“Definitive guide to the richest 1,000 in Britain and Ireland”

Except that it isn’t!!  It ought to be called “The definitive guide to the richest 1,000 people in Britain and Ireland which Philip Beresford and his colleagues  can find and prove that they are that rich without getting sued”

That’s no criticism of Philip Beresford since much of the information one would need to prove people are wealthy is not in the public domain.  The head of one of the world’s leading private banks told me three years ago that he thought the STRL underestimated the amount of wealth in London by a factor of about 7.  He reckoned there were 5,000 people in London worth £50m or more. At that time you had to have £30m to get into the STRL.

The serious point here for fundraisers is we risk becoming too reliant on STRL rather than private prospect research with volunteers leading us to other wealthy people.  So what would you do instead to find wealthy people?

• See who’s giving you big gifts already
• Ask your most generous donors to introduce you to others they know
• Look for wealth in your database: people who do the kinds of job likely to result in significant wealth creation
• Read the newspapers, especially the FT and similar - look who is selling companies, who leads those companies making significant wealth - yes these have been hedge funds and private equity. Don’t be depressed by the current market turmoil - remember hedge funds started as a way of making money when times were bad.
• Don’t be blinded by people earning £250,000 a year - very exciting but big big gifts need significant genuinely disposable income, or better, disposable capital.

More ideas welcome - do post them in the comments….

Here’s a photo of the Cathedral towering above the River Wear just a few hours before the service.

There are more pictures at http://www.beney.org.uk/pix/advent07

We returned with vectors to the ILS, and the runway lights at 600′
Here’s a nice view of our spiral over Durham

And finally, how wiggly was my ILS? Not the best ever…

By comparison, here’s the one from Newcastle the other day…

Agencies promise not only to tell you where your lost alumni or supporters are, they also say that they can tell you who has moved, and even who has goneaway from an address, the implication being that it’s not worth mailing the old addresses. Indeed when you ask one of the firms for a quote, they will even tell you how much postage they think you will save by not mailing all those dud addresses.

I find there are a number of significant problems with this approach. The best way of keeping a database “clean” is not to send it to agencies, but to use it continually, providing update forms each time you mail, plus specific questionnaires from time to time.

The other problem is that most universities and similar organisations have a fairly finite pool of supporters, so that simply marking someone as “goneaway” is not good enough. Indeed it’s scary just to do that without takiing any further action if a piece of mail is returned. It’s much scarier if the indication has come from a third party database.

So here’s my take on this:

In respect of people whose mailings have already been returned marked Goneaway, these services can be excellent for finding these people, especially if they have recently moved.

But in respect of people on a database which has been reasonably well used and from whom there has been no return directly to the organisation saying they have Goneaway, the best these services can do is indicate which records may be suspect.

Here are some examples of where these services, if not used wisely, can be unhelpful:

1. If someone moves out of the parental home, and changes the address for their bank and their credit card statements, then they will look like they have moved. If an “address cleaning” operation is then undertaken, the client will be told that the person has moved. But the address from which they have moved is likely to be a long term, reliable, parental address, whereas the one to which they have gone may well be transient. If they move again soon afterwards the chain lengthens and the likelihood increases again that the alum will be lost.

2. If the same person changes bank they will disappear from that address, and the chain is broken. Similarly if the parent (or for that matter the individual) gets fed up forwarding junk mail, they may start throwing it back in the post marked “Goneaway” or “Not Known.” Some of this will end up on the GAS database, and once enough scores have been made on the GAS database, the person will register as a Goneaway. Despite the fact that they are still known to the occupier, and possibly even still there.

3. If someone has temporarily moved overseas for work, but is intending moving back home, they may well place a forwarding order on their mail, sending it to their temporary rented accommodation in New York. It would be wholly inaccurate to say that they have moved, yet if the New York address is adopted it will soon fail, and contact with the constituent could be lost. Yet they will appear on NCOA.

4. If a constituent whose father has the same initial and surname, in a case where the father has died, but the son still lives at the same address, a Mortascreen match on initial and surname would be generated.

As with all things, it pays to understand the service one is buying.

Here’s what I suggest to my clients: DO everything you can to keep your own address clean. If you use these services then use them intelligently, and if they tell you that someone whose address you thought was OK has changed, then check it, by email, by mobile phone or by mail. Do not assume that the database results are right. One client of mine found that 29% of the people claimed by the database company to be Goneaway were in fact still there. If you get a 5% match on your database, and 30% of that is wrong, then the average University will be throwing away around 725 good addresses. Would you do that voluntarily?

I am absolutely not suggesting you should not use these services; what I am suggesting is that where you have a good address, buying the database service is only half the job (and cost) - the other half is rigorously checking the data that has been returned to you.

Have fun!

]]> http://blog.beney.org.uk/?feed=rss2&p=54 http://blog.beney.org.uk/?p=53 http://blog.beney.org.uk/?p=53#comments Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:18:52 +0000 Adrian Beney Places to stay http://blog.beney.org.uk/?p=53 was not good.  Tea was too strong, there was no muesli, the pastries were like cardboard and the fruit looked nice but tasted of nothing.

Anyone know a nice hotel in central Leicester for under a hundred a night?

Never thought I’d see the day, really, nor that I’d end up with a share in a Cessna. But beggars can’t be choosers, and sometimes get surprised. The wonderful looking machine in the photo (see an even better picture on Airliners.net taken by Robert Beaver) is a 1975 Cessna 177B. Note the lack of struts compared to a 172, and the wings set much further back. This, together with a larger engine and variable pitch prop means more speed. But it also goes slowly really nicely, and will get in and out of grass strips with relative ease.

Little did I think when I started flying 13 years ago that I might one day enjoy the huge privilege of having a key to my “own” plane. And all for less than a second hand Ford Fiesta.

More on the plane at www.cardinal-group.co.uk for anyone who’s interested.

I stopped often to take photos, which meant that a VW Camper kept overtaking me, only to be overtaken by me again a few minutes later.  After the third occasion when I stopped to take a rather damp Munro-bagger into Spean Bridge, the VW driver waved….

Then it was north up the Great Glen, a quick look at the hotel where my father announced to the entire dining room on his 55th bithday that “This was the worst birthday I have ever had” (the food was awful and my sister and I behaved badly….)  I stopped instead at the Lovat Arms in Fort Augustus where the chicken and mushroom pie was excellent and the British Waterways Ceilidh band warming up.  Finally a journey up Loch Ness, with the moon rising above the hills to the South, and a very warm welcome from Avril at the Silverwells Guest House.  Fresh milk was provided for in room tea and real coffee, fantastically comfy bed, shortbread to die for, and a view of the River Ness.  Very impressive…

So it was a funny moment when I went to the Durham Alumni web pages this week and found they had finally been corporatised, and probably quite right too. I always liked the web cam pic we had on the front page which meant that even if you came to the page from Australian daylight you got an image of the Cathedral, since it’s floodlit at night. It’s all a long way from the original Alumni page we put up in 1995 when we had email addresses for all of 17 Durham alums. Still, some of the old pages are there if you know where to look.