The Highs and Lows of managing a
larger research team.
Researchers in Fundraising 2012
Helen Carpenter
• How I got here – individually
• How we got here – as a team
• Are we really so big? The context of
Information and Knowledge Management
at the NSPCC
• The highs
• The lows – or let’s call them the
challenges and what we’ve learnt and do
to turn them into highs
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Becoming a prospect
researcher…..
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Information + Prospect research
= Information and Knowledge
Management
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One Manager
Two Senior Researchers
Four Researchers
CURRENTLY: TWO Prospect
Researchers to 80 Major Gift or
Corporate Fundraisers
AIM: THREE Prospect researchers to
80 Major Gift or Corporate Fundraisers
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RIF Conference 2012
The Highs
Team of passionate prospect researchers
Share the workload and bounce off ideas
Dual role of team brings opportunity
Lots of fundraisers to meet and learn from
Variety
Opportunity to progress within specialism
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The Challenges
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Being more single minded in quest to get to
50:50
Being bold - telling fundraisers what they need!
Saying NO to a reactive piece of information to
enable us to say yes to doing a proactive piece
of research.
Saying NO to new areas of work to take on – I
have said yes before and need to stop that!
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RIF Conference 2012
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Being aware of ratios, hours, resources
and timings to be able to communicate
clearly
Prioritising – “we just can’t do everything”
– where do we add most value
We are a specialist resource - being clear
that we aren’t an extra admin resource
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Layers of
Management……………
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Define Projects
Joint ownership of our objectives –
In particular meeting our aim to get
to 50:50!
Helping everyone to feel like a
specialist – not a jack of all trades
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On that note……………
Please contact Helen Carpenter on
020 7825 2961
Or anyone else in the team!
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RIF Conference 2012