informed of what’s going on in your organization. So that’s how I would start my prospecting with who we already know. You do the analysis of that. It’s your most recent donor. You want the donor who’s giving you the most gifts. And then we build strategy around communicating with them. Because your donor who’s been giving you $250 every year for the past 10 years is probably going to be an excellent planned giving donor. Your donor who just went online and gave you a thousand dollars probably has the capacity to be a major gift donor. So it’s important that we not only find these donors, but we do a screening for capacity, then relationships. And then the strategy begins with, okay, how do we get them to give their next gift? It’s always about the next gift.

And please, we don’t want to wait for a year to thank Lisa for her gift that she made or thank her once and then never reach out to her again or she’s informed or updated. The digital fundraising is really key here as well. Because we can see the clicks, we can see who opened an email, we can see who gave online. We can see who forwarded our email. So that’s for prospecting. And then I always getting that list of prospects. You get your top team and you narrow it down to the top 25, and then you go to your gift officers who goes to, in my case, in hospitals, to their physicians or go to the deans or the heads of departments and say, “Hey, here’s the list.” Name, recent gift capacity, and all the different Excel headers, and you sit down with this person and, “Who do you know here?”

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. So basically start with who you have. I think sometimes people miss that step because they’re like, “We don’t have anybody.” But you do. You just got to pay attention. Even if you have in-kind donors, just those could be converted into donors. So there’s always some magic in those folks you have, but I think sometimes we don’t think of it that way because we want this beautiful, viable list just ready for us. And I learned a lot about that with you because we started from … We didn’t start from scratch. We started more from, okay, this is what we have, what can we do with this? So start with what you have, do the analysis, create a communication strategy, and then that way you can start breaking it down into your top 25, top 50, and then get with your volunteers to figure out okay, who knows who or who has connections to who. I think those are very simple and profound steps in the way that you could really start out.

Celeste Davies:

Yeah. And like you said, know gift in-kind event participants. They may not have given you a gift, but they came to your event. Screen them. Potential. Who invited them? Who did they come to the event with? Connection.

Lisa Baxter:

I feel sometimes we miss a lot of opportunities because we don’t think about it in that way. We’re like, “Oh, okay. They came to the event.” But it’s like, no, it should never be that. It’s always strategic.

Celeste Davies:

It’s always strategic.

Lisa Baxter:

Always strategic. You’re not just going to a party. You’re really going there to really cultivate these relationships and give them the opportunity to realize how amazing your nonprofit is. No missed opportunities.

Celeste Davies:

None. And Lisa also, because we worked together in an organization, I think for both of us, it was really unique because we did not have the graceful patients or the alumni or the membership base. We had to find really clever ways and different ways to identify prospects in our community.

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. That community building part is really important. And I think sometimes people shy away from it because it’s an approach. This is like, who do we know? Because I even went into my own networks, who do I know right now that would want to be invested in this or would know somebody that would want to be in this amazing organization? That’s how we were able to build a great pipeline of people. It wasn’t just, oh, I just want you to give a check, but no, I want you to learn more about us and then tell us what are you interested in making an impact on? It was a very different feeling.

Celeste Davies:

Very different.

Lisa Baxter:

Does this seem like the nonprofit sector needs a rebrand? And what I mean by that is when COVID hit, it’s like we could never go back to whatever that was. It was very the traditional way of fundraising. Not saying that elements of that don’t still work, but I think we really all collectively understood. We can never go back to that. How would a prospect researcher rebrand the sector and their roles in the nonprofit?

Celeste Davies:

We have to become a social butterfly. A lot of us are home now. Prospect researchers tend to be very … Not introverts per se, but self-reliant. They work by themselves. They have all their little databases, they can do this alone. Saying we don’t need anybody around us. And you can fall very easily into that personality and that characteristic, and I am so the opposite. I want to know what’s going on. Tenacious, curious. So what I find is that I now have to be a lot more … Not so much vulnerable, but here I am willing to hear and willing to learn in this new environment because you really have to put yourself out there now. You have to communicate, whether that’s zooming, emailing, picking up the phone and having a conversation, getting that immediate feedback. Because the relationships with your co-workers, with the gift officers, that has to remain and go away. So you find each other and you check in on each other all the time.

So for me, I think that’s what it is. You really have to put yourself out there and say, “Here I am. I’m available.” And find out whatever method that communication is. I’m going to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, Lisa, I’m sending you an email about this person and this is what they did and this is what the profile has in it. Let me know if you have any information that you want to add.” That kind of thing. I have a report. Let’s have a zoom so I can explain all these Excel columns and what they mean. We have to be better communicators. And that dynamic has to continue because we’re not in the office seeing each other face-to-face.

Lisa Baxter:

You’re taking the initiative to really not just create that connection with your internal coworker, but externally you are a whiz on LinkedIn. Everybody knows Celeste because she has quite a following, but taking that initiative to not just put yourself out there, but taking that initiative to … I just remember you sending me … I wasn’t even thinking about certain people and you’re sending me these. I’m like, “Oh. Okay.” So super helpful because then you could have another person to think about and another strategy to create. It is super helpful. We have to be out there as fundraisers. I had to really put myself out there when I was the president of AFP and I didn’t like it, but I knew I had to do it.

Celeste Davies:

It’s coming out of your comfort zone. We have to be more proactive. We are reading, we are looking at social media. We have alerts on donors and prospects that we need to share .and I really want prospect researchers to come out of that. Become uncomfortable. Go, okay, I need to be not only seen but heard. It’s important. Okay. Here are some news alerts on your prospects, Lisa or Julie or Kelly or Sharon. It’s not me just waiting. It’s not that passive role anymore. It has to be dynamic. It has to be, I’m a resource for you. I’m available.

Lisa Baxter:

And that goes back to you being a teacher too. I’m already a voracious reader, but working with you, it made me look at information differently because I’m like, oh. And I would read this and then it would make me go down the whole rabbit hole. And then we would be sharing information back and forth, whether it’s a little tidbit that we found on Instagram or what have you, and it really does make the difference. And you’re looking at information differently because this is something that I could use that again, could advance the mission in a very different way. That gave us a leg up in that sense, because we’re just mining for information and relevant information at that. I look at frontline fundraising as we’re also educators and teachers, and prospect researchers are also teachers as well.

Celeste Davies:

I have at least two brown bag teaching sessions about prospect researching for my staff and for gift offices here. I do them on Zoom now. Remember, it’s like, “Okay, here’s my PowerPoint presentation. Here’s some little golden nuggets. You don’t need to wait for me to find out about this. It’s out there. Hey, this is a reliable source and here are some reliable resources for you to use. Go to Yahoo Finance and you find this information and just click on this little button. You see there it is.” And then everybody’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know that was out there.”

Lisa Baxter:

And that’s so great how you continue to be that teacher because the two words that I think would encompass this is you’re a strategic partner. This is a strategic partnership, and this is something that when both people are collaborating, both people are co-elevating, you really will see the impact on the organization and long-term as well. What advice would you give to emerging prospect researchers in this new era?

Celeste Davies:

What has helped me tremendously in this field is to learn what everybody else does. Try and shadow a gift officer. What is a gift officer do? How do they do their jobs? So befriend a gift officer and say, “I’d like to see what it is you do. How you do what you do. What are your matrix? What are your priorities? Dollars raised? So many meetings. How do you go about …” You pick up the phone, making, making that first discovery outreach. What does your email say? Shadow a gift officer. Shadow a donor relations and stewardship person. Shadow that planned gifts officer. Events. Hey, who are our sponsors? How do you find a sponsor? How do you know the sponsor is going to help us? So that way when you walk in your colleague’s shoes now you know oh, this is what they want. This is what they need to do their jobs.

And it is going to be so helpful because you’re not just doing things blindly. You’re not just going, okay, they need Lisa’s bio, her career, what she did in the board. Is she on a board here? How much money she gave over there? It’s more than that. Well, Lisa gets this information, and she does this in early cultivation. She does this in discovery. She does this for solicitation. She does this when she has to meet with one of her physicians for one of her priority areas. After we made a gift is made how do we thank them? All the different ways of thanking a donor. Working with facilities. A name on a wall. How do we choose where a donor wall is going to be? It’s all important because it helps you do your job better because you working with the big picture, you see the forest now as well. So you have the details, but you see the forest. That’s my advice.

Lisa Baxter:

I love it. I call that meet the people and knowing what everybody does, understand what their [inaudible 00:41:08] is and how can you best help everybody to again, advancement and collective-

Celeste Davies:

Yes. And your advancement services director, manager, whoever is in charge of that CRM. BFF.

Lisa Baxter:

Absolutely.

Celeste Davies:

Gift processing person, BFF. Yeah.

Lisa Baxter:

Yeah. That’s true because at the end of the day, you might be sitting there like what am I going to do? And they will send you that piece of information that will take you to the next level. So it’s not just about prospect research don’t just make us look good, they make us better. And I hope that everybody understands that about prospect research because they really help to uplift the nonprofit sector and philanthropy in general. Do you have any last words for us? Anything that you want to share before we go?

Celeste Davies:

Well, I say as we move forward with AI, that’s going to be a very strategic part of what we do as fundraisers moving forward. And we need to work in collaboration with not so much to replace, but to enhance what we do. The tool isn’t going away, so I say learn the tool. It could be a jumping off start for thank you letter or information on even research, or it’s your initial to be edited document. Use it for your analysis. But once again, it’s a collaboration placement. AI cannot replace building relationships, and that’s the most important thing in fundraising. All the data aside, we have to build a relationship with our donors and our prospects.

Lisa Baxter:

Absolutely. Not placement, but enhancement. Those are wise words. So much. This has been so awesome and so informational.

Celeste Davies:

Oh, thank you so much, Lisa.