This month, Suzanne Milauskas, Director of Prospect Research and Management at Bentley University, describes her decision to screen alumni based on reunion year on an ongoing basis, instead of in a large batch every few years. Read on to see how it's working for Bentley.

A Case Study – Wealth Screening by Reunion Class

WEALTH SCREENING – LARGE BATCH

The first week I started working in the field of prospect research, the modeling results of 50,000 constituents with wealth screening results for 10,000 of them were delivered to our department.  Dropped right into the fire in September 2007, I spent the next year with the then Director furiously analyzing all the asset data. It was a major focus of our time and our first priority. Even so, it took the two of us many months to research this “new-found" wealth.

We had made a decision not to circulate any results until all the major gift prospects were confirmed.  Since the screening was supposed to be the start of our pre-campaign planning phase, and the new ratings would form the basis of our campaign pyramid, we felt it was too risky to send out data straight from the vendor without confirmation. In theory, it was a good plan.  In reality, it wasn’t a huge success.

DELIVERY OF THE RESULTS

By the time we delivered the “top-tier” results to the development team in the fall of 2008, a year had passed and a lot had changed.

• Enthusiasm for and recollection of the screening had waned among the development team, so assignments of newly found prospects were not fully embraced.
• There were plans for major staff changes in 2009, resulting in a reluctance to alter portfolio makeups.
• The Financial Crisis had begun, and gift officer confidence in the new ratings plummeted, divisional goals and focus shifted, and campaign planning was delayed - all in response to the economy.

So, the investment of time and money in screening this large number of prospects yielded few positive results due to a confluence of unpredictable events.

REASSESSING THE MODEL

Fast-forward to April 2011 and the arrival of the NEDRA News, in which Amanda Yost Parker wrote a great piece about creating an effective plan for a wealth screening. I remember reading her paragraph about the importance of planning how to handle the results and the dissemination of a screening. I was the newly appointed Director of a department that now consisted of just me, and Amanda’s insights got me thinking about how to balance the future need for wealth screenings with my time availability, and how to ensure that the development staff used the results effectively.

SCREENING BY REUNION YEARS

Fast-forward again to the release by WealthEngine of the 2012 Higher Education Report: Best Practices for Prospect Research in Higher Education Fundraising - 2nd Ed., in which it was reported that “one hundred percent of HPOs [high performing organizations] screen alumni, friends and donors on a regular basis, with 86% screening parents, 79% screening reunion classes, and 41% screening faculty and staff.” We already screened incoming parents every summer but I had not considered regularly screening by reunion year before reading these statistics.

Since the industry considers the lifespan of a wealth screening to be five years, now in 2012 is the time to consider refreshing the data from 2007.  It is unrealistic to think I can handle a large-scale screening on my own and still attend to all the other requests and duties of my position. Our Annual Fund department recently created a dedicated Reunion Director, and our Vice President has separated Homecoming and Reunion weekends to give each its own focus. It therefore makes sense to align the wealth screenings with the divisional importance now bestowed upon the Reunion program.

CURRENT PLAN

Since the Reunion Director would like to be able to select volunteers, peer solicitors, and committee chairs 18 months in advance of Reunion, I need to plan backwards and assume that my screening of the two reunion class years must be submitted in December/January, so the results can be analyzed, rated, and disseminated in advance of when the data is needed.  

BENEFITS

The benefits of adopting this approach are three-fold:

• 1. Budget
• • We just converted to a new database and moved offices, both substantial University capital projects, so it is not likely that a large amount of divisional budget will be approved to do large-scale screening in the near future.

• • I can reallocate my departmental budget to accommodate the addition of 5,000 names to be screened each year. (I have budget to send two staff members to both the NEDRA and APRA annual conferences and am a department of only one right now). My current analytic subscription allows for 2,000 names to be submitted in bulk per year, and I will continue to screen the incoming parents every summer.
• 2. Time Management
  
• • It is feasible to add a regular analysis of a smaller batch of names to my schedule every year, rather than attempting to analyze a huge batch of records on my own at the exclusion of the rest of my job.
  • The regular screening of undergraduate alumni will capture the growing assets of our constituency as they mature, allowing for the transitioning of prospects out of the Annual Fund and into Major Gift portfolios when appropriate. Fewer alumni will fall through the cracks as their careers progress.
  • Newly rated major gift prospects will be entered into portfolios in a systematic procedure, avoiding the overwhelming glut of ratings from the large-scale screening.
• 3.  Database Cleaning
  
• • By screening by reunion year, each class will be screened right before attention is about to be focused on them, thus allowing for the ratings and data to be as fresh and relevant as possible.
  • Every list that is submitted to the screening will leave behind a list of alumni without sufficient data to have been screened and thus will continually highlight areas of the database for the Bio department to focus on and update with a year advanced notice.
  • The Reunion committee volunteers will also know who among their classes are considered truly “missing” and can reach out on our behalf for updates.

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

The only flaw with this new model is that is it geared towards the domestic undergraduate alumni population only. Moving forward, I will want to consider how to factor in a screening of the graduate alumni, the faculty and staff, and our individual “friends.”  International alumni research is a topic for another day!

CONCLUSION

This different model of handling our wealth screenings will result in ~ 5,000 names being screened and records updated every year, rather than 10,000 every five years. (Note: these numbers represent the domestic households with good address and/or employment data to qualify for the screening). The data will always be fresh for each class, the manageable chunks can better be fit into my existing schedule of activity without being my sole focus, the process will continue regardless of staffing changes, and the gradual discovery of higher ratings will ensure a smoother pipeline of prospects in our division.