Dear SRAFFERTY6486,

This is Chris Pipkins at JMU. Thanks for reading my article on KPI. I like your question about return on investment by way of an annual report.

In addition to comparing performance against peers universities, we track in-house propsect research work. We track the number of prospects identified, researched, and rated. The researched / rated ratio tells us the relationship between work to net additions to the pool.

We track the date we identified and added a person to the pool as well as the capacity amount from research. Finally, we attach a code that tells us the source of the identification - DO referal, vendor screening (we name the actual vendor), news alert, other identification methods.

In that way, our annual report gives a gross number, like 200 prospects researched, 150 had major gift capacity. Then we are able to break down the ratings: of the 150, 50 had ratings of $100K or higher. Other examples would be: Of the 150 with Maj Gift capacity, 100 came from research methods, 25 from vendor screening A, 10 from vendor screening B, and 15 from DO referal. The example might continue saying something like: the source which provides the best bang for the buck is research methods--it provided the most in quantity (100) and in quality (of the 50 with ratings of $100K or more, 25 came from research methods source).

Does that help?

Chris

I very much like Chris's suggestions regarding the specific metrics JMU used for benchmarking.  Very good examples all...especially the use of specific references.  Hadn't done that as a whole before, but certainly useful assessing value of a tool/source.

As you lay out what is going to be tracked/measured, I'd really suggest taking a good hard look at what can be tracked within your system via creation of codes, sources, etc.  When I was at UGA, we first looked at what measures we wanted to look at or thought would be useful, but ultimately our database was of little use with some of these specific indicators so unless tracking alot of the data in various spreadsheets by hand is desireable build your plan around what is easily accessible via queries and reports from your database.

Along the lines of using the data to "promote" research, I was evaluating options to create dashboard reports for our shop prior to leaving UGA.  Hadn't settled on frequency but there are some very nice tools out there to build slick dashboard reports which facilitate presenting the data in an attractive, easy to follow manner.  Some even allowed for the creation of interactive and/or html-based elements which can be incorporated into a departmental website or email messages.  I've seen a dashboard report that Karen Stitsworth produces at Purdue and found it to be a good example, so she might be a good resource.  MD

Here in our small community hospital (a.k.a. "One Person Research Shop") I create weekly reports to inform the Dir. of Opers. on status of projects. Quarterly I create a report which identifies Research completed for identified "Projects" (such as events series vs. research requests) as well as other Research requests, a recording of new prospects identified (with rating) and other linkages I make through the information management of prospect data (linkages to our institution). We are a narrow geographic area in which our prospects are inextricably connected.I am attempting to improve my "counting" of these requests for research: most entail researching more than 1 entity. Any ideas? I rate all newly identified prospects immediately, and communicate this as well in Quarterly Reports. Mark had a great idea: for some unstated reason our Admin. does not use our database to record research effort- so my reporting diligence requires, on my part, copious time in which I could be expanding our prospect pool. I am happy to share my quarterly report with confidential data removed, of course. Mary Feeney, Cooley Dickinson Hospital

We track a lot of information here at Brown University to enable us to provide various benchmarks. We track all work and projects of the research staff, including what amount of our work is proactively generated via our in-house data mining efforts and then how that later relates to fundraising activity. Similar to Chris' post, we can show both the number and quality of ratings produced each year, and show that more than 70% of our work is proactively generated, which truly drives the frontline of fundraising and helps to prioritize their activities.

Because we have a large reserach staff, we also show the productivity levels of each researcher based on number of hours used to complete projects against departmental averages and benchmarks. From a management perspective, this helps to indicate where individual staff members may need additional training or support. This allows us to set a standard of work performance expectations for all researchers. It is great to see over time how the individual researchers grow and further advance their skills. I'm very proud of my team and they can easily see their own progress excels every year.

We can show the impact of research in dollars raised by tracing back the proactive prospect discovery, rating and assignment process and looking and 'before and after' giving levels of the prospect. So looking at giving levels prior to discovery and rating and after assignment and field qualification shows explicitly the power of the researcher/fundraiser partnership and the dollar value return on investment in research staff and resources.

Elizabeth Crabtree