Bridging Tech Eras: Integrating AI with Tried and True Screening Methods

DonorSearch has been our go to as far as the standard for data Penn services primarily in the wealth screening space, and for many, many years, our clients have relied on that partnership to be able to bring in wealth so that they can screen their donors and Read More

DonorSearch has been our go to as far as the standard for data Penn services primarily in the wealth screening space, and for many, many years, our clients have relied on that partnership to be able to bring in wealth so that they can screen their donors and figure out who they should be communicating with, as far as high capacity and really a good return on the investment DonorPerfect is what we consider a fundraising CRM, so it’s very purpose built for fundraising. It includes all of the fields that you would need in terms of tracking all of your fundraising activities, where your donations are coming from, grants and information of that sort, so you you can get really great reporting, as well as great history in terms of where to drive additional fundraising in the future. I’ve worked with many of the other wealth screening solutions that are out there. Donor search has by far been the easiest to work with. As far as a willingness, from an integration standpoint, from a commercial standpoint, to be able to bring new products to market, their data has always been top notch. They’ve communicated to me what their value proposition is in terms of what differentiates them, and that has just made the difference in the world. As far as being a good partner to us, we’ve just heard the stories of of nonprofits that have been able they’ve built new buildings just using this recipe of how to fundraise. It’s it’s the ideal situation. From a major Gift standpoint, I

DonorSearch has been our go to as far as the standard for data Penn services, primarily in the wealth screening space, and for many, Many years, our clients have relied on that partnership to be able to bring in wealth so that they can screen their donors and figure out who they should be communicating with, as far as high capacity and really a good return on the investment DonorPerfect is what we consider a fundraising CRM, so it’s very purpose built for fundraising. It includes all of the fields that you would need in terms of tracking all of your fundraising activities, where your donations are coming from, grants and information of that sort. So you you can get really great reporting, as well as great history in terms of where to drive additional fundraising in the future. I’ve worked with many of the other wealth screening solutions that are out there, donor search has by far been the easiest to work with, as far as a willingness, from an integration standpoint, from a commercial standpoint, to be able to bring new products to market. Their data has always been top notch. They’ve communicated to me what their value proposition is in terms of what differentiates them, and that has just made the difference in the world. As far as being a good partner to us, we’ve just heard the stories of of nonprofits that have been able they’ve built new buildings just using this recipe of how to fundraise. It’s it’s the ideal situation For a major Gift standpoint. I

Sean, hello, everybody. Hello, welcome. My name is Sean Botero. I am a DonorPerfect training specialist. Welcome to Sarah’s session, bridging tech eras, integrating AI with tried and true screening methods. Sarah Tedesco is the CEO and co owner of donor search, bringing 15 plus years of nonprofit experience to the fundraising tech space since 2007 she’s helped grow donor search into a nationally recognized leader inspired by nonprofits working to make a difference. Sarah leads company growth operations, client success and marketing. She’s passionate about helping organizations develop strategy, adopt innovative tools and drive impact guided by donor searches, core values of growth and excellence. She’s committed to providing nonprofits with actionable insights to raise more funds. A recognized speaker and educator, Sarah has presented for AFP, APRA, AHP, Salesforce and others. She holds a BA in English and psychology and an MBA from the University of Maryland. Just a couple quick housekeeping items before we get started, you can download today’s presentation from the Detail section to the right of the presenters window. Please submit your questions in the Q and A tab so that we can address them during the session. And all sessions are being recorded. They will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. Please welcome me in joining Sarah Tedesco, take it away, Sarah, awesome.

Thank you so much, Sean, and it’s really great to be here today. Of course, I’m in the comfort of my own home. Hopefully all of you are as well, enjoying that remote experience. But yes, big thank you to DonorPerfect, not just for hosting this incredible event, but for the amazing work that they do year round to support nonprofits of all sizes, their commitment to innovation community and that real world impact. So really great to be partners with these guys. So with that, I’m excited to talk to you all about integrating AI with tried and true screening methods, and yes, we are bridging arrows. So when I first created this presentation, it was a little Ode to Taylor Swift. I never got to go to one of her concerts, but looked pretty amazing, and I thought it was a fun way to think about where we are in the industry right now. So a little bit about me. I’ve worked in this space for many years. Now. It’s about 18 years actually, and I started as a prospect researcher, so working in the Baltimore community foundation, pooling data together so that we knew where we should focus our time and energy. I am also the mother to a 13 month old who is the light of my life, and we have a little Labradoodle in a lake community here in Newmarket, Maryland. So love to connect with you. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Mike Bronson is also an amazing advocate as well. He’s in the chat, so hopefully he can send a little message to say hi, but if you have questions about this presentation or about donor search, he is a great person to talk to as well. So here’s our roadmap for today. We’re going to start to take a look at where you might fall in this prospect research timeline. So if you’re new to prospect research, we’ll talk a little bit about that and what that actually means. Maybe within your organization, you have a dedicated prospect researcher, or maybe within your organization, you’re wearing many hats, so you’re doing some of the prospect researching. You are leading the fundraising efforts as well as leading your mission. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. Then we’ll revisit some of the foundational methods. Talk about, you know, what got us to this point, you know, what are some of those best practices? As well as explore, you know, this leap to AI and data analytics, we’ll then sort of wrap up the conversation talking about some real world stories. There’s how we’ve seen them, DonorPerfect users, as well as donor search users. Research and how they were blend. They were able to blend those techniques together. Of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out happy to answer them as well. So a little bit about donor search. So we are family owned. Actually, I work with my father, who is the CEO, as well as my brother, who leads the sales organization, and we work with about 100 different employees across the 35 states. Our focus has always been on providing the best technology and resources to nonprofits all across the country. Doesn’t matter how large or small you are. We believe that you know, nonprofits are the organizations that are helping make the world a better place, and they deserve the best technology. They deserve information and tools that are going to help them achieve their success, achieve that financial stability, which is going to allow them to scale, grow, as well as serve the communities that they are focused on. We actually have one of the most experienced teams that’s focused on predictive AI and machine learning. We’ve spent the past six years or so focused on building models that will allow nonprofits to be successful, whether it’s their annual fund campaign, their major gift, work plan, gift, whether it’s acquisition. So we have this really amazing intelligence in house that is unique in the industry. Additionally, we are SOC two certified, so that, what that means is we’re able to work with healthcare organizations that are very large in scale, as well as those focused on remaining HIPAA compliant and cybersecurity, we all know that this is one of the most things, one of the most important or Paramount components when it comes to technology, and we take that extremely seriously. Additionally, we provide the access to the single largest philanthropic database in the world. When we started donor search, we actually began to compile that data set by bringing in annual reports, looking online, pulling in those, those really great pieces of information, so that nonprofits could use information related to their donors, philanthropy. So rather having to flip through printed annual reports maybe that sat on your desk hoping to find a caption or a picture of one of your donors. What we’ve done is we’ve actually compiled that into the single largest philanthropic database in the world. So we’re very proud of donor search. I’m very proud of donor search. I’ve spent pretty much the majority of my career helping build donor search, as well as work with amazing partners like DonorPerfect and 1000s of nonprofits across the country. And when it comes to the product or the different enhancements that we provide to organizations, we have a series of different solutions, but these are some of the solutions that come up quite often. So if you’re beginning your prospect research journey, or your your you know, maybe in the beginning of a capital campaign, and you’re not sure where to start, these are really great things to keep in mind. So prospect view online too, which it gives you the ability to do one off searches. It pulls in and aggregates all those really great data sets together so you can build profiles. Enhanced core is screening that also brings in some of the machine learning as well as brings in some Gen AI components. Donor search. AI is a custom solution that is very comprehensive and is very advanced, but something that happy to talk about, and then marketing list. So again, if you’re focused on some sort of acquisition campaign, this is also a great tool to consider. All right. So with that said, I want to start to talk about why we’re all here today, right? So we’re going to begin with thinking about what prospect research era are you in? So, you know, where are you in this evolution, thinking about, you know, all of the things that are going on right now in the world, thinking about the state of your nonprofit organization. Where do we fit in? So I wanted to start off with this timeline and focus on the fact that prospect research has been happening for decades, right? So in the early 1900s this was even the beginning of some of this research. We even saw. You know, when you think about like an art organization or an art family. You think of the patrons and the families that have been affiliated with that organization for a long time? Well, it wasn’t until 1956 that we actually had our first publication of an annual report. This was the first publication of Giving USA, which is the longest running, most comprehensive report. DonorPerfect. Donor. Search, and many of the other great firms in our space are part of giving you the giving Institute, which publishes the Giving USA annual report. We also saw in the 1960s This is where we had manual methods, personal networks, printed directories. These started to show up in the 1980s and 1990s which is where we actually started to see some of this information begin to get computerized. You know, this wasn’t, you know, super sophisticated, but it was folks looking at maybe real estate data, or even going to the library and looking at some of the census information that may have been available in the early 2000s we saw data analytics and CRM systems really take front center stage. And then 2007 was actually when we first introduced the first philanthropic screening. So in the past it was just looked at looking at wealth data, but now you could actually search for philanthropic history. And then we saw in 2010 to 2000 20s, predictive analytics and real time data integration. So set CRM data coming, bringing in this really good insight. And then in 2020, was when we released our first AI solution. So now thinking about 2024, and 2025, predictive and generated. AI is available to nonprofits of all sizes, right? So maybe five years ago, when we were in the thick of it with COVID, ai was very low on your list. Maybe it wasn’t even on your on your mind. But now thinking about 2025 this is commonplace speak, right? This is something that is coming up all of the time.

So when we think about the state of the nonprofit, you know, there is this question of, you know, where am I in my in my place, inside of my organization? How does my leadership consider AI, and I want to put this book here up front and center, because it’s something that we reference a lot, and it’s also helpful when you’re considering you know how your organization is structured and what their mindset is when it comes to bringing in new technology. So it’s like, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? There’s that sort of mentality with what we would call some of our skeptics and those late majorities. Well, the problem with sort of that mentality is that, you know, you might be doing something that is not very efficient. You might not be getting the results that you need, especially when you consider how things have shifted. We’ve seen federal funding freezes. We’ve seen policy shifts and changes. You know, maybe you are now being asked to raise more dollars with less resources. So how can we accomplish that? And if there’s any sort of technology resistance within your organization, it’s great to think about, okay, where do they fit on this chasm? So this is actually a study that was done. It was called the state of AI in the nonprofit sector. And this was actually done pre COVID. So, you know, pre COVID, when you think about, you know, where people were when they were considering ai, 75% of people believed that AI would make their life easier. That’s a huge chunk of people. When you look at those that believed that AI innovation aligned with their beliefs, 73% believed that. And then 83% believed that there should be an ethical framework, framework surrounding the use of AI. And then when you look at those that are actually afraid of AI. It’s more than half. So this is, you know, kind of a loaded statement, when you think about it. So it’s afraid of AI. Is it, you know, how AI might take someone’s job, or that fear of that? Or is it, you know, the robots and terminators, some of the scary stuff that we’ve seen, you know? Or is it the people in control, and, you know, again, five years ago, some of that was not front and center, but today it’s front and center. So it’s important to keep in mind, you know, thinking of where your leadership aligns versus where does your nonprofit align. Now let’s think about how we have currently done screening and prospect research. So historically, we have focused on building models that were static, right? It was a lot of energy. It took a lot of time to build a model that would then be good for that day. But as data changed, as engagement changed, as the giving changed, and, you know, practices were put into play. Those models quickly became outdated. They were really great, though, because it helped us identify, you know, who in our current CRM, or who in our current environment has a really great relationship with us. RFM is constantly referred to. This is. Looking at how recently someone gave to my organization, how frequently they gave to my organization in the total amount of money, it’s a good baseline. But the challenge is, is that one you typically may well typically people don’t learn anything new, and so you have donor exhaustion. And another challenge is that that data is only as good as the person that inputted that information. So if there were any challenges with that, or maybe if leadership changed, that data could quickly become lower, less accurate. The other way that folks were historically doing their research was just looking at wealth screening information. Now this isn’t looking at wealth screening and philanthropy. This is looking at purely wealth screening. So this would be based on real estate and zip codes or business information. And while that’s great for sometimes identifying a capacity, the challenge there was that people were often misled. So you think of a major gift officer. Where are they traveling? How are they spending their time? If they’re just focused on people that live in the big houses, that might not be the full picture, right? We know that real estate prices and inflation, all of that has really changed the way here changed the name of the game. You know, there’s always the adage, the old adage, of a gift officer going to someone’s house, you know, they’re ready to, you know, begin that stewardship process. They’re invited over for lunch, but what they find out is, you know, they’re strapped for cash. Over here, their kids are in school, and maybe they have a parent that’s living with them in that large house, or perhaps the home is in a trust. So that can be really misleading and often isn’t an indicator of affinity or even engagement. There’s also been a focus on just personal networks and referrals. So if you’re looking at word of mouth, or if you’re just listening and focusing on word of mouth to identify a potential donor, you know you’re really putting a lot of trust in whomever is giving you that referral. Again, that doesn’t mean that that’s really it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s a bad thing, but it means that you’re really just focused on what people are telling you, what to do, versus what data is telling you and what that engagement information is telling you. It can also be exhausting, right? If you’re reaching out and cold calling based on connections and that people have told you to do, that might not really be a good use of your time. We also see in the past, there was just a focus on event based research. Again, thinking about five years ago, organizations really had to shift. When it came to COVID, you couldn’t do an event, right? We weren’t allowed to socialize with people in more than 10 in a group, right? So there were virtual events. But again, events based research could be exhausting. It’s also can be really expensive, and it’s only as good as the event is put on. So again, thinking about this historical way versus like, what sort of things can we do today in the past, we also saw that philanthropic publications and directories were the main focus for identifying who you should talk to. So before there was a philanthropic database where you could look up where an individual had made gifts or what their interests were, people were flipping through different publications, you know, pulling annual reports going out and seeing, you know, do I see a photo of them in this magazine? Is there a caption somewhere thinking about the technology today that allows you to do that so much more effectively? And then, of course, manual research, so looking at public records, or, again, these newspaper articles, maybe there was a big binder that you had. You put it on the shelf. You’re taking it off, you’re flipping it through. There’s all different ways that that can be. There might be data that’s missing. And when we think about, you know, where we are today, we want to be able to maximize our time, be as effective as possible, and focus on people that are going to make a difference, right? You only have so much energy. Time is your most precious, precious resource. So how do we do that effectively? And it’s not to say that those foundational components are not important because they are important. They helped us establish a baseline for what we want our donor profile to encompass. They helped us build trust and understanding with those donors, as well as maybe a board member that had introduced us to a donor, and it lays this groundwork for a day. Driven approach. So thinking about, how can we pull all of that together and use that new technology? Thinking about what’s going to make it easier on you and your team, so that way you’re not stressed about trying to pull in small pieces of data to get that full picture. One of the important pieces that we want to focus on here today too, right? So you don’t need to use AI to understand who you’re talking to. It’s an empowering tool when it’s used effectively. But there’s all different ways that we can be effective without having to drag leadership, maybe across that chasm. So one of the first items that I want us to start with, and a nice takeaway for you all, are these markers of philanthropy. So in 2007 donor search, looked at $5 billion worth of known charitable giving across 400 nonprofit organizations, and we analyzed to see what factors made someone more or less likely to make a game give a major gift. And this is an important guide, because it helps us understand what are some of those key indicators that we would like our donors to have?

So the first predictive marker is, you know, sort of the baseline as to why we have this RFM, right? So it’s giving to your nonprofit. So you know, the best place to start is someone within your organization that has made a contribution to you in the past. Again, thinking about, you know, the pros to that it’s easy, accessible data, you always have access to it. The con is that, you know, there might be key pieces that were missing, maybe the data that was put in was actually not correct, or maybe you again have leadership changes, and so that sort of giving history has been influenced by a leadership switch, the second most predictive marker, and this is something that is really, really important to keep in mind is giving to other nonprofits, and specifically at the $5,000 level or more, when you can identify that, that’s going to be a great indicator, indicator for future philanthropy. This is pulling in nonprofit information from those charitable reports. It’s looking at news articles. It’s looking to understand, you know, what’s important to them. And again, when you’re thinking of connection, right, you’re thinking of fundraising as you know, it’s a people business, right? We’re talking person to person and how they can make an impact. You want to understand what’s important to them. Our third most predictive marker are those that are the trustees of a foundation. So this would be looking at IRS information or candid information that’s available. One of the great benefits of identifying somebody that’s the trustee of the foundation is you’ve identified a second vehicle for them to actually make contributions. So you know, if you think about Sarah as an individual donor, or potentially a donor search Foundation, the donor search foundation may have more means to give away a larger gift, versus Sarah as the individual. And one of the really great things there is you can often see, you know, where the donor and the that foundation, those dollars, line up like, what their interests are. You can also identify who else is on the foundation. And then you can see how much money that they actually give away within a year. So building, you know, the knowledge base around that is really incredible. So that would be another great marker to identify. Our fourth marker here is political giving. So those that give to the FEC, we’ve identified that there’s a correlation at those higher levels. So if you see somebody that has made $250 or more to the FEC, they’re in the 110 of 1% of the population. So 99.9% of us have never given a gift of that size. When we identify that you’ve automatically pulled yourself out of the majority of the population. When you see those who have given at $10,000 or more, that’s a one to one marker for wealth. And then anything above that is where you see those 567, figure gifts. Real Estate is also a great indicator. So again, keeping this in mind. So what we see is that anything above $2 million or more is a very strong marker for wealth. But again, thinking of this, you know, this layout here is that you want to keep everything in mind. So if they have, you know, a million dollar property in California versus a million dollar property out here in Maryland, the value is going to be different. They’re going to be living by different means. So that’s something to always consider. And then business affiliations, so looking at those that are SEC insiders, so at the policy making level of a publicly traded company, there. Is only 6% of those. The majority of those folks are going to be living in the Florida area as well as New York. And then there’s some that are out in California. And then what we want to see there is, again, you know, these business sort of organizations that are help going to contribute to their income or potentially be indicators for capacity. So this is a roadmap. This is a really great takeaway. So if you’re doing any sort of screening, if you’re doing any sort of research, these indicators can help you identify who are going to be your best markers for for future major gifts. Oftentimes, what you’ll see is you’ll have like, one or two of these that really hit. Sometimes you’re going to be lucky, depending on your constituency, maybe you’re going to get all five, and then you’re going to want to understand, Okay, well, how do I connect to them? What is the engagement that they have within my organization? What’s that relationship? So let’s come back to you. So when it comes to AI, right? So we’ve talked about screening, we’ve talked about, you know, what that sort of mindset is. When it comes to technology, we’ve talked a little bit also about how prospect research has changed. But when it comes to AI, what career era are you in? You know, how do you feel within your organization? So, you know, we call this this golden handoff error. So this would be, you know, potentially, if you’re a leader within your organization and you’re planning on retiring, or maybe you’re leaving and the next five years, this is, in my opinion, right, you could leave it to your replacement, right? You don’t necessarily have to bring it in. And we’ve talked with most organization, with many organizations, and we hear this often, so maybe they have a security person that’s in place, or, you know, some sort of leadership, and they’re really just coasting like they don’t care about AI. They don’t want to bring it in. It’s too much of a headache. They’re really just looking at that clock and they’re waiting to clock out. It’s not necessarily a great mindset to be in, but it’s one that we need to acknowledge. Right it’s going to be really difficult for an organization to catch up and again, when we think about how many shifts are happening within the industry right now, it could be deadly. It could put a bit like who could put a nonprofit out of business if they’re not pivoting or taking action in different ways. So think of it as prevalent as electricity. Think of it as prevalent as a spreadsheet. You know, think of different ways at how it could actually make your job more useful. We call this our encore leadership area era. So if you’re a leader and you plan on working for the next five years or more, in my opinion, right? So AI is not going anywhere. It won’t take your job. But people that are using it effectively, those are going to be the people that will move ahead. They’re going to be the people that are going to have a lot of progress, people that choose not to understand it. They choose, you know, to ignore it. All of that resistance, that is what we would call like. Remember when we were talking about in the beginning, the Crossing the Chasm? Those would be the skeptics. They would be sort of your laggers, the people that are behind so the good news is, is it’s pretty simple to understand. You know, if you haven’t downloaded chat GPT on your phone or on your laptop, I would just recommend doing that. If you’re in Gmail, there is the whole G Suite Gemini, which gives you access. Microsoft also has access. There’s all different ways that you can play around with it, and you can’t break it right. You can ask it all different kinds of prompts, if you’re using Gen AI and then on the predictive AI side, that’s something where you know you could think about it from your Netflix subscription. If you’re using Netflix, where it’s looking at your algorithm, it’s looking at different suggestions or recommendations based on what you previously watched that’s similar to what we’ll talk about later, is how you know what is predictive, AI when it comes to your nonprofit, when it comes to understanding how to connect with donors who can and will make a difference. And then we have our Launchpad era. So maybe you are brand new to nonprofits, or maybe you’re brand new to your organization, and you are, you know, somewhat early in your career, our recommendation is that you become proficient in it. The advice is, is that you know it’ll be nearly impossible for you to become a leader based on merit without this hands on experience. You know, you have an opportunity to teach others around you again as a way to sort of stand out from the crowd once you start bringing in. You know, the new technology again, most of the solutions that maybe you’re using within your organization are going to have an application to it. So if you’re in marketing. And you’re using Canva. Canva has an AI generative AI component to it. If you’re thinking about maybe an email that you need to send and you need to be collaborative, you know, you could have chatgpt, peer review it, and just say, you know, what am I missing, or what questions could I anticipate based on this, again, it’s very simple. You just go out and you download it and you just play around with it. That was actually a question that we had come up at a different conference, at the icon, AFP icon conference, where people actually needed to know, how do I how do I start? How do I even just press go. And really it’s just overcoming whatever hesitation you might have on your keyboard and just typing it in and downloading it, and that’s how you get started or asking questions within your organization. So let’s talk about transitions to modern techniques. So again,

to get everybody on the same page, right, artificial intelligence, AI, it just refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think and learn. So it can do everything that a person can do, but it can require but it can perform tasks at a higher caliber. So there’s no limit to the amount of data. There’s no limit to the number of algorithms that you might submit. And that’s the real beauty of it, right? Is where, in the past, you might have been limited by time. You might have been limited to what your Excel could do. You might have been limited to by you know what your laptop could do, or maybe you just didn’t understand or know what the best tone was for something, right? If we switched to a Gen AI scenario, there AI is a tool to help you get that done. Data Analytics is involving those large data sets to uncover patterns and correlations and insights, right? So if we think of the Netflix situation again, it’s like, how does Netflix know that I want to watch a romantic comedy about Christmas at Christmas time, right? Well, in the past, Sarah, you know, she does this often on Friday nights out while her husband’s at basketball, something silly or like that, right? But that’s that’s really what it’s all about. Same thing, if you think about any sort of online buying that maybe you’re doing, it’s looking at what those trends are, what your habits are, and then what the big companies have done, who have all been using, you know, predictive AI and data analytics for much longer than the nonprofit space, about 2030, years. Now, they’re going to push notifications, or they’re going to push advertisements at a time where I’m likely to act right. They’re going to do it at a certain time where they’ve had success of me consuming or buying. So that’s really, you know, when we think about that ideal predicted it so again, to set the tone here, so predictive AI is looking at historical data to predict future outcomes. So we’re not talking about Gen AI or chat GPT. It’s used for weather forecasting. It’s used for the stock market analysis, consumer customer behavior prediction, right? And the way that we want to use it for our nonprofit space is we want to look at what are the predictions for future giving to my organization. When I think of all of my big data sets that my nonprofit has, how do I bring it together and make sure that I’m spending time effectively and efficiently? You know, we’re never going to go back with the weather, right? Like we always want to know, do we need to bring an umbrella or a raincoat? We don’t want to just guess and say, well, it looks sunny today, but now at three o’clock in the afternoon, there’s thunderstorms, right? So when you think about again that crossing the chasm and the technology in the future, we need to start to embrace. You know, what are the great ways that we can use this to better ensure that we’re doing things effectively? So some of the questions that predictive AI might answer for you would be, will this prospect make their first gift? Will this donor give again within a specific time period they have a greater lifetime value. Should I spend my energy on this person instead of that person? When it comes to the lifetime value that I have with them, how will the how likely will this donor become a monthly Sustainer to my organization, and which donors are most likely to be retained? And that’s a really important one to think about, because we know retention is challenging. For many nonprofits, it’s more expensive to acquire a new donor than it is to sustain and keep these really great donors that have already demonstrated their engagement with you. So how do we make sure that we’re being affected? Of when it comes to retention, predictive. AI is great for this. You know, looking at what our current level is, our current retention efforts have been, how do we improve that with these others? One of the ways to think about this right when we’re thinking about well, how does this look comparatively to my screening efforts, or how does this look comparatively to some other research that I’ve done? And really what it is, is it’s like basically taking screening and enhancing it to a whole nother level. So with typical models or standard models, you’re just looking at wealth data. Maybe you’re looking at giving patterns and RFM, so that information is typically static, right? So this is where, you know, a lot of organizations in the past may have done a screening, or they’ve done some research. They use it one time, they put it on a shelf, they come back to it five years again, ago or five years later, and then they have to redo it again, or maybe they never use it, and they just look at it and they just put it on a shelf. That’s really not a great way of doing things. And what is the ideal way, or moving forward, looking ahead? How do we keep it dynamic? How do we, you know, ensure that if someone’s giving patterns change again, especially as you know, so many things have shifted this year and the following year. Who do I spend my time on? So if people are going to be holding their purse strings a little tighter, where do I focus on? I know I have these giving patterns. I know that we’re creating these really great experience for the donors. I have my wealth information. I have the philanthropic data and the demographic data. Let’s see if we can use the AI tool right, which is the computer behind it that powers the models, to make sure that we can bring in as much custom information as we want as possible. One of the really amazing things for those that are DonorPerfect users, that we’ve been able to integrate is actually our first machine learning score, and this is called the MLR score, so this is most likely to respond. So we talked a bit about RFM, and RFM is that static model, so recency, frequency and total amount of money for the longest time. So for you know, at least the 18 years I’ve been in this industry, many folks have asked, Well, how could you make RFM to be more dynamic? An MLR score is just that. So it allows you to bring in updated engagement information and look at the affinity, which will help you focus on supporters who are most likely to make a major gift, or make a gift, excuse me, within the next 12 months. And what we’ve highlighted here is on your DonorPerfect screen, where that lives, and that score is out of 100 so it would be zero to 100 and in this case, we have an 86 which is a high score, and that MLR rank is an MLR one. So what you could do is you could pull reports based on these different scores or indicators, and you can also be using the new technology, when you look at the likelihood segment, segmentation, really, the goal is to focus on who is your priority, right? So you want to spend your time and energy with folks that are high likelihood and high wealth. You don’t want to be spending your time with low likelihood and low wealth. And these different subsets, these different groups, are maybe put into different plans, right? A high likelihood but low wealth, maybe they’re really great plan gift prospects. If you look at low likelihood and high wealth, maybe those are folks that you continue to nurture and keep in your campaigns, or maybe you have a high touch board member that’s going to help you focus in on that. What we’re showing you is this basic, you know, fundraising guide that so many folks are used to. And on the left side, this is where we’re showing you what some of those data points could be that you could use when it comes to your predictive AI, when you look at each individual person within your CRM, all of them are re scored regularly based on the updates to their data. So today, I might look like not a great donor, because I haven’t, you know, opened the email that was sent to me, or I haven’t made a gift in the past, you know, 12 months. But tomorrow, when I make my gift and I open the email and I attend the gala next week, all of a sudden my score and assignment may change. And what that allows you to do is it allows you to keep your major gift officers portfolio dynamic and full and focused on people that can and will make a difference. One of the points that. Hear often is, and I’m sure this is familiar within your organization too, is, you know, how do I make sure that my donor pipeline is where it needs to be? You know, we we’re our major gift donors and prospects. We just need more of them. Well, maybe it’s not necessarily more. It could be more, but it could also be shifting. So who do we shift our energy and focus on today versus yesterday? And really, what this tool and what these technologies allow you to do is be

agile as well as flexible. So this is what most people think about. We’re going to switch now to generative AI. And you know, the picture here that I asked was just from my chat. GPT, right? So, can you make an image for a slideshow for a DonorPerfect conference? I’m explaining Gen AI, and so what it does is it creates, you know, this little image for me I could then say, Okay, well, I don’t like this one. You know, put a picture of donor search in here, as well as DonorPerfect. And, you know, let’s have, like, a fun group of folks. You know, you can play around with it, right? So Gen AI is designed to generate new content. It could be an image, it could be a video, it could be a email. It’s it’s crazy what you can see. And I’m sure many of you have. And this also brings up a question, right, which we talked about earlier, what are the parameters around, maybe even Gen AI, how do we keep deep fakes out of, you know, the current news? How do we look at art or music composition now that we have this capabilities? And, you know, I’m sure that’s all going to be discussed in the future years, right? It’s going to define what our children are going to experience in school and education. But it is a tool that we have available, and, you know, it’s important to make sure we’re using it ethically, but also to help us get things done. So Gen AI could be used to create personalized marketing materials for appeals to a donor interest. You could introduce it to use unique things. You can also, like we talked about, actually help you create stories or, you know, maybe you have a video or a really great testimonial from a donor, and you’re trying to get out, you know, this case study that you’re going to use for an appeal. You can literally take that video, take the link to it, put it in chat GBT, and ask it to help you create the narrative that you want for a case study that you would share with others, right? So that’s not Gen AI doing the work for you. That’s Gen AI helping you get the work done more effectively with resources that are at your disposal. So it’s all about how you use it, and you know, you’re going to tweak it and make it your own based on, you know, your perspective based on the mission for your organization. And again, we use this internally. We actually have a statement. It’s a goal that we have corporate goal that we want folks to be using this new technology. We want people to be able to do more while resources maybe are maintained. So the perfect blend is really bringing in the predictive AI, so, you know, helping us understand who’s going to do what next with the Gen AI, that personalization and, of course, your human touch. So this is like, really, where the power comes in, right? So you have no limit to the amount of data that you’re able to pull in, no limit to the amount of features that might be associated with an individual combining that with, you know, your creative, artistic mentality, but with an actual tool that can execute all of a sudden, you have this really fantastic way of being able to be precise and elevate the level of work that you’re producing, which, again, thinking about how this is used within your organization, could make the difference between being able to scale and grow or not. One of the ways that we’ve actually incorporated inside of donor search is we’ve added a Gen AI component on top of our research element. So not only will, you know, we talked about those standardizations of profiles, bringing in wealth data, philanthropy data, you know, all of those pieces that we’re looking at from a donor perspective, but oftentimes we hear that, well, in order for me to distribute that, then I have to come up almost with a Tear Sheet. I have to come up with a summary. So my work is not finished once I have compiled this really great profile. So what we’ve done is we’ve actually created a summary for that profile, and so you’re bringing in and. Sources, and you’re bringing in the data that was pulled from the profile, so it makes it easier on the team that is then going out to ask the gift right? So the work is not finished, even when you’re using this real great technology, but it’s allowing you to have that stronger relationship, foster that really great connection with your donors and with the folks that are engaged within your nonprofit. So on our website, donor search, there’s all different case studies of how people have used it, but we wanted to talk about one of the ways that it was an integration of traditional and modern models. This summary slide here is talking about just examples of how you could use different data points from the verticals that are within your organization. So if you’re in the arts, maybe you’re bringing in all the visits or the ticketings in the last five years. If you’re in healthcare, looking at all the living patients in the past five years and refreshing information. So goes on to explain some of the summary of the data points, but let’s focus on music of remembrance. Maybe they’re here today. If you are here today, hello. Thank you for sharing your story, but it’s a really beautiful organization that talks about how they’re able to remember some of the really serious historical events that have happened, as well as bringing in this art and creative so what they were able to do is they were able to identify new major gift prospects and use that real time insight to be able to quickly and segment and prioritize donors. So they were able to save a significant amount of time on the manual data transfers between the two platforms, and they were able to identify a $10,000 gift very quickly after they were able to bring that information in, what they were able to do was they were able to bring in the enhanced reporting and segmentation tools that DonorPerfect and DonorSearch have together, as well as do the automated prospect updates. This also allowed that streamline for gift officer workflows, which we talked about as well. So again, thinking about maybe your own organization and the portfolio pipelines that each of your gift officers have. How are you refreshing that? How many donors do they actually hold and is it the right the right group of donors for that individual gift officer, or maybe just in general, is it the right group of donors that they should be spending their time all of this information and all of that insight is directly pulled inside of their CRM and Then, of course, that seamless integration that we have. So as we wrap up here today, I know we have just about a few minutes left, but I wanted to open it up to any questions that some of you may have. You know, it goes back to you. So when you think about it, What era are you going to choose? You know, where are you within your career? How do you bring that sort of information and technology to your organization if you’re faced with any sort of resistance. And

Sean, I will.

I’ve been summoned. Thank you. Hello again. Sarah, hello, we did have a lot of questions, sorting through them now, some some we were able to answer. But here’s a question from Carrie, wondering if anyone in the healthcare sector can speak on HIPAA compliance, uploading patient data for patients using donor search and how AI is a covered use, if at all? Yeah.

So we can actually get you more information on that, but we are 100% HIPAA compliant and follow the SOC two standard, which is sec two type two standard, but yeah, it’s working within your organization, within your team, to make sure that all of that information is processed securely and safely, abiding by those different standards and regulations. But yeah, that is something that we do, and also on site. On our website, we work with hundreds of healthcare organizations, and several of them have actually shared their stories of success. So talking about, you know, the EMR data that they have, they’re giving information. How do we pull all of that together to make sure that? One, you know, we’re checking the boss the boxes for the cybersecurity elements. But two. Able to bring that data to effectively fundraise, which is always the important thing, because so many hospitals and healthcare organizations have very little profit, operating below margins from time to time.

So okay, safety first, as always, safety Good to hear. Here’s another question, could you remind us again about what MLR stands for within donor search? Yes,

it stands for most likely to respond, and those would be people that are able to respond and then or that will likely give a gift in the next 12 months. So that’s why we called it the most likely to respond, which was sort of an advanced cousin, if you will, of the RFM, which is that static model, which is looking at how recently, frequently and the total dollars that they have given to that organization.

Excellent. And yeah, a lot of excitement about the MLR score. We have had the donor search fields for a very long time, and this is, this is a newer one, and a lot of excitement about how people can get that MLR data into their databases. Yeah.

So we’ll work with all of you and Mike, of course, as well, but the build for that MLR score has been really exciting, so that way it’s not a heavy lift for any sort of DonorPerfect client, but we can bring in that information, and then that MLR score will be loaded seamlessly, so there’s no sort of back and forth, excellent.

And if there’s any DonorPerfect clients that need more help, you can always reach out to technical, technical support on the database side. And I’m still going through this, through the questions that we have over here, but Sarah and I were talking before this, and I admitted I’m a bit of a donor search fanboy, but what I didn’t mention is that I have a favorite donor search field. What’s your don’t? What’s your favorite donor search data points? Because I have one, I’m wondering if you do, yeah, because it’s a lot of really niche, interesting data Yeah,

that’s that’s such a fun question. Nobody’s ever asked me that. Sean, I love that question. Probably my very favorite data point is looking at the charitable giving data. I love to sort and segment on the single largest gift found, and then, well, can I have a Can I have a second data point too?

Oh, you’re, of course, you’re allowed to have a second. That’s, that’s a good inner problem to have, not being able to pick your favorite. That’s a good one to segment by, agreed, yeah, yeah,

yeah, that one’s my favorite. And then obviously we love to match it up to the wealth data. So oftentimes it’s a really good indicator as to, you know, somebody really known for their philanthropy, or is somebody known for their wealth. And then SCC insider data is fun too, because you can look at all of their options and see what money they have. But what about you, Sean? What’s your favorite?

I also have two. I also have two. Airplane owner would have never that put that, you know, if I own an airplane, I’m definitely in a higher wealth bracket. And then the other one is, are they registered with the Coast Guard? Nooks and crannies of like virtual data you’re finding that financial data and the other things that are adjacent to it. Yeah, Mike is agreeing to there’s, there’s, there’s, too many favorites, too many favorite fields, and MLR is being added to it.

MLR is all of our favorites. Yes,

love to hear it. Well, that looks like it is our time for today. Thank you everybody in chat for bringing in questions and thank you Sarah. Thank you everybody for attending Sarah’s session. Next up on stage one is another set of power sessions with Tim Lockey and agency in the age of agents navigating the human stack, when AI takes the wheel and Vanessa chase with here’s the thing to know about email, how to connect with readers right from the start. And on stage two, we have Joe scanion from Microsoft with get your board on board, leading AI conversations with your stakeholders. No matter what session you choose, you will not miss any content, since all sessions are recorded and found on our DonorPerfect site after the conference. Thank you again, Sarah, and we’ll see all of you soon in a few

thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Bye.