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- [00:00]
Bill Tedesco
We stopped to meet one of our friends that we had had from, you know, a couple years before, and he said, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean, what are we doing? We lived in Harrisburg at the time. He said, what are you doing? You got out. These people can't get out of here. They. They're stuck here. You got out. You got a degree. You got an education. You. Why are you even considering coming back?
- [00:30]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators, and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy, and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Bill Tedesco is the founder of Donor Search, the leading provider of fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit world. Raised in Pennsylvania, he studied landscape architecture and then earned a Master of Public Administration from Penn State before beginning his career in technology and then moving into key development role at the Fund for Educational Excellence and later the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He went on to serve as Executive Vice President at Target America and CEO of Wealth Engine before launching Donor Search in 2007. In this episode, we explore his journey from school days to frontline fundraising to technology leadership, the lessons he's learned along the way, and his vision for the future of the field.
- [01:32]
Bill Tedesco
Our grandson has taken to the horses. We've got out of our way to, like, put them in front of horses, and he's, like, grabbed a hold of it. It's like, Sarah sent us a little thing with him on the. We gave him a rocking horse, right? And you squeeze the air and it's like, yeah, go ahead, cowboy. And then he's kind of like a little cowboy hat. And he. He digs it. He likes it. So I use that as context for. We've been thinking about a mini for him. Wouldn't that be a hoot?
- [02:12]
Jay Frost
That would be amazing.
- [02:14]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah. Yeah. We had somebody come visit us. They were taking minis from one location in Connecticut down to a new place. They're living in North Carolina. And they're adorable, but they're also pretty hardy because it's a horse. It's got everything associated with the horse, but in a really small package. Right. So we'll see. We'll see. If we do it. It might just be. Here's something I bet you. You never thought of is it's not really wise to buy a pony because your children outgrow it. Oh. And it's like, you know that they actually. You can lease them, and then they move from one family to the next.
- [03:02]
Jay Frost
You can lease A pony?
- [03:03]
Bill Tedesco
Yes, you can.
- [03:05]
Jay Frost
How long do ponies live?
- [03:08]
Bill Tedesco
They live a really long time. You know who lives a longer, longer? Donkeys. Wow. Donkeys can live 80 years.
- [03:17]
Jay Frost
Maybe that's why that donkey's years expression came from. I had no idea.
- [03:22]
Bill Tedesco
I never heard that.
- [03:26]
Jay Frost
All right, so, Bill, I've got to ask you. When you were growing up.
- [03:29]
Bill Tedesco
Yes.
- [03:30]
Jay Frost
Ever think you'd be riding horses, owning horses, or talking about miniature horses?
- [03:38]
Bill Tedesco
No, No. I like. I like being outside every. I don't know, every other summer, I got to go out to the country. My uncle had a cabin. He didn't have any horses, so I didn't get much interaction with him. This. I'm going to put this on my wife. She's always wanted a horse, and she lived. She grew up in northeast Philadelphia, and there aren't many horses in northeast Philadelphia. And there's an interesting story around it, but when we made the move and bought the farm, that was like a big deal for her. That was like realization of one of those. I think some folks will call it a bucket list or other folks will call it that. It was almost. Well, it very much was kind of like a lifetime dream. So it was like, if we can pull it off, let's give it a try. And we did.
- [04:42]
Jay Frost
And she's from North Philadelphia. And you're from.
- [04:46]
Bill Tedesco
I am from Pittsburgh.
- [04:48]
Jay Frost
From Pittsburgh.
- [04:48]
Bill Tedesco
I grew up in the suburbs. Where? Pittsburgh. Once you get outside the. Well, all of Pittsburgh's hilly. But once you get back about 10 or 15 miles from the city, everything's a hill up, hill, downhill, up. So quite literally, I walked a mile to school. Up and down hills both ways. Yeah. Got some disproportionate calves.
- [05:17]
Jay Frost
And the story to tell your kids, because that's what every parent says. As I walked a mile, you know, through the snow, both uphill, both directions.
- [05:26]
Bill Tedesco
It's true. You just need two hills.
- [05:32]
Jay Frost
What was it like growing up there?
- [05:36]
Bill Tedesco
It was good. It was. How should I say? What was it like? It was. This is an easy life. I didn't. I didn't know anything else, Obviously. We lived in apartments, rented buildings. My father died when I was young, but we were being raised by a single mom, three boys, so she had her. She had her challenges. Right. The good news is we were all raised with pretty strong values. And by example, we all learned that working hard was probably one of the strongest values that you could have. If you've got something to do, just get it done. Don't toy with it. Don't try to skate.
- [06:33]
Jay Frost
How old Were you when you lost your dad?
- [06:35]
Bill Tedesco
Two. Wow.
- [06:39]
Jay Frost
Yeah. So you must not. I don't know how some people remember things that young. Most of us don't. I don't.
- [06:48]
Bill Tedesco
Did you lose your dad at a young age?
- [06:49]
Jay Frost
No, no, no, no. But people who have, whether they've lost a parent or not, remembering something at that age is rare. Do you have recollections?
- [06:59]
Bill Tedesco
Very little. Very little. They, they said that when I was growing up, I used to look at you going right for the emotions, just going just like, here, let's take Bill's heart out and put it on. On stage. Yeah. I used to tell folks he was coming back. So.
- [07:23]
Jay Frost
And your mom, what does she do? Because she was a hard working person raising three boys. What did she do?
- [07:29]
Bill Tedesco
She's a nurse, a night nurse, private duty, which means that she could pretty much set her own schedule. She would call into a registry and they would have people who wanted to pay for private nurse. And she would, you know, I think probably eight times out of 10 it was in the hospital, leave for work at 10:30 at night, come home by 7:30. Wow.
- [08:01]
Jay Frost
And when you're growing up with a parent who is, like you said, kind of setting their own hours, even though you're working for other people, I mean, that's, that's very hard work. What kind of impression does that leave for you? I mean, I know my dad was, was. He had his own little cottage business in the back of the house. My mom worked with him, but I saw him working every day. Sort of like you must have seen your mom going off to work and coming back from work. What kind of impression did that give you?
- [08:31]
Bill Tedesco
You know, she was going off to do work and it was our job to support her in that, make sure she was able to get ready fast enough, make sure, you know, as we got older, make sure there was gas in the car at the very least. Yeah. And you know, we were obligated to kind of hang into the straight and narrow, if you know what I mean. It was like, now this whole thing falls apart if we don't all pull together.
- [09:00]
Jay Frost
Yeah. You talked about values a minute ago. So what were those? Was there pretty much like a set of clear values almost that you could write up on a chalkboard in the house.
- [09:12]
Bill Tedesco
They'd be idealistic, you know, being honest, working hard. Education was a very, very high value with her. Turned out, I think we were attending somebody's funeral and it was one of the first times that we weren't particularly close to either side of the family. But at the funeral, we realized that we were the only ones that were going to college. It was like, oh, you learn a little bit about your roots at that moment. So. And it's worked out really well. My eldest brother has a doctorate in geology, worked for Chevron. Middle brother has a master's, I think. I think it's public administration. And ironically, I got one too, in public administration, which is. It's interesting because we didn't. We never talked about it. We kind of like found out afterwards. It was like, oh, really doing the same thing. So neither one of us. He went further with his degree in public administration. He worked as a township manager. I think that's what it was. Yeah, he was a township manager, a fast growing area out north of Pittsburgh. And I got as far as interviewing for township manager positions and I was offered a job. I briefly worked in north central Pennsylvania, which is the kind of standing way of understanding it is that there are more deer than people. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we went up there. I'd been asked to come up for an interview. And we're looking around and, you know, they. They kind of showed us around and essentially said that the job was available if we wanted it. And while we were up there, we stopped to meet one of our friends that we had had from, you know, a couple years before. And he said, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean, what are we doing? We lived in Harrisburg at the time. He said, what are you doing? You got out. These people can't get out of here. They're stuck here. You got out. You got a degree, you got an education. Why are you even considering coming back? And we had a fairly long. Ruth and I had a fairly long ride home in the car, and it was like, yeah, you know, Pat's right. This is a Pat Walsh at the time, and we're very grateful. And it's not an accident that our son is named Patrick. So anyway, so I ended up working at the state and. And bumped into some computer people that like the work that I did. Got a nice career in computers.
- [12:25]
Jay Frost
And so you. You left. I mean, but before you left, this is Penn State for both degrees. But your first degree was. Was landscape architecture, right?
- [12:37]
Bill Tedesco
Does that seem unusual to you?
- [12:39]
Jay Frost
Well, it's an unusual degree for, for anybody. It's pretty amazing. So what was that all about? I mean, you talked about this earlier and you've told me this separately before today about liking being outside. So I don't know if that's what this is about or if there's Something else.
- [12:59]
Bill Tedesco
I also like building stuff. I went to Penn State thinking that I was interested in architecture, but I had no idea that people would be showing up and they'd have portfolios and they'd have their own ideas and maybe they'd had done internships and all that sort of stuff. So I wasn't the best candidate for the architecture program. And I got a roommate just by chance. And he said, hey. And we compared notes and we both had the same aspirations. And he said, I got into the landscape architecture program. So I joined the landscape architecture program. Landscape architecture program was fairly severe in terms of its. In the way that it was. How do I describe the way success was, was teased or offered out? I think we started with like 200 people coming into it. After the first year, it was down to 100. And then after the second year it was down to 50. Oh, and then by the time we were done, we were down to like the last 30, 35. They didn't cut it in half. The last. The junior year. And I made it. I made it through. As it turned out, it was completely locked sequence as well. So I'd gone to school for one year before I got into the program, but I had four years that were locked after that. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It was a good challenge. You know, all the values come out. You know, you have to work real hard. You can't cheat, all that sort of stuff. Plus there was a kind of tapped into some sort of technical stuff that I enjoy. Actually, one of the first courses I took at Penn State was a computer course. And it was a really long time ago, so it involved cards, right? But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. So every opportunity I got as I was going through the landscape architecture, I tried to include the computer aspects to it. Then when I got the master's I had taken, I was. I remember what it was. I wanted to be able to work while I was going to school, just from a money perspective and everything. And I took a job at a township, and I enjoyed that tremendously as well. But that's where I began to make a really earnest sort of transition to computer work. The township I was in was looking to buy a computer system. They said they gave it to the intern. You know, you figure out which ones we should look at. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every aspect of it. And the guy who eventually ended up winning the business, he offered me a job afterwards.
- [16:09]
Jay Frost
So in the middle of all this, you must have met your wife, because you mentioned in this Other thing, when you were talking about interviewing for this town manager position, that you were already married. So when did that happen?
- [16:23]
Bill Tedesco
Ruth and I met, I think it was the second year of me and landscape architecture. It was the summer after the first year. She's one year older than I am, but she had done it in three years. So she was on our way out. She had already graduated. We met at that time, we kept in touch, and then we got married very shortly after I got out of school. So, yeah. Yes. Pretty cool.
- [16:58]
Jay Frost
Is this the first time you went to England, too? Because I know you did a project that was kind of a landscape architecture project, right?
- [17:06]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah, yeah. The senior year, if you saved your money. In my case, I borrowed the money. You had an opportunity to do the study abroad, and for whatever reason, the program that they had in Portugal or Spain fell through for that year. So they were able to recruit a guy named Bodvan Griffin, who was the landscape architect to the Queen. Wow. And he said, well, fine, send over some students. So I think there was four or five of us that went over, and we weren't housed together. We were all kind of scattered through different rental units, and we'd only bump into each other if we were in the studio trying to do the work. So the. The joint task that we were supposed to work on and there were different levels of compliance with that is they had a village, it was called the village of Laycock. Still there, ancient, you know, like 1200 sort of stuff. And what we were supposed to do is go in and try to figure out. They knew that it was going to be a bit of a tourist attraction. They had an abbey there, and there were a couple other things. And they said, well, give us a design where you can still enjoy the aspects of this old village. And, you know, they'd have, as you imagine, old English buildings with the wood outlining the white sort of plaster and.
- [18:43]
Jay Frost
All that, or the whole Tudor or something. Tudor architecture, I think. Something like that.
- [18:50]
Bill Tedesco
I didn't get in the architecture program any rate. So we did a design, and I was a little disappointed. Well, when we did the design, like I said, there were multiple. There were different levels of compliance. Basically, I ended up finishing the project, like, on my own. And at the time, I was experimenting with developing my own film as well as my own photos and stuff. Oh, broke as a church mouse. I mean, just no money. So I screwed it up. I came back with these photos of the. The plans that we had designed, ready to explain them to everybody else. But if you remember how Film works. You have to wash it to get it to a certain level where it's good for making prints. I didn't do that part quite right. So, like, half of the image was shot anyway. I did share with you that I went back to England. I've been back twice. This would be the second time. And they just, they just ignored every. Every everything. We recommended everything, which was disappointing, I have to admit. But, you know, they're. The local people got to choose and they did not want all these extra things just for folks that were coming in as tourists. So as a tourist, it was a. This third, you know, third time I'd been to England. It was pretty mediocre experience. They were successful. Congratulations. So, which is in direct contrast. I had done something in my junior year and this one just kind of blew me away. I had the town I lived in in Pittsburgh, Crafton. I was able to get shots of the whole little town. And then I was able to get blueprints where everything is paper at that point. And I came up with an idea. We were asked to come up with an idea, design something. And I came up with a design as to where the opportunities were for redeveloping that downtown. And mine was very, very basic. It was like, look for the stuff that was appraised at the lowest cost per square foot. So I was looking at all the cheap lots, basically, is what it came down to. Some were in the middle of houses, others were a little bit more rural. And so what I did is I made recommendations for each of the. I think it was like 20 different plots of ground, including there was a train track that went through the middle. I thought, wouldn't that be great if that was a commuter route all the way into the city? Ultimately, when I went back, it turned out it became a commuter route. They had put a bus line through that. They'd ripped out all the tracks. To my chagrin, Literally every plot of ground that I had designed or suggested that they change, they had followed it. And it was like I didn't even remember where I left the plans. And I thought, well, this is absurd. This, this isn't. This isn't real. But I basically systematically went through each of the different plots and in one place, I was actually changing the street layout and they changed the street layout. And I was like, you guys realize you were following a, you know, a 20 year old who had never designed anything at this level before. And plus the, the common denominator was the. The lowest cost per plot, right? Per. For the land, you know, X number of dollars per square foot, that sort of thing. That one, that was. That was a big surprise. I didn't see that one coming. I still, to this date, have no idea how it happened.
- [22:56]
Jay Frost
I'm just imagining what that must feel like on two levels. First, to see what you've designed come to fruition and still standing a good number of years later. But then the other part is to be one of the few people who realize that you did that, because it's not like there's a big plaque somewhere and then says, bill Tedesco designed this. Right.
- [23:22]
Bill Tedesco
There's no pla. I have no idea. I. I don't remember where I left the plans. I think it was like the mayor got a hold of them or some real estate developer got a hold of them, and they just followed to the letter. And. And if they got any pushback, they must have held the plans up and say, well, see here we got plans. Because it was. I mean, right down to the densities, like, this should be multifamily. This should be a high rise. This should be single family. You should tear this building down and put this up there. I mean, the stuff all happened so kind of wild.
- [24:04]
Jay Frost
And then to be aware that you did it, but other people are not aware of it. Is that. What does that feel like?
- [24:13]
Bill Tedesco
I haven't been home enough? I don't. I. It just feels good. Feels good. Is like, huh. You know, obviously, I could see the things that I would do differently in hindsight, but, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to kind of have that impact, you know, if you want to make a segue to the business, you know, I know we've had an impact. You know, it's kind of silly when you think of some of the algorithm, the basic algebra that was done to make recommendations, but the recommendations turned out pretty well.
- [24:58]
Jay Frost
Yeah, it's. You know, it's funny that you say that, because I'm sure you're right, but when you began this, this part of the chapter of your life that you're talking about, you were talking about using computers and using, you know, I guess, punch cards or whatever people would call them for Fortran maybe, for something like that to do computer programming. And then you ended up working. Was it. Was it ncr? I'm trying to remember.
- [25:29]
Bill Tedesco
It was ncr. NCR gave me all the technical background on computers and, you know, like, literally, what's an operating system? What's memory? What's this call, that sort of thing? And then you had to tell people about it, the they it. When I got, you know, after the, maybe the first five or 10 years in doing prospect research sort of stuff, I wondered what it was in my background that seemed to fit and what it was. It was the computer knowledge, which is way over here, and then it was the landscape architecture stuff over here. And with landscape architecture, at least during that time frame, what you were doing is you were going out and getting a soil map, you were going out and getting a topology map, you were going out and getting a utility map, you were going out and getting a vegetation map and you'd lay those on top of each other and then what would pop would be the places where, you know, the ideal place for building would be something that was flat, it would be something that, you know, you wouldn't have to cut down a lot of trees for. It would be, you know, maybe something with a good view, all that sort. But in many regards that's very similar to what we ended up doing with prospect research because we were, you know, we were stacking business affiliations, we were stacking real estate, we were stacking charitable gifts, stack political gifts, we were stacking foundation affiliations. Things that were definitely markers. And what you're looking for is where you have multiple markers in a given prospect. So there, there was a reasonable transition or not transition. The two different career paths kind of merged on. This worked out nice too.
- [27:23]
Jay Frost
And how did you make that transition though? From working at NCR Computers, sales, et cetera, and then into development? Because that even though I can see exactly what you described, making that career switch is something that's maybe a little more unusual.
- [27:42]
Bill Tedesco
The career switch was pretty painful. What happened is I was working for direct manufacturers. If you look now, there are not that many direct manufacturers. Back then they were all purporting my proprietary system is better than your proprietary system. What happened is as PCs and networks began to overtake the minis, then that whole part of the direct manufacturer sales disappeared. And then it started to move up into the mid size and some of the larger systems. And what happened is that part of the sales channel just collapsed. Just one day we were selling to stores or one day we were selling directly to clients, the next day it was considered very innovative that we were selling to stores that were reselling our product. And then a year later it was all gone. And it was tough. I got depressed for about a year. I mean it was a really long time, but gave me some quality time with the kids. That was good.
- [29:12]
Jay Frost
Oh, so by that time you'd already had Two children. Okay.
- [29:17]
Bill Tedesco
Pat and Sarah. And then my wife said, you ought to try this development thing. I said, this development thing. He says, your whole process at work is very similar to what I do in development and never to be spoken again. The similarities between sales and development. Right. Anyway, it turned out she was right. And I did some internships where I didn't get paid, and I traveled. You know, I think I was traveling to Northern Virginia three days a week on my own dimensions. Oh. And anyway, I found somebody who took a. Took a chance. They had never had a development officer. They said, well, you can be the development officer. I was very fortunate. The board members were salespeople, business people. So they appreciated the skill sets that I did have. And I did that for three years that I went to University of Maryland. University of Maryland was. Was pretty intense for me. Excuse me. Long and short as I lasted a year or so there. And then I was matched up with a guy who was doing prospect research. What he was doing was marketing research. What. The way I kind of converted it for him, I converted it into more prospect research. And his technology was just a hair ahead of where everybody else was. It was on CD Rom, so it was a natural for hospitals. Right. Because you could have the data, keep it on site and everything.
- [31:05]
Jay Frost
And that was a world that you knew. Because at Maryland, I guess it was the school of medicine that you were.
- [31:10]
Bill Tedesco
Working with, or school of medicine. I think the best way to describe that is I learned how the sausage was made. And the truth of the matter is that for all sorts of political reasons, the school of medicine really did not have access to much data at all. The level of data that they had access to consisted of printed listings of people who had gone to school there with very limited information. Of course, it was paper, so it was all quite dated. The prospect research tools were limited to the people that were, you know, had developed portfolios, et cetera. I was used more as a bird dog there, where I would just go out and talk to folks that had been at the school, you know, ask them how they feel about the new dean, anything they have of interest. And, yeah, that's how I made the transition.
- [32:17]
Jay Frost
Yeah. And then over at Target America, how was that transition for you to go from on the one side of bird dogging it, but obviously to raise that revenue to providing services. That was kind of early in the service cycle for the industry.
- [32:34]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah, yeah, it was. But not for me. I mean, because I'd been doing that in the state of. I was selling to Pennsylvania state government. So if you just give your moment a pause there, you can imagine the, you know, the different layers that you have to go through and the certifications that you have to go through. So selling into hospitals just during that time frame and we were dominated by hospitals. We did extremely well with hospital. I think we picked up maybe 200 of them, maybe or two or 300. And they were. The nice part about it was it was recurring revenue right at that point. Prospect research, you would do it once, you'd wait five years, hope that you could afford to do it again. And you know, and I know that over time that began to shorten. That went from five years to three years to two years. And what we were delivering is something where you could do research every day. It wasn't an online thing, but it was a, it was a CD ROM that had, I think it was probably four, three or four different databases that had been merged together. I mean, in hindsight, it's nowhere close to what we're doing nowadays.
- [34:06]
Jay Frost
And so that was kind of a transition point too, because you were there, I guess for a while. That was almost four years. Yeah. And then you moved over to Wealth Engine, which is where we really got to know each other. So how did that transition occur? It's ancient history now. So I'm trying, trying to remember how that happened.
- [34:28]
Bill Tedesco
From Target America to welcome to. We were doing really pretty well and folks are starting to notice a bit. And my former business partner from Wealth Engine came over to Target America. And in hindsight, the setting was the person who actually owned Target America was, had at one point sued the guy that I was working for. This was his son in law coming in and saying, hey, you guys look like you know what you're doing. Why don't you resell our product? And the guy I work for, Jim McGee, who's passed on at this point, said, no way in hell I'm gonna do that. Just he would do it out of spite, the kind of guy he was. And I think a year later, well, I'm dating myself now. This is 1999. 1999, there was this, what they call it, the tech boom. Right. There was a lot of private equity money flowing into tech. All you had to do was put.comor.net on the end of your name and somebody would show up that would be willing to pay you a million dollars that. Well, Jim saw that as an opportunity and he was right. You know, he, he was out in the market actively marketing it. And even though we had kept Target America very small, the folks that were looking to buy us seemingly couldn't remember my name. I can take a hint. I gave it two tries and I thought, okay, this is not going to turn out. And then he presented me with a non compete, which I hadn't had at that point. So I went to the guy that I had met, my former business partner at wealthengine, and said, hey, I was. They weren't really making much of an impact in the industry. They gotten a couple things wrong. I said, let me be your CEO. And he said, well, I don't have a lot of money to pay you. I said, it's fine. We'll do it with stock. And he said, okay, well, I'll give you a stock based on what you sell. And I said, that's okay. I had more or less lived on pure commissions for the previous four years with Target America. And we transferred over a lot of the things that we had learned while at Target America. And he did have better technology. And then we were able to kind of build out to the wealth engine product. So we had to make some changes, you know, in terms of pricing and strategies and the like. But overall it was a very positive experience.
- [37:36]
Jay Frost
This is when it was power, I.
- [37:38]
Bill Tedesco
Guess it was power all the way through the end. Ultimately, I did get stock as you got stock as well. If you remember, the stock certificates said power on them.
- [37:51]
Jay Frost
People of wealth and resources for the Tribune. Prospects of wealth and resources. Excuse me.
- [37:58]
Bill Tedesco
It's a good name, right?
- [37:59]
Jay Frost
Yeah, it is a good name.
- [38:01]
Bill Tedesco
So, yeah, so I stuck around for a while. A couple years as CEO. A couple years when you got there. By that time, our former business partner wanted to be the CEO. I hung around for another couple years, kind of protect the value of the stock. And you and I left at the same time. So it's your, your responsibility, Jack.
- [38:34]
Jay Frost
Well, I hope there's a silver lining in that, in that story.
- [38:38]
Bill Tedesco
Of course there is. Things have turned out very well. Things have turned out very well and we've been afforded the opportunity to work together. What are we up to now? 10 years?
- [38:49]
Jay Frost
No longer than that. Because if that. That happened. When Was that? In 2000. That we sold our interest, I think.
- [38:58]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:59]
Jay Frost
Long, long time now. But you immediately got to work on the next thing. I mean, we, we. We were trying to pilot another project with, with, with. With a friend of ours, which didn't really fly, but then maybe a little ahead of its time, I'm not sure. But then no, it was, it was.
- [39:22]
Bill Tedesco
About a year behind.
- [39:23]
Jay Frost
Behind, but it still took years for People to do it. So I don't know it's true.
- [39:30]
Bill Tedesco
No, conceptually, it was. It was an excellent idea. The technology platform was. Was the problem. We. We put it on a technology. I'm sorry, you know this. I know this. We don't have to belabor it.
- [39:43]
Jay Frost
Well, with others who have no idea what we're talking about, what we.
- [39:51]
Bill Tedesco
I'll describe it. If you agree, then we'll proceed from. There is a concept of when you go out and do a discovery call with a prospect, or frankly, any kind of a call with a prospect, that you would have a call report that needed to get back into the CRM. And we thought we had devised just a very clever way of capturing that information. That true?
- [40:18]
Jay Frost
I think. So they could just make a call and file the whole thing. But getting people to actually commit to filing those reports, regardless of how easy they were and how expensive it was, that turned out to be kind of tough.
- [40:30]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah, it was. It was. And then the Apple phone came along, and the technology we were on just didn't make any sense anymore.
- [40:40]
Jay Frost
Right, right. And that did happen pretty soon after. But you are already starting the next thing.
- [40:47]
Bill Tedesco
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was concurrent. I beat in both at the time. So while I was at Wealth Engine, I had access to a lot of data. And one of the things we did was. Kind of one of the things I wanted to pursue was what variables that we had to offer were most predictive of people that were likely to give. And the easiest way to do that was to look at the ones that had given to our clients at that point and figure out what characteristics that they might have in common with people that had given to other nonprofits. So the good news is it was. Aside from having to stratify it a little bit, it was pretty clear, I think we came up with the five, six markers of philanthropy. And it's still. I mean, it's still valid now. I mean, if you're doing major gift work, it's at this point, it's probably one of the single best ways of predicting that.
- [41:57]
Jay Frost
So what are those things that are so constant that are good predictors?
- [42:03]
Bill Tedesco
Well, you know, they were defined by the data that we had. So real estate at the time we did the research, if you had $2 million of real estate, it just kind of punched you up to a new level of wealth. And there was a disproportionate number of folks that, you know, in hindsight, of course it did. It demonstrated that people had wealth and. And those are often the people that are making the major gifts. Then we did the same thing for foundation trustees. It popped in a similar sort of way. In hindsight, probably wasn't necessarily their individual gifts that were kind of pointing to the fact that they were a good place to invest time. But knowing that somebody is the trustee of a foundation that can give to your cause is, and you know, if they're engaged with you, that's a really logical place to invest time. For major gift work, we did it with business data. Business data is a lot less precise, but the estimates of what people's sales revenues turned out to be a pretty good factor. If they had any sort of business affiliation, it edged them closer to being somebody that would make a gift. If even using these sort of rough cut numbers that they had between one and five, it would edge them a little bit closer. And if they were over 5, regardless of the position that they had, it began to be predictive. And in hindsight, of course, you know, you're talking to people that are involved in businesses that hypothetically are successful, so they should be generating income or generating wealth. And then probably the obvious one, but was probably the toughest to do was charitable giving. Looking at annual reports, collecting that data, and then screening against that to see if you could match up to the prospect that was being evaluated and whether or not they had given elsewhere and at what level they had given. And again, in hindsight, it's like, duh, let's talk to people that are charitable already. And then let's see, the one that was most controversial turned out to be the political giving. I think you're giving me an opportunity to talk about that, Jack. That's very nice of you. I think it's unfortunate that APRA has chosen to say that research shouldn't look at that information. But as it turns out, as soon as somebody starts giving politically, it starts to bump up in terms of the likelihood that they're going to be charitable. As soon as they start to make larger political gifts, which are smaller because it's a regulatory, in the past it's been a regulatory environment, then the likelihood that they're going to be charitable goes up even higher. When you get to lifetime giving of like $5,000 politically, it's a dead on marker for people that are going to have a high correlation to making larger gifts. Charitably, when you get to $10,000, the correlation is almost 100%. If you find somebody who's over the course of their lifetime given $10,000 or more politically, which is a very rich data set because it is a regulatory data set public, it's almost one to one you're going to find that that person's made 5, 10, 20,000 half million million dollar gifts. You ask why? Maybe there's a correlation between political giving and charitable giving or just the type of people that like to give politically also like to give charitably. Or you could look at it as the kind of an ideal marker for wealth. Political giving is not taxed, tax deductible, but people still do it. And you know, they're the idealists would tell you they're giving the causes that they care the most about. The cynic among us would say they're giving cause they're giving to people who can influence policy which is going to suit them from a business or a personal perspective. Either way you're turning over disposable income. And if it's only a measure of disposable income, it's an incredibly good measure of disposable income. It's, yeah, anyway, and then when you run into people that have given more than 10,000, it's you. It's just a matter of taking the time to either look up, look them up in a charitable donut donor database or just do a quick Google search or chat chick et. You know, they're typically very, very high.
- [47:39]
Jay Frost
Profile folks and these are, this is a pretty small population really. I mean people talk about the power of political donations but they don't often talk about the percentage of people who make them. Do you have a sense about how small this universe is?
- [47:54]
Bill Tedesco
I think when we saw the thing about 10,000 and above, I think we went back and looked and I think we were able to pull out something that like less than what was it? I think it was 1/10 of 1% of the population. And if you look at major gifts givers, I think it correlates, you know, it's, it's, you know, you're not getting major gifts from 20% of the population or even the constituents and it just, it points to the same people. So.
- [48:31]
Jay Frost
Right, right. And now politics seem to be infused in everything now. So I'm sure that even discussion, this stuff must get kind of complicated with people. You just mentioned, you know, apra, for example, being concerned about some of these things in the past. So maybe this is a good point to just discuss research in general. I mean you were talking about how you've applied some of the lessons and the interests that you had, the understanding you had of the landscape and then pairing that with technology and how that ended up playing out of course in this world of development quite successfully. Not just in the office, but also in these services. How has that changed, if at all, over the years? I mean, from the time that you started doing this kind of work with prospect research and fundraising to today.
- [49:26]
Bill Tedesco
There'S been a steady decline in costs. You and I both were around where to do a, to do a search looking for political giving or real estate. Back when there was only like those two data sets available. You could pay a couple bucks for each of those search. If you're doing it online, you could easily pay $10 for it. That's taken a steep drop over those past 25, 30 years to where if it was only real estate and SEC insider stuff, the profile would be considered incomplete. Without the business data, without the charitable giving data, without the foundation data, and now without the anecdotal information about what people have made known about themselves on different social media platforms. That's a good profile nowadays. And if you do it without AI, you can do it for less than you do it. Well, less than a penny. Let's just leave it at that.
- [50:45]
Jay Frost
Versus a dollar.
- [50:47]
Bill Tedesco
Versus a dollar. Yeah. Or ten dollars. Right. Truthfully, you start adding a few more zeros on the front of that, that's closer to, I mean at donor social we were doing 20 million a month. Even at a penny, that's still a lot of pennies. We weren't paying that kind of money. So what's happened now is that as you use the AI to, if you were to combine together the different data sets and you'd go off and use AI to try to pull together the, you know, sort of variety of narrative based data sets that'll probably get more expensive for a while. That might even go up to, that might even go back up to a dollar. Certainly on a retail basis. And from a production perspective, I think maybe 10, 20 cents should cover it. It'll be interesting to see and the profiles are much more complete going forward. I think there's going to be a real issue in terms of the power that's necessary to do the AI right now. My impression is it's very heavily subsidized or it's soaking up bandwidth or power that was there but wasn't fully utilized. I think we're moving into a next stage where you're going to have to be willing to pay for it. I don't know how long that will last. You don't know what types of energy sources people are going to come up with. I mean there's lots of good prospects that were even more cost effective than what we have now. That'll kind of determine where things go. You can still get a lot done with the, with a profile that costs less than a half of a cent or a tenth of a cent or one hundredth of a cent. But when you want to embellish it with narrative and you want it to write the story for you, those things are still more expensive right now.
- [53:00]
Jay Frost
Is that the expectation too? I mean for people who are trying to raise money today for charity and it's become really complicated, especially in the last half a year or so, are they expecting just pretty much everything? All the data sources you just talked about how there were four back I guess back in the day at Target America. Now it must be at least three dozen plus databases plus all the, and all the databases are much larger. This matching is much closer but then, and the online services are much faster. But then you've also got all this AI layered both the predictive and the generative. Is that the expectation of the consumer just give it all to us?
- [53:48]
Bill Tedesco
I think what's not resolved yet is how much is the right amount to give and if there's more, how do you make that available? Maybe that's the premium product or the premium service but invariably what was premium one day becomes the norm after that. I, yeah, I, I, yeah, of course, of course. I mean if I'm a non profit and I have somebody that has appropriate skill sets and I've asked them to do research on somebody that I have to go see, let's say you're lucky and you have a whole day to put it together. So you very often you're working with a junior person or maybe you're working with a senior person. If they're going to do a complete profile themselves it should take about an hour, maybe somewhere between an hour and three hours to aggregate it, pull together, make it sense and make a narrative so that it, but you can, for 25 cents you can have the first draft done in a minute. I, I don't see how that doesn't become the norm. Yeah, if you think of your, your own interests, if you were you know, let's say Masterminds was a non profit and you were out soliciting grant money or you were out soliciting major gifts from people that you had found amongst your constituency, do you really want to pay somebody 50 bucks to put together the profile and you have to wait a day or do you want it for a quarter and start reading it before you head out, right. Or you know, maybe give yourself 20 minutes to read it. I think that's where the. It's not really worked out how much data folks want. I think what they want. Just my guess. I don't think most of the technology is there yet is they want the stuff that's relevant to their nonprofit and relevant to the visit. You know, let's say you're from Michigan, right? God forbid you should actually be talking to somebody who's from Michigan. Right. That would give you common ground almost instantly. And you know, if your mission is to promote communications in the nonprofit market, let's say they're a communications major. Now all of a sudden you just drag out those two pieces of data and put it in front of you. You've probably got about 40 or 50% of what you could. You could likely end up talking about. You don't need to know that, you know, they have husky dogs that if you don't have a husky dog, if.
- [57:03]
Jay Frost
You know what I mean, Or a mini horse.
- [57:07]
Bill Tedesco
Or a mini horse.
- [57:09]
Jay Frost
So where is the. If that's where we are, mini horses or not. Where is it going?
- [57:21]
Bill Tedesco
Where is it going? Where's it going for who?
- [57:25]
Jay Frost
Well, I guess for the nonprofits out there, for the masterminds. 501c3.
- [57:32]
Bill Tedesco
I think non profits are going to be presented with more and more challenges to be better informed. I think kind of like, you know, as computers went along, if you had a computer that could do XYZ things and the person you were talking to was interested in xyz, then you came across as being somebody they wanted to talk to, somebody they wanted to consider investing time with. The folks that show up ill prepared. I mean, it's always been the case. People that show up ill prepared, except for just dumb luck, it's very difficult for them to persist. I think the bar is going to continue to get set higher. I don't see that as a bad thing. I see it as a way that things could become a lot more efficient. Yeah, I don't see it as bad. Again, but I don't have a prospect researchers job. I don't. I'm not running a nonprofit. I'm not a development officer. But I. Yeah, I think if you're still gonna. If we're still gonna hang on to personal interaction between the development officer and the prospect and you know, other folks are putting things out that suggest that we don't. But if you are going to try to maintain that sort of time consuming, one on one, you know, looking for emotional Intelligence, all that sort of thing. Then you've got to show up better prepared.
- [59:28]
Jay Frost
Yeah. Well, now I want to ask you about where this has gone. And starting with the business as it was, and you started Donor Search, really, I guess in your house, in your living room and the basement and all over the place, but it was really you and a couple of folks and I guess then eventually your kids. Right.
- [59:51]
Bill Tedesco
So you're not going to talk about your role and getting me started?
- [59:56]
Jay Frost
Well, you. Please say whatever you.
- [60:02]
Bill Tedesco
Whatever Listening. Jay was actively encouraging me to go out and buy a company that had put together. He, Jay understood and I understood the value of charitable giving information in that prospect identification role. And Jay was relentless. And ultimately we did end up buying the company. Thank God she was willing to do buyer finance or seller financing. So, yeah, that's how it got started. I mean, you understood what the basic rationale was. This is like wealth gets you this far, but philanthropic intent gets you further. And the two together. Wow. It's a big deal.
- [60:54]
Jay Frost
Well, that was. And that was, I guess the, the work that they had done was. Was pretty substantial. Done by groups, I guess, largely of. At that time, we used to use the term homemakers. I don't think people say that.
- [61:06]
Bill Tedesco
Oh, yeah.
- [61:07]
Jay Frost
But hand keying, Very, very successfully. Lots of data from annual reports. But you went from that, from what, a million or whatever records to 250 million records or something more than that.
- [61:21]
Bill Tedesco
It was actually five million records.
- [61:23]
Jay Frost
Oh, five million. Excuse me. I don't want to understand.
- [61:25]
Bill Tedesco
I think you've overstated the condition they were in when we got them. If you want to profile the people that were collecting the data as homemakers, that's cool. But the lack of consistency between the output of one homemaker and another homemaker, and by definition they were all part timers. And there wasn't a lot of structure on the back end to say, no, no, the data has got to come in this way. That took us about a year or two to figure that out to get that cleaned up. Yeah. Then we just kind of started building in earnest. Didn't hurt that we had competition that we knew we had to keep up with. That made it pretty clear. And yeah, it turned out pretty well.
- [62:19]
Jay Frost
And that was just again, a few people in your house, then into the, into the buildings in Marriottsville. And now It's. Is this 18 years?
- [62:31]
Bill Tedesco
Yes, it is, Jeff.
- [62:34]
Jay Frost
So for those who don't know what just happened to this thing that you built, the latest thing that you built.
- [62:41]
Bill Tedesco
Oh, Donor Search was purchased by a good company Evertrue. And it's a nice match. It's a real nice match. Evertrue has a history of working with larger nonprofits and providing additional capabilities outside the CRM, never competing with the CRM and making the fundraiser's job a lot easier. You know, show me folks that have these characteristics, bring them up, prompt me for them, that sort of thing. And they, as a company, saw the wisdom in the data that we had collected and the way we refined it into the products and then especially what we were doing with AI. The stuff that we've been doing with predictive AI at the point. Well, if we just go back a month or so, we're definitely leading the industry with it. We had worked with Chad Goble and Nathan Chappelle, Scott Rosenkrantz, Amanda, and Chad was willing to let us hire these folks that already under had a more than a basic understanding of AI. And when that got mixed together with the technology that we had and the sales and distribution systems that we had, it's worked out very well for folks. Yeah. So Evertrue is going to take the two, put them together, and then just kind of make it even bigger and better.
- [64:40]
Jay Frost
What is it like for you to. To have that transition? Because this is, again, something you spent a lot of time, energy, you know, sweat and tears, but also family building.
- [64:54]
Bill Tedesco
Yeah. Well, both Pat and Sarah have chosen to stay with the merged company, which. That gives me a lot of reassurance. But the, you know, they were the people that were related to me, but just as important, more important, because the numbers are greater, you have the rest of the infrastructure that we put together. I had been looking for somebody who would try to keep the integrity of what we had built in place. That is not take it apart for the pieces. And Evertrue kind of fit that bill very nicely. So, yeah, there. There are synergies at almost every aspect of the business, whether it be it. Whether it be marketing, whether it be sales, sales at a high level, sales at a medium level. Yourself, you're an excellent. You know, what you do for donor search to build out our brand in the market, logically it should expand to be able to do that with Evertrum. So, yeah, things are good. Things are good. How do I feel about being retired? It's not as bad as I thought it might be.
- [66:25]
Jay Frost
Well, you said the word retired. I wasn't even sure if that was true. But that's okay. So that's what it is. But what does that look like for me? You.
- [66:34]
Bill Tedesco
It's very new. It's very, very new. I still have some obligations for the company. Not, not, not anywhere close to what I had before. So now I'm in the middle of a small horse farm, and I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want. So we traveled a little bit right out of the gate, which was fun. I think we'll do more of that and then just sprucing the place up a little bit, you know, try to stay out of trouble.
- [67:14]
Jay Frost
Some increasingly small animals, But. So if you were to look back over this, I know this is a snapshot in time, and if I asked you this question 5, 10, 15 years from now, your answer might be different. But if you were to look back at this, what gave you the most joy so far?
- [67:35]
Bill Tedesco
We were able to do good things and in the process, to do well ourselves. I mean, we, look, we stuck with the clients. It was like, don't do it if it's not good for the client. Don't do it if you can't. If the client doesn't say yes, that's what I want to do. Don't, don't promote it. Just stick with the stuff that works for them. And, you know, the ideal is when they can tell you exactly how it worked for them. The ideal would be is they implemented it here, they measured it over there, and they were able to calculate this specific return. And, you know, we, we were a little slow at capturing that information. I mean, we didn't really start it until probably two or three years in earnest. And then doing it with video was. Was absolutely key as well. Yeah. That. You don't have to feel bad about any of that. That's all good. Right, back to the values.
- [68:42]
Jay Frost
Yeah. Thank you, Bill.
- [68:46]
Bill Tedesco
Thank you, Jeff.
- [68:49]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM podcast. You can learn more about donor search@donorsearch.net Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.