This research-based, practical discussion of the impact of the governing board on fundraising will highlight practical strategies and techniques for supporting the board and enhancing its capacity to lead. We will explore the ways in which the board, the most underutilized tool in the development toolbox, can and does set the pace for giving. Specific management tools to upgrade the board's positive impact will address issues in board management such as setting fundraising expectations, orienting members, making fundraising assignments, and building board awareness and involvement in fundraising. We will explore practical, specific measures to help the board and its members become more effective leaders in development. What will be covered: Current research results that document in quantitative detail how boards impact fundraising. Specific techniques and tools for "managing" boards in fundraising. Skills and tools for enhancing board management. Benefits of participating: Learn the industry standards in what you can and should expect from your board. Acquire data that will help you influence board thinking at your institution. Develop the skills and confidence you need to change your board. Target audience: Vice presidents for development and advancement New presidents Board chairs, development committee, and nominating committee chairs Directors of development Prospect researchers charged with building lists of board nominees Assistants to the president charged with board relations, board orientation, board reporting, etc. Development officers who interact with board members as donors and volunteers Date: July 10, 2008 Time: 12:00 Noon Central Time Duration: Approximately 1 hour Cost:  No charge for current clients of Bentz Whaley Flessner, $195 for non-clients Deadline: Registration (and payments for non-clients) must be received by 5 pm July 9   Full participation in these webinars is applicable for one (1) point in Category 1.B-Education of the CFRE International application for initial certification and/or recertification.

The phonathon is still the best way to engage new donors and renew past donors.  It is an important part of the overall annual fund strategy and must be tightly managed to achieve success. To help you maximize the phonathon as a key part of your annual giving program, we will discuss: Various approaches to telemarketing--in-house versus outsourcing. Volunteer versus paid callers. Staffing for the phonathon--professional versus student management. Environmental factors impacting phonathon productivity. The phonathon as an integral part of the annual giving program.

Giving money to charity does not necessarily make the world a better place. Nevertheless, most donors believe that donating qualifies as doing good. In fact, the gift of money is only the first step in a chain of events that might achieve the elusive goal of creating social impact.Full-text article by Sean Stannard-Stockton is available via Financial Times, 6.28.08

It has been awhile since I have posted on the DonorCast NewsWatch. Alex is so in-tune with the data mining world, I have had little to add. However, as a long-time Wired subscriber, I could not go without mentioning the latest issue, "The End of Science."Chris Anderson sets a premise followed by several other contributors regarding the modern use of data. One of the most provocative points of the feature is that the scientific method can actually get in the way of data exploration. I believe Chris is correct.However, as with most debates (endogeneity vs. exogeneity, in-house vs. outsourcing, prospect-based tracking vs. project-based tracking) it is not as simple as one or the other. James Cheng, the brilliant data miner at MIT, presented a compelling case for the scientific method at the APRA data mining symposium this past April. Before changing strategies based on analysis, I use control group tests whenever possible. Kate Chamberlin and Michelle Paladino at Memorial Sloan-Kettering very effectively use controlled study principles in testing the validity and effectiveness of both models and development strategies.There are times when the method can get in the way, too. Chris Anderson points out that Google does not try and understand "why" before implementing the results of the analysis. It simply moves ahead with it. In the writers own words:Google's founding philosophy is that we don't know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that's good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required. That's why Google can translate languages without actually "knowing" them (given equal corpus data, Google can translate Klingon into Farsi as easily as it can translate French into German). And why it can match ads to content without any knowledge or assumptions about the ads or the content.When I first began to build predictive models, I always started with a hypothesis. This would influence my data selection as well as my model selection. The more I build, the more I move to allowing the data to guide the process. In fact, the most challenging part of CRISP-DM is the "data understanding" step. If I let my data decisions be guided entirely by what I understand the business question to be, I might miss a hidden pattern.What is the risk of letting the data guide the process? Well, let me use a major giving model as an example. As I have discussed before, if your goal is to predict giving likelihood to risk-manage a gift pyramid, you may wish to have a large degree of endogeneity. Like a credit score, you really would want to know the probability of the behavior. If your goal is to find new people that might be good major giving prospects, you might choose to minimize endogeneity. The result would be less predictive, but would serve to minimize the identification of names already known to you.In this scenario, if you were to allow too much endogeneity in the identification model, the risk is small. You would likely exclude researched and assigned names before starting your qualification process anyway. What remains are not known names. But, you might have missed some names that would fit the profile if you had more data about them.Sometimes, I have Marianne Pelletier's voice in my head, "Well, did you find more prospects?...That's good--isn't it!?" It is very similar to Google's "Did we make more revenue on that ad?...That's good--isn't it!?" Sometimes "why" can get in the way.Maybe, this is my long way of saying, "Buy this magazine and read the feature." It can be confusing at times since it references "models" in the context of "ways of doing things" as opposed to statistical models. But, I think you will see Chris Anderson's point. It is worth the read.Read The End of TheoryLink goes to the first essay from the feature by Chris Anderson. See the links on the left side of the page for the other brief essays.

Oklahomas state colleges and universities have been engaged in a fierce scramble to finalize donations for endowed chairs by June 30, the deadline to qualify for matching funds from the state.Full-text article by Kathryn Masterson is available via the Chronicle of Higher Education, 6.30.08. [Subscription required.]

Pressures exerted by a slow economy and soft stock market increasingly are being felt in corner offices, underscored by a drop in pay for top executives at Arizona public firms for a second straight year.Chief executive officers and chairmen at 54 firms reported a median compensation package of $868,000 for 2007, down from $1.09 million in 2006 and $1.11 million in 2005, according to an annual pay survey by The Arizona Republic. Full-text article by Russ Wiles is available via AZCentral.com, 6.29.08.

Former night schools across the country are transforming into more traditional, residential college campuses to boost enrollment and gain prestige. Full-text article by Dorie Turner is available via Boston Globe.com, 6.30.08.

Stocks moved to the threshold of a bear market Friday, triggering debate on Wall Street on how long a downturn could last and how much damage it could wreak.A day after losing 358.41 points, the Dow Jones industrial average shed an additional 106.91 points, or 0.9%, to close out a dismal week at 11,346.51.Full-text article by Walter Hamilton is available via the Los Angeles Times, 6.28.08.

Amy and Malone Mitchell, who both graduated from OSU, donated $57.2 million to be split evenly between academics and athletics. The gift will be used to create an entrepreneurship program within OSU's Spears School of Business and to provide support to athletic programs.Full-text article by Murray Evans is available via the Houston Chronicle, 6.27.08.

Real-estate-rich universities are taking advantage of new ways to develop their holdings through corporate partnerships, says a report released this week by Moody's Investors Service, a credit-rating agency. Those partnerships pose a wide range of payoffs and risks, the agency says.Full-text article by Paul Fain is available via the Chronicle of Higher Education, 6.27.08. [Subscription required.]