Amelia’s 2015 Best of Prospect Research List!

happy-new-year-champagne

Now is the time when we are flooded with listicles from all major media outlets about the past year .  I rather enjoy those, particularly the weird data round-ups.  So, I propose we share our own prospect research highlights of 2015!

Here are some of the items that rocked my research cubicle in 2015:

  1. New data resource (US): Donor Search!  My office just started to use it for proactive prospecting and it has been very useful so far.  Stay tuned!
  2. New data resource (international):  London City Data Store  Free data about London!
  3. Professional development event: APRA in NOLA
  4. Professional development presentation:  Tie between Preeti Gill and Jen Filla‘s presentation on female philanthropists and Kenny Tavares and Elizabeth Roma’s (Helen Brown Group)  podcast on family offices.
  5. Major news article: The Financial Timesseries on London housing prices.  This series led me to reexamine how my team rates London prospects.
  6. Academic article: Mesch, Debra, Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, Una Osili, Xiao Han, Andrea Pactor, “Women Give 2015,” Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthopy. November, 11, 2015. IUPUIScholarWorks Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/7425
  7. Tweets: I agree with the adage that a good tweet does one of the three e’s i.e. engage, entertain, or educate.  Here are my 2015 favorites in each category:
    1. Educate: Sabine Schuller’s tweet about the international $1M gift report.
    2. Entertain: Catherine Cefalu’s thoughts on her pending thesis (good luck!)
    3. Engage: Helen Brown’s conversation about prospect researchers’ wild-eyed dreams.
  8. Prospect Research Humor:  This post by Fundraiser Grrl.
  9. Book: Preeti Gill’s What About Women? Prospect Development from a Female Perspective
  10. Office Technology:  Slack.  My office switched from Gchat to Slack this year, and I’ve liked all of the ways we’ve been able to customize it.