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When I am not in a client meeting, I’m traveling with my history-loving husband and going on New York City adventures with my two intrepid teenagers. If you’ve used a donor research consultant or team to help you refine and flesh out your prospect list, they’ve likely already explored most of these points.
- That’s why it’s crucial that you segment your audience with specific metrics.
- This means matching gifts can encourage prospects to reach new levels of giving with your organization through their employer’s matching gift program.
- To carefully steward each prospect, you should increase the positive and valuable engagements you provide.
- Understanding a prospect’s preferred methods of communication is the easiest way to boost your chances of developing that relationship further.
- Donors who have contributed between $5,000 and $10,000 to an organization are 5 times more likely to make a donation elsewhere than the average person.
Equilar Atlas allows development officers to prioritize prospects through connections with friends, acquaintances, and business relationships. If your donors are philanthropically minded, they probably aren’t only giving to your nonprofit. Let prospect research unveil past giving to organizations with causes that are similar to yours. Reach out to talk about how the DonorSearch platform can help your organization reach more donor prospects, raise more money and build long-lasting donor relationships. Prospect Research Ultimate Guide.For more in-depth information on prospect research, read this detailed guide. It will take you through everything your organization needs to know about researching potential donors.
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If their employer offers a matching gift program, the search tool will then populate with the necessary forms and guidelines they can use to submit a match request. DSGiving is a free prospect research tool that offers access to a smaller-scale version of DonorSearch’s philanthropic and political contributions data. Simply type in an individual’s name and state of residence, as well as the gift type, and the tool will pull useful data for you to leverage. Since prospect research involves collecting both wealth indicators and philanthropic indicators, it’s important to understand the common data points that fall under each umbrella category.
A county tax assessor can also be a valuable resource when it comes to establishing official records of purchase prices and property values. The amount that donors give to political campaigns can be a strong indicator of their wealth. Mobile data can pinpoint areas that require more focus in your major donor campaigns, such as groups that donate relatively large or frequent amounts with mobile devices. These donors have already demonstrated a vested interest in your organization. By performing a gift capacity analysis of your most loyal annual fund contributors, you might just find that their ability to give is greater than the amount they’ve historically given. Now that you know how important event attendees can be to unlocking your major donor potential, check off all the boxes on your event checklist to ensure that your event is a smashing success.
If your organization supports similar causes, then you can make a segue between your mutual interests. To find philanthropists who may not be on your nonprofit’s radar, extend your search to your larger network. Personal information can be gathered from social media sources, for example, and may indicate which causes a major donor is inclined to support.
How To Get Started With Prospect Research
From your experience with marketing fundraising campaigns and promoting your projects to your base of support, you know that communication is crucial. It is a good idea to focus on the potential of individuals that are closest to your organization and its mission rather than approaching wealthy public figures. Most celebrities are inundated with requests for money, and they may have no connection to your nonprofit’s mission or location. Makes the value of that donor’s potential gift twice as high. Make sure you know how much to ask for, what communication channel your prospect prefers, and other factors to ensure you make the most effective ask. Take the time to analyze the screening results so you can pick out the prospects who are most likely to contribute significantly.
People who own $2 million or more in real estate are 17 times more likely to donate to your nonprofit than the average person. The correlation between real estate ownership and donating cannot be ignored. After all, event attendees are already invested in your nonprofit. They’ve taken time out of their day to express their interest; use these circumstances to your advantage. Past donors are statistically inclined to give future donations. Each of these topics will be discussed in more depth later in the article, but they are not the only wealth indicators to take into consideration. This tip is fairly straightforward but always worth the effort to put into practice.
Why Does The Annual Fund Offer Valuable Information?
Your nonprofit might elect to bring in a prospect screening company for your prospect research needs. Once you’ve decided to perform prospect research for your organization, where should you start? There are a few avenues you can take, such as using prospect screening companies, prospect research consultants, or performing in-house screenings on your own. Having this information will help your nonprofit tailor matching gift-specific communications to match-eligible donors. Seeing who in your area has the ability to give may be easy but learning who would want to give is a different question all together.
Pull donor records directly from DonorPerfect for a DonorSearch screening, and your new wealth and philanthropic data will flow into your DonorPerfect records for you. DonorSearch provides nonprofits like yours comprehensive wealth data and actionable insights that can help your organization identify and engage valuable donors in your network. No matter their mission or size, all nonprofits can use prospect research to save time and resources while making their fundraising processes vastly more efficient. The quality and quantity of real estate someone owns is always a top wealth indicator your fundraising team should be aware of. Individuals with notable real estate are proven to have large giving capacities that you can capitalize on in your nonprofit’s fundraising initiatives. Much of this information can be collected online, such as through social media, and can help you identify ideal prospects.
How Does Prospect Research Fit Into Your Fundraising Strategy?
Software can be employed for everything from purchasing tickets to arranging seating to tallying the donations themselves. Donors who have contributed between $5,000 and $10,000 to an organization are 5 times more likely to make a donation elsewhere than the average person. There are bound to be errors and duplicates when it comes to data entry. Those who haven’t donated in two or more years should be removed to make room for new, active donors. You may consider sending a notice of removal via email or phone to those who are on the list.
What are prospective donors?
In the donor environment, a prospect, by most definitions of the word, is “a person likely to succeed as a potential donor to help another person or organization.” So, breaking that down, it looks like this: … Likely to succeed – This is about an expectation that this person may give – there is a strong possibility.
Showing your donor appreciation is crucial so that the supporter understands how much their contribution means to your mission. Make sure to also send them updates on the impact of their gift so that they know they’ve truly made a difference.
Philanthropic indicators to determine a donor’s willingness and capacity to give. This presents nonprofits with a full picture of their donor’s profile and helps them make a more educated ask and focused outreach. With iWave, I was able to gather and verify critical wealth and philanthropic information about a prospect that led to a $10 million gift from that individual. IWave’s research platform helped us get 25% of the way to our goal with that one prospect alone.
For smaller or newer nonprofits with tighter budgets, a do-it-yourself prospect screening approach is a good option. DonorSearch’s charitable giving database is comprehensive and constantly growing, housing tons of useful philanthropic data. Several online tools that nonprofits and educational institutions can utilize to maximize their efforts. Corporate giving program, which can provide insights into potential matching gift opportunities. Past giving is the best indicator of future giving because it means the supporter is interested in your cause and has already made a contribution. Prospect research helps uncover these previous donations so your organization can leverage that data and reach back out. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, wealth screening is actually only one component of prospect research.
Events are the perfect opportunities to speak face-to-face, so use this opportunity to persuade your potential donors and assess their likelihood of making a donation. Both must be taken into consideration to identify the most likely major donors. This is even more important if they’re a high-impact donor, like a major donor or a match-eligible donor.
By eliminating extraneous or inaccurate data, you’ll have less, and therefore more focused, material to sort through in your major donor search. Your donor database is going to be the starting point for all of your identification efforts. People who already make donations, to your organization or to other organizations, are the most likely candidates to continue donating. However, general interest and support for nonprofits can also be an indication of a willingness to donate. It is important to remember that wealth alone cannot determine whether a person is willing to donate. As such, wealth indicators should be considered in conjunction with philanthropic indicators.
The opportunity to have their support matched can be a major motivator for new donors. It’s also an extremely effective way of convincing your existing donors to upgrade their support. A prospect’s relationships with other nonprofit organizations is another key point of donor research that you might have used to identify them in the first place. Of course, an intuitive and fully functional donor database or CRM platform plays a huge role in making all this data truly actionable. Once you understand your existing history with your prospect, it’s much easier to refine your communication and solicitation strategies as the relationship grows.
After all, it’s the donors who put the keys in the ignition and kickstart fundraising. Understanding a prospect’s preferred methods of communication is the easiest way to boost your chances of developing that relationship further.