The (Hidden) Wealth of Nations: Perils, Pitfalls and Opportunities in Using Data to Estimate Gift Capacity

We often hear of the potential and promise of data to boost major gifts, and the need to be data-led in all we do. But published reports, research and datasets used for gift capacity ratings are often based on (very) small samples (and so underestimate the scale of HNW populations), contain important omissions and gaps, or use broadly journalistic methods. Added to this, net-worth figures are often revised significantly (up or down) using undisclosed sources, overlook key asset holdings such as diversified investments, and vary hugely across publications, with figures in Forbes, Bloomberg, Hurun etc., differing by multiple billions of dollars. On top of all this, data on philanthropic giving is extremely limited, or absent, in many global jurisdictions, hampering efforts to scope market potential, benchmark effectively or to create solid business-plans. 

In this session, Ben lays out some of these challenges and suggest practical ways to address them so your team can understand the scale of the potential in your current or prospective major donor audiences. He describes strategies for prospect research teams to make realistic and ambitious gift capacity numbers for their teams, and draws on his fifteen-year career with European and global nonprofits (big and small!) to suggest innovative solutions to strengthen our ability to aim higher, more consistently in our major and principal gifts work, and ultimately to raise more funds, more often, from high-value constituencies.

Learning Objectives:

• Attendees will gain confidence and competence in constructing data-led gift capacity estimates for their teams across the value range - at mid-, major and principal-gift levels.
• Attendees will learn of the global context for data-led philanthropy and take away specific, actionable strategies to access/analyse data to build more consistent/ambitious gift ratings.