Fund raisers who conduct research on potential donors are seeking to improve their images after The Wall Street Journal published an article raising questions about whether nonprofit groups were invading the privacy of affluent people. Some fear that the article could lead to a government crackdown on what information fund raisers can glean.
At the annual meeting of the Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement, held this week in Anaheim, Calif., fund raisers expessed concerns about the article, “Is Your Favorite Charity Spying on You?”
Some worry that the article, which details how some hospitals immediately screen admissions records to find wealthy patients who have checked in, portrayed their profession in a negative light.
“We’re not spying on people, for goodness’ sakes,” says Elizabeth Crabtree, who served as a previous president of the research association. She thought the resulting piece was “really one-sided” and the writer, who interviewed her and other fund raisers, was “intent upon causing concern.”
In the current issue of Connections, the association’s newsletter, she writes about her “disappointment and frustration of seeing our profession and work regarded in such a disconcerting way.” She continues that “the reporter chose to incite rather than to inform the public by manipulating the facts, often by simply leaving out important information or context.”
Asked in a separate interview about what she meant by this, Ms. Crabtree says that the association has an ethics code that ensures donor privacy and confidentiality. She adds that prospect research about donors, such as their real-estate and stock-market holdings, is available public information, and is comparable to the intelligence found in the business world’s market-research divisions.
“Prospect research is an integral part of helping organizations be more efficient and effective in engaging donors for the right project and the right ask amount,” says Ms. Crabtree, director of prospect development at Brown University.
Case in point: For the past six years, she and her colleagues identified 11,671 new potential donors to Brown, 5,284 of whom made gifts of $10,000 or more. This represented $649-million in new gifts and pledges to a campuswide $1.4-billion campaign. More than 20 percent of the people she and her colleagues identified had never made a gift previously.
The fallout from the article, though, has given people who conduct prospect research an opportunity to educate the public about its purpose.
Ms. Crabtree writes: “There is really nothing ‘creepy’ about connecting a donor’s passion and interest to a nonprofit organization’s mission and initiatives.”
0 Responses to Fund Raisers Worry About a Crackdown on Donor Research
annettaf3 - July 23, 2010 at 3:48 pm
I haven’t read the article yet, but on the surface it sounds a little “creepy” to me. Say you check into a hospital for treatment and the next thing you have been identified as a potential donor; would you feel that your privacy has been invaded? I would.To say that confidentiality has not been breached when the only reason you contacted the person was admission to your hospital sounds like a strong case of justification to me. I’ll be interested to hear how other development people view this.
sharonann - July 23, 2010 at 4:40 pm
As a former prospect researcher for a 3-hospital system, I can say confirm that the development office received the daily admissions names; current major donors or previously identified potential donors received flowers. But what I consider even more disturbing is that major donors at a certain giving level receive, in return for their donation, expedited access to medical specialists, fast track admission to the emergency room and other “first tier” healthcare perks. And new major donors are actually informed that if they give over this X dollar amount, this is the exclusive service they can receive. This is a NFP hospital. Hospital fundraising is probably number one in offensive fundraising. The prospect research was always among public records only.
help501c3 - July 25, 2010 at 6:28 am
I agree with Ms. Crabtree and disagree with Sharon Ann.Without the funds, hospitals would not exist. To discover that your patient has the means to help your hospital, then provide them special attention in the hope of cultivating future gifts is good business. It also helps to secure the future of the hospital so that regular or indigent patients can receive care.As Ms. Crabtree stated, this is public information being used to make smart moves. All the charity does is mine the data that is already there.Kevin
raincross - July 26, 2010 at 12:09 am
I’m always struck by the level of naiveté – and sometimes hypocrisy – that exists in our society around nonprofits. Private companies – banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, and even grocery stores – constantly collect information about customers that *isn’t* public and use it to increase their bottom lines. The occasional consumer advocate may raise a stink, but ultimately we all accept this as the cost of living in a capitalist economy with a standard of living that is the envy of the world. But when organizations that actually create social value have the gall to be strategic, people rise up in protest. This is a fact of life and, as Kevin points out, major portions of our healthcare safety net would not exist without it. If I were capable of giving a 7-, 8-, or 9-figure gif to a hospital, you better believe I’d expect better treatment. But that’s how most consumer-based services operate in our nation. Even in countries with socialized medicine like the U.K. and Canada, people with more money have access to better and more options.And for what it’s worth, having worked at one of the top hospital systems in the nation, most of the people who are most concerned about being targeted by development officers following a hospital admission needn’t be concerned.
wendy1234 - July 26, 2010 at 6:11 pm
I totally agree with raincross in that we are all being scrutinized by so many marketers….consider what Google knows about our searches, or Facebook – massive private information that these companies use to their advantage – totally different from what we attempt to gather as charities. I started as a donor researcher in the 1980′s pre-Internet, and much has changed, except the fact that as fundraisers we only seek publicly available information, and most places I know are very respectful about its use.
rocketpreacher - July 28, 2010 at 11:33 pm
As a fundraising professional we have the strictest of ethics standards. We follow all HIPAA laws and go beyond that to protect the identity of a donor even from previous jobs to our new jobs if we change jobs. However, in every industry there are possibilities that someone acted inappropriately. If someone from a hospital fundraising department was given permission from the hospital to look at a list of patient names and then do market research on them that was totally available to the public, this may or may not be against HIPAA. There is no difference between someone buying clothing with their credit card at a major store chain. The customer has come in and given their name to the store. I guarantee you that store does market research on all its credit card customers, especially the ones that have a store credit card. As long as the hospital employees were acting on behalf of the patient and not using HIPAA information for purposes other than what their job called them to use it for their was no wrong doing. In this case it falls under total patient care and it is no different then paying for one of those expensive search engines to identify prospective customers and/or donors in a 50 mile radius of a hospital. In this case the patient self identified with the hospital. If they don’t want a fundraising person calling on them they simply tell the fundraising professional they are not interested and in our industry that is highly respected and honored!Reverend Chuck Cunningham