Say that you’re the leader of a mission-driven organization that’s poised to scale up. You have compelling evidence to show that your program gets results and a well-rehearsed elevator pitch. All you need is a chance to get in front of the right people.
You could spend hours poring over Facebook pages or Googling potential donors. Or you could take a cue from Andrew Bernstein, major gifts director for the YMCA of Greater New York. He goes right to Relationship Science, or RelSci. It’s an online platform that launched in early 2013. RelSci, Bernstein says, is “the first tool I use when I’m researching an individual.”
Designed to streamline the kind of networking that’s essential to business development, RelSci shows at a glance the shortest distance between you and the people you most want to reach. Although the tool has obvious applications for dealmakers in the for-profit world—bankers and lawyers were among its early adopters—RelSci also aims to meet the needs of the nonprofit sector.
“The nonprofit segment is important to us,” says Josh Mait, chief marketing officer of Relationship Science, the startup that operates RelSci. The company has more than 200 clients, and among them are nonprofits such as the Nature Conservancy, World Economic Forum, and Yale University.
Fundraising for organizations like the YMCA would be easier “if we had access to those who might support our efforts,” Bernstein says. “Relationship Science helps to bridge the gap between those already in our network and those we hope will learn about our work.” Assistance with board recruitment is another common use of the platform.
Clients pay an annual fee that starts at $6,000. In exchange, they get access to a proprietary database that covers more than 2.5 million prominent people in the private and public sectors. A staff of 500 people scan publicly available information to build a dossier on each VIP. “Which causes do they support? Which boards do they sit on? We want to help illuminate the full person, beyond the résumé,” Mait says. Individuals cannot add themselves to RelSci. Nor do they get a tip if someone is checking out their profile. Those features, among others, set this tool apart from social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.
RelSci uses a six-degrees-of- separation algorithm to map relationships. The goal is to ensure that “no call is ever cold,” Mait says. “Think of this as a warmness tool.” When clients load data from their own list of contacts into the RelSci database, they find out how many handshakes removed they are from targeted VIPs. The tool also rates the likely strength of those connections. It does not, however, provide VIP contact information. Instead, users must establish contact on their own—typically by asking a mutual acquaintance to make a personal introduction. “There’s work to be done after you’ve used this tool,” Mait notes.
That emphasis on the use of personal introductions is a selling point for RelSci, at least in some quarters. “Many of our initial investors told us that this is how they’ve been doing business throughout their careers,” Mait says. Neal Goldman, founder of Relationship Science, previously started Capital IQ, a financial database service that he sold to McGraw-Hill. He launched RelSci with $60 million from high-profile investors, including Henry Kravis of KKR & Co. and Andrew Tisch, cochairman of Loews Corp., along with corporate backers such as the Hearst Corp. A postlaunch funding round, held last June, brought in an additional $30 million from investors such as Salesforce.com.
RelSci provides “exactly the kind of information you need to make intelligent decisions about how to reach out to someone for the first time,” says Nancy Sims, president of the Robert Toigo Foundation, an organization that promotes workforce diversity among finance professionals. Recently, while test-driving RelSci on a new initiative, she entered a wish list of new supporters into the platform. “We were amazed by how many people in our organization had first- or second-degree connections to the very people we most hoped to reach,” she says.
Sue Toigo, founder of the Toigo Foundation, was quick to appreciate the benefits of the tool, according to Sims: “She calls this her ‘magic book.’”
Read more stories by Suzie Boss.