# Getting to know you, getting to know all abouuuuut you!
Identifying your Beneficiaries
Your beneficiaries are those people who benefit or have benefited from the services provided by your organisation and as such should have a particular affinity with your organisation.
Clearly, given that they offer different services, different organisations will have very different beneficiaries: a Scottish university will have different beneficiaries to a West Country museum, a local animal shelter will have different beneficiaries to St Paul's Cathedral. And just as clearly, some organisations will have wealthy types amongst their beneficiaries and some organisations will not.
Nevertheless, unless you are very sure that there is no possibility of your organisation having any wealthy beneficiaries, I believe that it is worth your while to seek them out.
Some organisations will be able to identify their beneficiaries more easily than others, but whatever your organisation, you can use the same basic method to discover who your beneficiaries are, if it is not immediately obvious.
Ask yourself the following three questions:
By answering each question as fully as you can, you should be able to produce a comprehensive list of those who benefit from the services that your organisation offers. Hopefully, it will be more people than you think.
What services does your organisation offer?
How are these services offered?
Where are these services offered?
Clearly there is some crossover between each section, but the idea is to produce a comprehensive list and not (to begin with) a neat and tidy list. You can tidy it up later.
To be really sure that you have covered all possibilities, ask other people in your organisation to produce such a list. And not just fundraisers; volunteers, someone in HR or IT, the Chief Executive, and so on. You want to get as comprehensive a list of you can.
E.g. “Dad suffered a stroke”, “Mum suffered a stroke”, and so on for father, mother, granny, sister, brother, etc. Ditto for the phrase “died of a stroke”, “had a stroke” and so on.
This is time consuming, especially the internet search, but I have been able to identify a number of wealthy beneficiaries in this way, as it is generally only the wealthy, influential or famous (i.e. the people who we are interested in) who are written about in the news. Of course, there are human interest stories about ordinary folk and their experience of stroke, but it is well worth reading through ten, twenty, or even one hundred such stories to find one story about a wealthy or inflential person who has experience of stroke.
And if there are stories about wealthy/influential people and stroke, there will be stories about wealthy/influential people and other health issues, as well as animals, the environment, children, the elderly and so on. You will need to tailor your search to your organisation, but just imagine how it might be mentioned in an article or interview ("my daughter/son/father, etc. was bullied/in the scouts/loved going to church/had a pet dog, cat, budgerigar, etc.") and start searching.
Another way to identify your beneficiaries is to look through Debrett's or Who's Who for people who may have benefitted from your organisation - or, better still, to do a search on KnowUK. For example, those in Debrett's and Who's Who usually list their school and university (very useful for alums, if they are not on your database) and also their recreations: e.g. opera, music, wildlife conservation, travelling, the countryside, family, education, and so on.
Obviously, inclusion in Debs and WW is no indication of wealth, but you should be able to get some idea with the career information that they provide.