From blank stares to breakthrough connections
Jeremy Wells, SVP, Philanthropic Services, St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation
Video transcript: As we were reaching out to different demographics and groups to say, who do you know that might benefit from a relationship with us? We would often get that blank stare. You know, I don’t know anyone. I’m not sure who I know. And so as we started doing a little research and came across RelSci, one of your products, when we screened our board members, 20 board members, with one of our board members in particular – we walked through her list and I said, “oh my gosh” when I saw this list. This is like a who’s who of everyone we want to be in relationship with.
You can’t underestimate the importance of relationships. Tapping into relationship science, I think, can be a real win for you in terms of just priming the pump. If someone walks through that list of people they know, their mind starts working and they start coming up with, oh, you know who’s not on this list? These three individuals as well. If you would have given them the blank piece of paper, they would have never got to those three. So yeah, I’m a big believer.