Better Donor Prospecting With Nexis® for Development Professionals

For nonprofits, one of the most critical challenges is finding new donors who are not only willing, but eager, to support your cause. The quest becomes less daunting when you consider a key insight: individuals who have a history of donating are significantly more likely to contribute elsewhere.

OneCause writes: “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. The likelihood of donating only increases with the amount of past giving. Donors who have contributed $100,000 or more are 32 times more likely to donate elsewhere.”

Understanding this, it's a lucrative tactic for nonprofits to home in on prospects that have a proven track record of philanthropic giving. However, traditional methods of identifying these generous individuals often fall short. This happens especially when relying on public search, social, and news sources that typically highlight only the few largest and most newsworthy donations from an individual, if any at all.

In this post, we’ll go over some common challenges of donor prospecting and how tools like Nexis for Development Professionals provide a reliable solution to help you connect the dots with comprehensive information on your prospective donors.

The power of Donor Profiles

Traditional search methods require nonprofits to manually organize information and insights from many different sources to get a full picture of donors and prospects. A nonprofit researcher may find a prospect’s employment history on LinkedIn, their income from a salary estimating website, and their email from a Facebook profile. Sure, the information you need is out there, but this traditional search method requires a lot of time and effort per prospect, creating less efficiency in fundraising and can lead to less money raised overall.

To improve this efficiency, at the heart of Nexis for Development Professionals are the Donor Profiles, a feature that offers an in-depth look into an individual donor or prospect at a glance. These profiles provide a wealth of information, including income and personal details, but most importantly they shed light on a prospect's giving history. This insight allows nonprofit professionals to build a list of potential donors who have shown a previous commitment to philanthropy, making the outreach process both more efficient and potentially more fruitful.

Donation history features available in Donor Profiles:

To help nonprofits quickly grab the insights they need on their prospect’s philanthropic history, Donor Profiles in Nexis for Development Professionals provides the following visualizations and charts:

• Bar Chart Visualizing Donation History: See a prospect's giving patterns over time, offering invaluable context for your outreach efforts.
• Donation Value Count Table: Understand the scale of a prospect's donations, ensuring that your ask aligns with their historical giving amounts.
• List of Donations Made: Delve into specifics, including the organizations supported, types of nonprofits donated to, amounts given, and the years of donations.

These visualizations can help nonprofits quickly understand the quality of each prospect, as well as their preferences when it comes to philanthropy, to further increase the odds of a successful donation request.

Let’s say, for instance, you discover that a prospect typically donates to multiple charities every December. Timing your outreach to send in late November or Early December can increase your odds of a quick response and donation.

Likewise, if their average donation to nonprofits is $250, asking for a similar amount can demonstrate your awareness of their past philanthropy, making them more inclined to donate. It also helps nonprofits plan their fundraising strategy, as development professionals can more accurately estimate what each prospect may donate.

This level of detail available in Nexis for Development Professionals not only saves time in building your donor outreach list, but also significantly increases the odds and value of a successful ask.

MORE: How donor prospecting technology can streamline your workflow

Enhancing outreach and strategy with Nexis for Development Professionals

Knowing when, how much, and to which industries a prospect donates allows organizations to personalize their approach, thereby enhancing the likelihood of donor engagement and support. For specialized nonprofits, finding a donor with a history of supporting similar causes means you're not starting from zero; you're building on an existing foundation of philanthropic inclination. This is why Nexis for Development Professionals doesn't just offer a way to identify potential donors; it empowers nonprofits to fully understand their donors and prospects and refine their outreach strategies accordingly.

Moreover, the quick Diligence Check module inside each Donor Profile of Nexis for Development Professionals ensures that nonprofits can conduct their due diligence on new donors efficiently, saving precious resources and time that can be better spent on mission-critical activities like fundraising.

MORE: Adopting donor due diligence: How to begin your donor prospecting strategy

Set yourself up for donor prospecting success

In the competitive landscape of nonprofit fundraising, Nexis for Development Professionals stands out as a powerful ally. By leveraging the power of Donor Profiles, organizations can streamline the process of identifying and reaching out to potential donors with a history of philanthropic giving. This not only optimizes the allocation of resources but also significantly enhances the chances of a successful donation drive.

With Nexis for Development Professionals, nonprofits can focus more on what they do best—making a difference in the world—backed by trustworthy data and powerful features that help turn every ask into a donation. Reach out today to learn more about how Nexis for Development Professionals can streamline the path to the high-value prospects your nonprofit needs.