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When crafting (or honing) a fundraising strategy, professionals are bound to get lost in the jargon of the industry. And for good reason: terms like “donor prospecting” and “donor profiles” all seem nebulous until you have real definitions to place behind them.
Here, we outline each of these crucial concepts so you can tackle fundraising efforts from an informed, actionable place.
Donor prospect research means collecting and compiling lists of current and potential (aka prospective) donors so that you can better strategize around your donor pool. The process normally involves looking at donors’ wealth portfolio, news records, and more, as well as placing them within your larger network so you can map out your outreach.
Donor prospect research is by no means a one-and-done process. While it’s important to do the groundwork of researching current and prospective donors upfront, the foundation of knowledge you build can always grow and shift. You’ll need to conduct new prospect research each time your organization increases its fundraising goals, for example.
Similarly, donors change all the time. Maybe a major donor from the past has lost their job and no longer can give as much as they used to. Or, perhaps a prospective donor came into some legal issues, and they need to be removed from your database. Regardless of the potential changes, it’s important to regularly conduct research to ensure that your prospective donor list is qualified, optimized, and up to date.
MORE: Finding potential donors and influencers for political campaigns
Donor profiles are one piece of the prospective donor pie. The profile of a donor is an ongoing record with crucial information that can help predict their giving potential, donation patterns, and much more. It’s also a place where companies can monitor the ethical side of their donor base, ensuring that all donors are in good standing with due diligence checklist and other legal to-dos.
Here are some things that might be included in a donor profile:
Create donor profiles right after an initial prospect screening, so that prospective donors are saved in your database in a secure but accessible way. Then, an organization should set a pre-determined date—like every 6 or 12 months—for when they will track a donor’s profile to ensure all of the information is up to date.
Trigger events like death, marital changes, IPOs, business news, and other major events should regularly be monitored so that a donor’s profile changes as their life changes. For example, if a donor has been publicly promoted within their company, it’s important to note their new role and any potential wealth changes in their donor profile.
MORE: The best wealth screening tools for major gift officers
Donor prospect research is the process of researching current and potential donors. That also includes generating donor lists for prospecting or other strategies and having regular news alerts to consistently update your data.
Donor profiles are a component of donor prospect research that helps keep data organized and understandable. These will be actual documents based on the researching of current or potential donors. So, they are one part of the overall process of getting to know your current and future donor pool.
There are plenty of best practices to use when it comes to prospect research. If you’re just getting started, or if you’re looking for a refresher, here are three simple steps to keep in mind.
Start with what your organization already has at its disposal. Consult your database and identify high giving potential so you can begin to optimize the donors you’re already in touch with. Then, use social media to post about giving campaigns and fundraising efforts so that you’re reaching the followers you’ve already amassed, and potentially getting in front of their followers as well.
Finally, leverage your network so that the donors and stakeholders already in your court are helping with your efforts. That could mean hosting a fundraising challenge wherein donors and followers are given a reward for hitting specific donation goals, attracting new donors to the company.
One you’ve identified donors, it’s time to create donor profiles for everyone. As mentioned, these profiles should include information like personal wealth data, due diligence checks, descriptions of how and why this person might be interested in donating, etc.
From there, you can develop outreach strategies that cater to your donor base. If many of your donors are in a certain area, consider hosting a fundraiser gala close to them so they’re more likely to attend. Or, if you notice an influx of younger donors, perhaps invest more in social media and newer modes of communication so you’re reaching donors where they are more likely to be responsive.
MORE: How donor prospecting technology can streamline your workflow
There are myriad ways institutions can benefit from prospect research, including:
If you’re looking for an easy way to start this process, LexisNexis offers fundraising tools with all of the above steps in mind. You can easily search our database for donors, get automatically-built profiles of prospects and securely store and share your data among members of your company. It’s a one-stop solution for every donor prospecting to-do, with levels of security and research you may not have even thought of.