This past summer, I attended the APRA International Conference in Nashville. This 4-day conference centers on analytics, prospect development, and prospect research. To the credit of the organizers, a record 2,000 professionals attended. I was inspired by the melee to write this blog post. Attending… Read More »What Conferences Are Good For
I have just come back from an AFP Central New York[1] luncheon, hearing a talk given by Bill Abrams (of Infiny), and my mind can’t stop spinning about what Bill said. Let me share with you a boiled down version of his message: As communication… Read More »Is This the End of Major Gifts?
In the analytics arena, we love to discover and to share new tools. A recent article in DataScienceCentral was titled, “40 Techniques Used by Data Scientists.” (see: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/40-techniques-used-by-data-scientists) That much hubbub must surely give us a tool or solution to any fundraising problem that we… Read More »In the End, a Data Scientist Still Has to Solve a Problem
When I talk to data vendors about what data I’d like them to resell, I always mention patents. And then I get pushback from my peer consultants on whether searching patens is worth the time. The argument in our community against searching patents are twofold:… Read More »Are Patents Worth Our Time?
While visiting a client recently, I received this question: Of all the dashboards that must be created for a development operation, what is the best order of creation? In other words, how does one get management reports up and running as quickly as possible? Off… Read More »Building Your Dashboards: What Comes First?
In 1957, my father sat in the cold metal hut buried halfway into the ground of Shemya Island, a remote piece of land that sits near the very end of the tongue full of islands that make up the eastern edge of Alaska. It’s no… Read More »Prospect Research Pride 2016
This article was first published as “Marianne’s Mining Minute” in the APRA Upstate New York chapter’s newsletter, 2015. When starting a data-mining project, we are often challenged by our management to “go do some data mining.” We can get stuck from there, unless the tool… Read More »Data Science AFTER Identifying the Real Need
This article was first published as “Marianne’s Mining Minute” in the APRA Upstate New York chapter’s newsletter, 2015. When we get ready for a campaign, we often employ consulting firms to sit with our closest prospects and ask them how much thy think we can… Read More »Your Data Driven Feasibility Study
This article was first published as “Marianne’s Mining Minute” in the APRA Upstate New York chapter’s newsletter, 2014. I got a little carried away in this issue thinking about prospecting overall and the ways that data mining can be blended into prospecting, management, and portfolio… Read More »Where Do I Start? Three Different Examples of Fundraising Strategy
This article was first published as “Marianne’s Mining Minute” in the APRA Upstate New York chapter’s newsletter, 2012. The world around us is talking about Big Data and how to use it – see this Wikipedia article for the description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data. I keep talking to… Read More »Big Data? Little Data? Do I Have Data?