Using Google to Find Funding for Research

Jeff Briand, Associate Director, Research & RecordsSteven Wardle, Senior Research Analyst, Research & Records

Division of Advancement, York UniversityMarch 21, 2012

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Introduction

•Overview of Research and Records at the Division of Advancement

– Research and Prospect Management

•Research Sources - Publically available information at York University

•Accessing and using research resources

– Search engines

– Using search operators

•Questions

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Research & Records at DOA

•Prospect Research

•Prospect Management

•Records Management

•Central Files Administration

•Concept of Prospect Development

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Prospect Research

•Research Profiles – Individuals, Corporations & Foundations

•Response to queries – Memos, projects etc.

•Research Identified Prospect Process – serendipitous discovery of prospects

•Prospecting Initiatives – By Request or Strategic

•Trip planning

•Briefings and memos for events and trips

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Prospect Management – What is it?

•Designed to focus development activity towards the successful cultivation of Major Gifts, Planned Gifts, Sponsorships and Leadership-level Giving

•It involves a series of activities that are conducted in order to develop and nurture the prospect’s awareness, interest, involvement and commitment to York University and its mission.

•Prospect Management enables:– Consistent and appropriate donor relations across all university units– Repository for institutional memory related to the development of relationships with prospects– A process to maximize organizational, divisional & individual performance through systematic tools and portfolio measurement– Monitoring and predicting proposal activity and the securing of future gifts to YU

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Prospect Management - Components

•Details on the Prospect’s fundraising relationship with YU:

– Stage of Relationship

– Rating

– Forecasts for donations

– Assignments

– Interests

•Details on any Proposals provided to a prospect to support an initiative at YU:

– Type of Proposal

– Stage of the Proposal

– Projection & Expected Date for Proposal’s Approval

– Assignments

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Prospect Management – Codifying Actions

•Contact Reports

– Meetings, Events, Correspondence, Formal Invitations

– Notes to outline what happened with that activity/interaction

•Tasks

– Reminders for future actions to move the relationship forward

•Notes

–Strategies, Assignments, Memos to File, Research, Reassignment, Stewardship, Inactivation & Trip

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Information Collection: From People to Resources

Human Interaction(Contact Reports, Impressions & Observations)

VS

Publically Available Research

(Databases, Internet, Subscriptions & Media Sources)

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What’s Advancement got to do with it?Finding Funding for Research

Tools the Professionals Use•Free Resources

•The internet!

•Using free resources

•Google

•Better searches

•Operators

•Searching databases

•Additional web resources

•The Library

•Fee Based resources

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Research on a Budget

Free Resources• Search Engines - Google, Bing, Ask (Tip) Use more than one, use the

Canadian domain

• Pick a few search sites and learn them inside out

• Bookmark your favourite sites so you an access them quickly

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Research on a Budget (2)

What’s out there?• Biographical Dictionaries• Donor lists• CRA• Appointment Notices• Canadian Honours• Rich lists• Company lists• Industry Canada• SEDI• SEDAR• LinkedIn, Zoominfo• Foundation Finder (U.S.)

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Understanding Search Engines

Do I really need to understand how this internet thingy works?

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Search Engines - Google

Googlebot• Google’s webpage finding web crawler

• Constantly searching for new web pages and indexing them

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Google - How it Works

Ordered by priority of rank or “PageRank”

Proprietary algorithm developed by Google that measures a website (actually named after a guy named Larry Page)

Believed to include:• Link Popularity• Link Quality• Link Quantity• Age of domain name• Quantity of traffic• Monitoring Bookmarks• Monitoring clicks away from page• Frequency and quantity of page changes

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Remember: Keep it Simple

• Describe what you need in as few word as possible• The more words you use the greater the search will be limited• Don’t be put off by too many hits, this is a chance to refine our search

Better Searches

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Search engine strategy

Devise a Strategy• Write down key search terms you want

to use

• Don’t be buried under too much information – you don’t have time to read hundreds of pages

• Make your searches specific and to the point

• Make use of search operators

• Consider name variations - are there short forms?

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Critical Thinking

What is the first page to come up?• Wikipedia – a great resource that can be

vandalized, be critical, seek confirmation

• Zoominfo – may contain inaccuracies

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Google Search Operators

Quotes• “Quotes” – enclosing multiple search terms in double quotes finds pages

where the terms appear together, exactly

• Example: top researchers in Montreal – will find pages where “top”, “researchers” and “Montreal” will appear

• However: “top researchers in Montreal” – will search for pages with that exact phrase

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Wildcards

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• Wildcard Operators – using * (asterisk) that can match a missing word or term; wildcards can be used when you are missing one or more words (or letters)

• Example: donor to big * of Canada will return – donor to big brothers of Canada, donor to big sisters of Canada, and donor to big organizations of Canada

• Also: donation* will search for donation and donations• Remember the wildcard only works on whole words, not parts of words

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Searching within a Site:• Using the site: operator instructs Google to provide results only from

a given website• Example: donation site:globeandmail.com will deliver results where

donation was mentioned in the Globe and Mail website• Most important for us site: yorku• Sometimes flipping the order will also work, try – yorku Site: term or

name

Site

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Synonym Operator• Use ~ at the beginning of a search term (with no space in

between) and make Google search for that term and its synonyms

• Example: ~donation will bring up pages that include donation and gift

Synonym Operator

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The Inclusion Operator (+)• Place a +immediately before a search term to ensure the word is

present in the results• Example: if looking for a job in Los Angeles, use +LA careers;

without the + Google will exclude LA since it would deem the word as “the” (in Spanish or Italian)

Inclusion

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Exclusion

The Exclusion Operator (-)• Place a –immediately before a search term to instruct Google to

find pages that do not contain the given term• Example: to find about a health-related virus, use virus –computer

to ensure that Google returns pages that contain virus, but no pages related to computer viruses

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OR

The OR Operator• Use the OR Operator to tell Google that you wish to find pages

including any of your search terms• Example: a Google search for TV program OR show will generate

pages referring to either• Example: the OR operator helps with regional spelling differences: like

labour OR labor, neighbour OR neighbor • OR must be in caps

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Every word Matters

Remember, if you add a word to a search query it will be used

But there are always exceptions: Common words such as ‘the,’ ‘a’ and ‘for’ are called stop words and will generally be ignored

And there are exceptions to exceptions: search engines are programmed to imitate how people think. A search for ‘the who’ will direct you to the official website of the band

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Filters

Using filters to limit the number of results you see

Pages from CanadaAny time• Past hour• Past 24 hours• Past 4 days• Past week• Past month• Past year• Custom range...

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Google Alerts

Let the research come to you

Email updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.)

Based on your choice of query or topichttp://www.google.com/alerts

Handy uses of Google Alerts:• A developing news story• Keeping current on a research interest or

industry• Getting the latest on an event• Track news on a donor

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Further Google Insights

Google Image (shhh! now you know my secret)• Can shed new light on prospects• Who are their Friends, Family,

Business Associates• Pictures from a gala with

movers and shakers

Google Maps• Where does your prospect live

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The other players

There are approximately 35 additional search engines out there

Bing – Microsoft challenger to Google, strong graphics focus

Ask.com - Q&A focused search engine

Yahoo! – now in partnership with Bing

Webcrawler – One of the first, launched in 1994, a metasearch engine that blends the top search results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing

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Introduction to Boolean Logic and Operators

and

andor

w/n

*

nearn

/Fn/

same

$

?

( )

adjn

not

/Nn/

atleastn

[ ]

or

not

$

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George Boole (1815 – 1864)

• Mathematician, philosopher and the inventor of Boolean logic, the basis of all digital computer logic (and my hero…)

The man who invented it all

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• AND• OR• NOT

Search Operators

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Search Operators AND

ANDDonors and Alumni

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Search Operators OR

ORDonors or Alumni

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Search Operators NOT

NOT, AND NOT

Donors NOT Alumni

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Wildcards

• Can be used to substitute for any of a defined subset of characters

• Especially useful for names

Examples• Steph$, Brad$, Mitch$

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Proximity Operators

Allow you to locate one word within a certain distance of another

For Example

w/n where n is any number between 1 to 10

•University w/3 research finds items containing “University” within 2 words of “research” where “research” is the second word

nearn where n is any number between 1 to 500

•University near5 research displays articles with the word “University” not more than 5 words away form “research,” where “research’ is the fifth word (0-4 words between)

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More proximity operators

/Nn/ where n is any number from 1 to 500

•Bombardier Q400/N30/Porter Airlines finds articles containing the term “Bombardier Q400” within 30 words of “Porter Airlines” where “Porter” is the 30th word (0-29 words between)

/Fn/ where n is any number from 1 to 500

•Sanofi/F50/ will find articles with the word “Sanofi” with the first 50 words of the article

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Truncations

$n where n is any number from 1 to 9

•Earn$4 will find articles that contain any word with the root “earn” including earnings, earns, or earned

*(asterisk)

•Telecom* will find articles that contain the root “telecom” including telecom, telecommunications, telecommute, or telecommuting

•Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using the *sign, and the *sign must be entered at the end of a word only. No number is allowed following the truncation

?

•Globali?ation will find article containing “globalization” or “globalisation”

•Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using ?

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Using Parentheses or Brackets, atleast and same

( ) Parenthesis or [ ] Brackets

•Select releases and (university or instructions, or course) finds items about select releases related to to universities, instruction or courses

atleastn - where n is any number between 1 and 50

•atleast6 Magna will return items with at least six mentions of Magna

same

•Bergeron same VeriFone finds items containing “Bergeron” in the same paragraph as “VeriFone”

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Library Resources

What’s Available• Factiva• Imagine Canada’s Canadian Directory of Foundations and

Corporations• Lexis/Nexis• FP Directory of Directors• FPinfo Mart• Hoovers

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Factiva

•Factiva covers information on industries, public and private companies, business and management topics, current awareness information and historical news

•Covers 1969 – present, dates vary by publication, worldwide

•Many full text articles, trade journals, news wires, media programs, company and stock reports

•News in twenty-two languages in over 8000 sources

•Searchable by title, industry, geographic location and type

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Better Factiva Results

Time Savers•Consider building a ‘canned’ search. Create it in Word, copy and paste into your search daily or weekly

Examples

•donor$ or philanthropy or donation$ or endowment or York University or endowment

•Rita Burak or Chantal Hebert or Step$ Ling or Ken Singh or Joel Cohen or Jay Hennick

•Date: In the last week

•Sources/Major News and Business Publications/Canada

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Example

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Using Imagine Canada’s Canadian Directory of Foundations and Corporations

•Most accurate funding research tool in Canada

•Bilingual database with detailed, searchable information on thousands of Canadian funders.

•Contains searchable information on all Canadian grant making foundations, as well as government funding programs, American foundations, and hundreds of corporations that invest in the community.

•First published in 1966 by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and adopted by Imagine Canada over 25 years ago.

But note:

•Sometimes it does not display the most recent data. Always check CRA.

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Different look, same techniques

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Fee Based Resources

Can you afford it? Which one is right for you?

PRO – Prospect Research ONLINE• Guidestar Grant Explorer• Searchable by funder name, state/province, city, ZIP code and can be

filtered by grants awarded ($), total number of grants awarded, Employer Identification Number (U.S.)

• Pivot: funding connected• Onesource• ABI/ProQuest

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Remember it’s a jungle out there

Spyware

Viruses

Viruses

Malware

Malware Spyware

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Possible pitfalls

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Closing Thoughts

Interacting with the Research & Records Unit at DOA:

•Focus Relationship Building that will result in asks over $5K; $25K is considered Major Gift Level•Concern on prospects heading into Solicitation•Concern with prospects with Stewardship commitments•Sharing information – both before and after “the ask”•Trips, prospect lists & ideas

Contact:Jeff Briand, Steve Wardle Phillipa Vaz

Associate Director Senior Research Analyst Research Analyst

briandj@yorku.ca wardle@yorku.ca pvaz@yorku.ca

(416) 650-8204 Ext. 58229 Ext. 20380

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Questions?