How to Raise: PROST! PRoactive, STrategic Research – a $1 Billion Tool for Cultural Transformation

As presented at Apra PD 2025, this session will most assist those who want to build bridges with fundraisers and create an efficient principal-gift level pipeline. It will tell the story of how research was used to shift the fundraising culture at the National Geographic Society towards integrating operations with frontline fundraising. Aone-person shop was able to create an efficient, targeted, proactive system that identified over $1 billion in capacity in the database, most of it from donors who had made a gift within the past year, all while continuing to support all other requests from ~15 fundraisers and the CEO. Lacking an alumni base, we created a self-populating list and identified many UHNWIs who were previously unknown to us. Most importantly, we shared this process for impact and to drive cultural change towards greater integration of operations into strategy. We not only created an UHNWI pipeline, but used regular assignment of these new donors in portfolios to create good will and foster stronger collaboration between operations and fundraising. Previously, the frontline fundraising staff and the operations team had some notable challenges in achieving optimal alignment. Divergent expectations from varying fundraising backgrounds, especially those not used to an assertive operations team, made it challenging to partner with the frontline and to break out of a role where operations most visible contribution was supporting an events strategy. The work described here helped move the needle and give our team a larger seat at the table.