Apra Prospect Development 2022: Industry panel discussion

It was amazing to connect with old and new friends at APRA PD 2022. It was a fantastic opportunity to discuss prospect development, donor due diligence and effective fundraising with so many inspiring professionals across the fundraising industry.

One of the highlights for us was the vendor panel discussion, chaired by Kari Stokosa, where our CEO and co-founder Dan Secretan spoke alongside:

• Emmanuella Modilim – VP and Global head of client success at Altrata

• Lawrence Henze – Analytics Architect and Senior Principal at Blackbaud Target Analytics

• Brett Herzog – Senior Product Manager at LexisNexis

Some of the key takeaways from the conversation were

• The increased need to use online information not just for insights on giving capacity and employment, but for due diligence purposes. This is a shift we often characterise as the move from can we work with this person/organisation, to should we, from a values, ethics and reputation-led perspective.
  
• How the vast range of information on the web can overwhelm researchers, but tech can help in the process of turning the mass of open-source data into strategic insights.
  
• The role of ethics in prospect research and data management. How tech can help researchers identify prospect intelligence using publicly available data which minimises bias and maintains respect and sensitivity.
  
• The need for data protection compliance and respect for privacy to be built into research processes. How systems with this built in can help by minimising human error and potential inconsistencies between researchers.
  
• How, looking to the future, due diligence and reputational risk will only grow in importance as the information explosion continues.

It was a great opportunity to discuss how new tech such as Xapien is helping researchers turn the wide range of open-source data out there into strategic insights.

Xapien does the grunt work of searching, verifying, collating and extracting information from the open-source web. Prospect research and donor due diligence teams can focus on decision making, finding new prospects, and building positive relationships. Our system extracts key insights and presents it into an easily-digestible, fully sourced report. It does this within minutes. This means faster prospect research, more effective fundraising, and quicker relationship building, with the confidence that your prospect aligns with the values and ethics of your organisation.