What do you do when gift officers come to you looking for new prospects? At VCU new leadership charged the prospect research teams with creating self-serve discovery pools that gift officers could come to when they needed fresh prospects. Having a prospect pool creates a pipeline for your gift officers that is continually refreshed and doesn’t require responding piecemeal to individual requests. Attendees of this session will learn how these two institutions developed and organized their prospect pools. Researchers from both institutions will discuss how to ensure data quality, accurate tracking of prospects through the pipeline, and a steady flow of new prospects. Learn from experienced researchers about the opportunities and challenges of creating a prospect pool for your gift officers.

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point. 

Machine learning & AI can be powerful tools for enabling data-driven fundraising, but they can also be incredibly complex. 

Join Windfall’s Arup Banerjee for a deep dive into feature engineering. In this session, Arup will examine the nuances of machine learning models and the important role that feature engineering plays.  

Hosted with APRA, this session explores:
• How machine learning helps nonprofit organizations
• What feature engineering is and how you can leverage it
• Important advantages, drawbacks, and gotchas around feature engineering
• Simple steps to leverage feature engineering today 
• How to implement machine learning models

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.

Prior to her work in higher education, Mary spent several years working for one of America's leading background screening firms, HireRight. As an industry expert, she will offer practical tips and training for how to complete public records searches in-house. The session will include an overview of the complex court structure in the U.S., as well as a live demonstration of how to perform online court record searches and analyze sample cases. Attendees will be able to identify opportunities to expand their existing research products with free resources for public records data.

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.

Many hospitals and healthcare organizations are beginning to explore how to more authentically represent the communities and patients they serve. This includes examining fundraising practices with the goal of becoming more inclusive and welcoming to a variety of donors. As such, how to meaningfully incorporate principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion has become an increasingly significant question for prospect researchers. Prospect researchers at healthcare institutions have many opportunities to drive change in fundraising practices at their organizations in this area. At the same time, to make progress, healthcare fundraising shops and prospect researchers must be prepared to tangle with tough questions and issues.

This session will review strategies and ideas for incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in prospect development practices at healthcare organizations. It will examine:
• diversifying donor pools and boards
• refining research and portfolio management tactics to address unconscious bias
• benchmarking and goalsetting 

This session will also highlight and discuss some of the challenges encountered by prospect researchers in healthcare fundraising shops in diversity, equity, and inclusion work, as well as potential approaches for managing these challenges. This includes:
• acknowledging the larger context that fundraising is taking place in, including understanding the historic distrust of healthcare institutions among certain populations
• defining prospect research's role in organizational change
• navigating privacy laws and the ethical collection and storage of data

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.

Get 10 of the most popular sessions from the Prospect Development 2021, on a variety of topics.

In the midst of global uncertainly, how did LSU rearrange the board -- rebuilding metrics and unveiling new portfolios -- while retaining talent and reinforcing a culture of accountability?

Within a year of launching new development metrics, the LSU Foundation faced a critical need to reset fundraising priorities and execute a total organizational restructure. Leadership across Development, Advancement Services and Talent Management collaborated on an unprecedented strategy we hoped would result in a more advantageous position for transformational fundraising at LSU.

Join the LSU Foundation’s Vice President for Development and Senior Director for Prospect Development to learn more about determining what to measure across varying portfolio types, setting consistent expectations around all metrics, working with fundraisers to self-set proposal goals and making data-driven adjustments along the way.

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.

You know the importance of prospect development and the value it brings to a development team, but does everyone outside the prospect development team know it, as well? As prospect development professionals, we have opportunities every day to showcase our skills and present real results but what is the best way to do this? How can we move the needle on our impact within our development teams while also growing as leaders? Join me to hear lessons I've learned while leading small and large-ish teams in both higher ed and a national cause-based organization.

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.

Apra Talks began in the style of TED Talks, with industry specialists sharing their expert opinions. As we discovered a difference in outlooks during these talks, this conference session was shifted into Apra Debates. In both sharing professional judgment and debating the merits of something we believe in, there’s still one common theme we continue to see: communication can be hard and words are important. This year’s Apra Talks will seek to inform and spark conversation on three topic areas where our words sometimes get in the way:

Topic 1: Updating Problematic Terminology
Updating problematic terminology helps cultivate a more welcoming and inclusive work environment. The language we use shapes how we view our donors, our missions and ourselves.

Topic 2: Establishing Common Definitions
Establishing common definitions and terminology improves our ability to benchmark and share ideas that can advance our industry. Shared global terminology that is collaborative and standardized helps us all to work together, track our progress, compare results, and create sustainable processes that will move our industry and our organizations forward.

Topic 3: Positioning and Branding
Positioning and branding encourages the behaviors you seek and help you get the results you desire. 

During the Summer of 2020 my organization took the cues of social change and decided to focus more on diversity and inclusion, primarily, centering the Black and Latinx experience. We later had a nationally broadcasted controversy around race.  I led the charge in focusing portfolios and analytics around ethnicity and race to determine how we engaged our BIPOC constituents while simultaneously chairing the University Relations (Advancement) division's Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce.  Here's how it went.

This webinar is worth (1.25) CFRE points.

These days we are finding more and more Directors of Development coming from a research / data background. Learn from those that have done this, reasons why researchers may make great Directors, discover if this role is for you, and if so, what steps you can take to get there. 

This webinar is worth (1) CFRE point.