By Melody Song, Director, Communications, APRA Canada |Prospect Research Senior Officer, Calgary Zoo
The APRA Canada Membership Survey is an important tool to better understand the demographics of our membership, identify industry trends and evaluate member services.
The APRA Canada Board would like to thank each of the 78 respondents (or 46% of the total members) who took time out to give us their valuable feedback and contributions to this year’s survey, and share some of the key findings with all members.
Below is a short summary of key findings. The full survey report is available here.
Survey Highlights
Older and wiser
- 74% of respondents are 35 years or above compared to 68% in 2011.
- 60% of respondents hold a Masters degree or higher, when only 50% of positions required such qualifications
More full-time researchers, smaller organizations
- Though organizations we work for are still mostly concentrated in the higher education and health sectors, there was a doubling of the number of prospect researchers working in arts & culture in the last five years.
- The number of organizations with an annual fundraising goal of $5 million or less increased from 14% in 2009 to 22% in 2014.
- There are more full-time workers (91% currently, compared to 83% in 2011 and 2009) and fewer contractors (decrease from 13% in 2011 to only 2% in 2014), indicating that there were potentially more full-time positions created in the past couple of years and higher demand of prospect researchers in all sectors.
More focused, better rewards
- Members are focused on what they are trained to do: 17% of respondents do not support any other areas, compared to 8% in 2009.
- Average salary is currently $65,000. There is a significant increase in the $70,000 - $79,999 range, from 8% in 2009 to 21% in 2014. The median salary of our American counterparts is $56,000 (APRA International Survey 2012)
Shrinking budgets
- Both research budget and individual professional development budgets decreased from previous years, which is incongruent with previous indicators that point to organizations investing more in prospect research.
Stressors
Follow-up interviews were conducted with some self-identified respondents on what stresses they faced on the job and what they saw as areas of frustration for prospect researchers.
Two themes ran common in responses. Firstly, the ability to balance prospect research with other emerging responsibilities like prospect management, database management and consultations with fundraisers on donor strategy. This is probably mostly due to small team sizes as reflected in the survey.
The second theme/commonality centered on the “isolation” from the rest of the advancement team, and value and use of the work produced by prospect research.
Again, if you would like to read a full summation, it is available here.