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27
Feb, 2018

By donorsearch

Prospect Generators: 4 Essential Tips to Find New Donors

As you begin the prospect research and development process, you might find yourself becoming overwhelmed both with the possibilities and the magnitude of the task at hand. Although it’s never easy work, there are a number of effective prospect development strategies you can follow to ensure the success of your major campaigns. One core strategy is to use a prospect generator when building your initial prospect list.  Prospect generators can be invaluable tools for your nonprofit’s donor prospecting process. By both saving you time and streamlining prospect identification, a generator tool can help drive your campaigns to unprecedented levels of success. If you think that a prospect generator tool might be a good idea for your organization, check out these 4 essential tips for choosing and using one:
  1. Identify a prospect generator tool that suits your needs.
  2. Set specific goals for your prospect generator.
  3. Recognize your most valuable data.
  4. Craft a solicitation plan.
Prospect generators are often the most important element of a successful development strategy. Read on for some crucial insights on how these tools can benefit your organization’s next major campaign!  

1. Identify a prospect generator tool that suits your needs.

To find new prospective donors, nonprofit organizations will typically look toward charitable giving databases to identify prospects with proven potential and interest in supporting their cause. A number of useful databases exist to serve this need, some providing more comprehensive information than others. DonorSearch’s databases cover a full range of philanthropic, wealth, political contribution, and professional statistics that can give you a full view of each prospect as an individual, for instance. However, all this prospect data can easily become overwhelming without the proper tools to for sorting and ordering it. That’s where a prospect generator tool can help. Any good prospect generator tool features the ability to search the donor lists of other nonprofits, helping you to identify proven high-value prospects that already support your issues or causes. Check out DonorSearch’s prospect generator tool for an example of what this kind of information might look like: A great prospect generator tool will contain any number of additional features, like:
  • Search functions to find proven donors by distance or zip code
  • Research capabilities on the complete fundraising strategies of other organizations
  • Detailed information on individual donations and nonprofits
  • Export tools to complement your full research process
Imagine how you could streamline your prospect research and development process with access to this kind of information. Best of all, with a prospect generator tool all this data will be organized and searchable, maximizing the efficiency of your entire prospect identification process. When choosing a generator tool for your prospect research and development process, always look for the functions listed above. Depending on the exact scope of your capital campaign or other major project, you might find yourself needing access to more data and functionality than you initially assumed. When it comes to prospect research, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Find a prospect generator that can cover all your potential needs.  

2. Set specific goals for your prospect generator.

While the purpose of a prospect generator tool is to help you identify and organize tons of prospect data, it’s rarely a good idea to jump into prospect research without any preliminary guidelines or targets. It’s crucial that for every major campaign, you use your prospect generator tool to create a specific and strategic game-plan. The unique goals of your campaign should shape both your overall campaign strategy and the more specific ways that you target and refine your prospect list. A fundraising feasibility study can provide your organization with a clear and realistic vision of your campaign’s parameters, budget, goals, and ideal techniques. All of this information will be important to the ways that you’ll use your prospect generator tool to develop a prospect list. Next, use the results of your feasibility study to answer some crucial questions about your prospect development:
  • How many current major donors can I count on for this project?
  • How many new major donors will I need to attract?
  • What range of giving will help me most efficiently reach my funding goal?
  • What kind of time constraints are there on my donor prospecting process?
  • Which of my donors or prospects will be interested in this specific campaign?
Now, let the answers to these questions guide the ways that you use your prospect generator tool to build and refine your prospect list. As with any significant challenge, setting specific goals for your prospect research and development is key to starting off on the right foot. A great prospect list can become an invaluable road map for your campaign by clearly designating your most important targets and key back-ups. By fully understanding both what kind of prospects you’ll need and also what you’ll need from those prospects, you can ensure that you’ll make the most effective use of your prospect generator tool and hit your targets quickly.  

3. Recognize your most valuable data.

Knowing exactly what you’re looking for is pretty much essential to ever finding it, right? The same applies to your prospect research and how you’ll need to use your prospect generator. The nuances of your goals and the unique elements of your campaign will completely determine which specific data points will be the most useful to your prospect development process. Check out our ultimate guide to prospect research if you need some direction about how exactly you can better refine your targets and goals to make the smartest prospecting decisions. Remember that a great prospect generator and access to comprehensive prospect databases will provide you with a wealth of data points, including:
  • Prospect location and property records
  • Complete giving history
  • Details about the organizations the prospect has supported
  • Political contribution history and details
Fully understanding your own campaign goals will help you to better understand the exact kinds of prospects you need to target, which in turn will guide your entire research process. Since a prospect generator will grant you access to plenty of data, it’s essential that your organization take full advantage of the opportunities this presents without becoming overwhelmed with possibilities. Do this by using your generator tools to identify prospects whose demonstrated interests align with your own campaign and fundraising histories. The alignment of prospect interest and your own nonprofit’s history will be reflected in a specific data point or two. Identify these most valuable metrics, use them to filter your results in your prospect generator and search tools, then quickly build an effective prospect list.  

4. Craft a solicitation plan.

Once you’ve used your prospect generator to identify and filter your prospects, it’s crucial that you develop some effective solicitation strategies. You already used your data to find learn more about your prospects as individuals, so your solicitation plans should be equally individualized, too. There are a number of donor and prospect communication tools out there, which, in combination with your strong prospect data resources, can pinpoint your solicitation efforts like never before. By using your prospect data and knowledge of other organizations your prospect has supported, you can make some inferences about the most convenient ways to communicate with them. Always try to tailor your solicitation plan to the individual prospect. There are a number of ways that a prospect would likely prefer to be contacted, like:
  • Through email
  • Through a personal appeal letter
  • In-person at an event
  • In a private meeting
It’s important that you never take a one-size-fits-all approach to your solicitation strategies. For instance, you might know that one of your core prospects is a corporate executive who supports another organization that regularly hosts large fundraising auctions. A busy executive might be unlikely to respond to every email or voicemail, but you might be able to contact them in-person at the next charity auction and set up a meeting in the future. Alternately, a retiree philanthropist might love the opportunity to share a dialogue on email or over the phone prior to discussing specifics, while the director of a grant-giving foundation prefers to be contacted through official application channels. Initiating a donation conversation with a new prospect for the first time can be difficult, but with the wealth of information provided by a prospect generator and other databases, you can craft the most effective solicitation plan possible. A prospect generator tool is perhaps the smartest investment you can make in your organization’s fundraising abilities.  Targeting your research and building refined prospect lists early in the process allows you to save invaluable time and resources throughout your entire campaign. Prospect databases and generators are an essential component of streamlining your donor prospecting process and reaching new levels of success in your fundraising! Check out these additional resources for more information on capital campaigns and the value of effective prospect research: Our top 5 Steps to Building a Prospect List for Your Next Capital Campaign. With or without a prospect generator, it’s essential that you build an effective prospect list for every campaign. The Top 3 Political Contributions Search Tools from Double the Donation.

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05
Nov, 2015

By donorsearch

DonorSearch’s Charitable Giving Database

The strongest indicator of future giving is past giving. Curious how we know? We know past giving’s role in predicting future giving because we have back tested our predictive models against $5 billion in known giving. That $5 billion came from 2 million donors to 400 fundraising organizations. Look at these statistics:
  • A donor who has made a gift of $100k+ to a nonprofit organization is 32 times as likely to donate charitably as an average person is.
  • A donor who has made a gift between $50k – $100k to a nonprofit organization is 25 times as likely to donate charitably as an average person is.
  • A donor who has made a gift between $10k – $25k to a nonprofit organization is 10 times as likely to donate charitably as an average person is.
  • A donor who has made a gift between $5k – $10k to a nonprofit organization is 5 times as likely to donate charitably as an average person is.

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18
May, 2015

By donorsearch

Planned Giving: Identifying Prospects

Planned giving prospects demonstrate significantly different wealth and philanthropy characteristics from major gift prospects. Traditional wealth markers, such as value of real estate, are not accurate indicators of planned giving. The philanthropic activities, such as significant political giving and prior major gifts, that are strong predictors of future major gift philanthropy, are also not accurate indicators of planned giving. The key factors in identifying planned giving prospects are loyalty to the nonprofit, as evidenced by the number and frequency (not the dollar amount) of gifts, and the age of the prospects. This article will not differentiate between gifts given before death and gifts given at death. There is currently no methodology to predict what type of planned giving program will most appeal to any specific donor. The information in this article is applicable to all types of planned giving, including bequests, trusts and other planned giving vehicles.

Planned Giving: A Significant and Growing Source of Revenue

According to Giving USA, in 2011 giving by bequest increased by 12.2% to $24.41 billion over 2010. The Council for Aid to Education (CAE)’s Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey shows that the 10 biggest higher education fundraisers received 10.5-31.1% of their gifts from planned giving from 2005 to 2010. Because age is a significant factor in identifying planned giving prospects, aging trends can help predict future giving trends. As of 2010, only one state (Florida) had over 17% of its population over the age of 65, and 26 other states reported that 13.1-17% of their population was over 65, according to the US Census Bureau. By 2030, the same study predicted that all but four states would have 17+% of its citizens aged 65 or older.

Key Trends in Planned Giving

Often, planned giving involves two factors: a desire to support an organization, cause or mission, and an unwillingness or inability to provide a significant gift in the present. Much of that unwillingness to donate today is driven by fear, uncertainty, and doubt about financial security. According to a 2011 survey by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), 57.4% of older Americans are somewhat to much less confident that their income will remain steady, while only 5.6% predicted their income would increase. For planned giving, which asks donors to promise a future gift that will cost them nothing now, this is good news. Donors can support nonprofits in the future without jeopardizing their present financial circumstances. A second significant trend, a 2009 survey by the Hartford Financial Services Group, shows that 76% of Americans ages 50+ support charitable causes, compared to 60% for Americans ages 49 and younger. As Baby Boomers age, Giving USA expects non-bequest giving to flatten, while bequest giving increases. View more prospect research statistics.

Wealth and Planned Giving

While wealth is not the most significant predictor of planned giving, the likelihood of a planned gift rises with the size of an estate. According to IRS data as reported in Giving USA 2012, 4-5% of all Americans leave a charitable bequest in their will, but that percentage is significantly higher for those that leave larger estates: In fact, for estates large enough to file estate tax returns and their giving histories, charitable bequests far exceed lifetime giving. According to David Joulfaian, a U.S. Dept. of the Treasury economist/researcher, a study of 11 years of IRS data concluded that charitable bequests exceeded donors’ total lifetime charitable giving by 2.74 times. Development officers who’ve seen large bequests given by donors whose lifetime donations were much smaller will not be surprised by that statistic. Development officers will also not be surprised to learn that giving by bequests has risen much faster than the general level of giving. According to Giving USA 2012, total estimated charitable giving by individuals rose by 4.0% from 2010 to 2011, while giving by bequests rose by 12.2% during the same period. One more significant fact: 78% of planned giving donors gave 15 or more gifts to the nonprofits named in their wills during their lifetimes, according to a survey by Lawyers.com and the CAE VSE survey. Learn more about the limits of wealth screening.

Understanding the Differences Between Planned Gifts and Major Gifts

The methodologies that effectively identify planned giving and major gift prospects vary, with six of the eight methodologies DonorSearch routinely uses differing significantly between the two groups of prospects: Screening methodologies that are effective at finding major gift (and, by extension, capital campaign and annual giving) prospects cannot accurately identify planned giving prospects. Married couples, for example, are much more likely to give major gifts than single adults. However, there is no evidence to show that widows, widowers, and adults who are divorced or never married are more or less likely to include planned giving in their estate planning. Learn more about major gift prospects.

Planned Giving and Major Gift Markers

The markers that identify planned giving and major gift prospects also show significant variations:

DonorSearch Planned Giving Prospect Identification (PGPID)

Because the engagement strategy for planned giving prospects can be lengthy, and development office resources must be used as efficiently as possible, identifying the strongest planned giving prospects is critical. DonorSearch has developed a specialized prospect research tool, Planned Giving Prospect Identification (PGPID), to more accurately find planned giving prospects. In a project for a major university, PGPID identified 2,259 planned giving prospects based on loyalty, which was 9.5% of the total file which included 23,827 records. Using a proprietary process that classified every record with a rating of A (most promising) through G, the results made a planned giving program much more manageable for the university: Loyalty ratings can be overlaid with location (by state), age, wealth, known philanthropy or other factors, for further analysis and action. Planned giving is a significant and growing source of gifts for nonprofits of all types. Identifying and cultivating planned giving prospects efficiently can ensure future income for nonprofits of all sizes. If you’re new to planned giving or want to learn more about how planned giving can boost your fundraising then contact DonorSearch for a free demo today.  
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09
Mar, 2015

By donorsearch

What Software Does DonorSearch Integrate With?

DonorSearch offers software integrations with a wide range of technology companies, so you can use our comprehensive prospect research software in coordination with your other powerful tools. Below is a complete list of companies that we integrate with. They are organized into one of three categories according to how you access DonorSearch’s data:
  1. API Integration — Seamless integration at the click of a button. Use the information in your CRM to search for philanthropic and wealth data from DonorSearch and integrate this prospect data back into your database with ease.
  2. Custom Data Field Integration — DonorSearch is the CRM’s prospect data provider of choice, and the CRM provides fields specific to DonorSearch to house your prospect data.
  3. Manual Integration — You can import DonorSearch data into the CRM, but the fields are not customized for DonorSearch. Data must be exported in a CSV file and imported manually into the CRM.
The specifics vary between software options, but DonorSearch plays nice with all of these technology tools. With DonorSearch, you get more of the information you need when and where you need it. Keep in mind that you must be a registered DonorSearch user to receive technical integration support, and DonorSearch does not provide technical support for all integration software.  

API Integration

These companies let you access DonorSearch’s philanthropy and wealth data with the simple click of a button, so you don’t have to do the heavy lifting of importing the data yourself.

Agilon

Agilon provides Agilon One, which is a modern fundraising and communication software for nonprofits ranging from healthcare to higher education to public radio. You want to develop, grow, and maintain relationships to support your institution, and Agilon wants to provide innovative solutions, problem analysis and correction, and on-demand reports and information.

Resources to Integrate

Agilon integration support Contact Agilon for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

Bloomerang

Reach, engage, and retain the advocates you depend on to achieve your vision for a better world. Bloomerang has pooled together the latest in best practices for fundraising, loyalty, engagement, and retention to create a simple donor database solution that decreases donor attrition and increases nonprofit revenue.

Resources to Integrate

Press release about the integration Contact Bloomerang for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

DonorPerfect

DonorPerfect provides one unified database to organize all of your constituent data. With straightforward constituent relationship tools, you can make smarter, timelier decisions to raise more money for your cause. DonorPerfect received the most ‘excellent ratings’ from the nonprofits N-TEN and Idealware in their donor management systems reports.

Resources to Integrate

Details of what you can do thanks to the integration Contact DonorPerfect for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

Little Green Light (LGL)

Founded in 2007, years of experience in web-based software, business development, and real-world fundraising experience allow Little Green Light to provide nonprofits with a 360-degree view of their constituents. LGL’s web-based donor management software provides a singular location to help nonprofits track details about volunteers, members to alumni, donations to events, mailings to campaigns, and all of their constituents.

Resources to Integrate

Slideshow about how to use DonorSearch for Little Green Light Contact LGL for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

NeonCRM

Raise more revenue through automation and help staff streamline day-to-day processes within one truly connected platform with NeonCRM’s cloud database. NeonCRM empowers organizations by placing their most important information in one dedicated system that’s accessible from any internet connection. Online forms integrate easily with any website. Also, auto feed information to NeonCRM and allow for real-time processing and recurring payments.

Resources for Integration

Integration guide from NeonCRM Contact NeonCRM for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

OmegaFi

Compass is OmegaFi’s data-rich, information integration product for national Greek foundations. Achieve your organization-wide business process goals with an assist from OmegaFi.

Resources to Integrate

Press release about the integration Contact OmegaFi for more information at: info@omegafi.com Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

Patriot

The Patriot Version 2 system is designed for the headquarters staff of chapter-based fraternal organizations. Patriot V2 is the smart way to manage your data and complements your organization’s business model.

Resources to Integrate

Contact Patriot for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

ResultsPlus

ResultsPlus offers donor management software with none of the IT maintenance. Manage fundraising events and ensure both the accuracy and deliverability of your constituent mail and email address information with the tool that supports the way you work. ResultsPlus maximizes the time of both your staff and volunteers, so you can focus on what matters most: cultivating donor relationships and supporting your mission.

Resources to Integrate

Contact ResultsPlus for more information Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

Salesforce

Salesforce1 for nonprofits provides a set of end-to-end solutions to make any nonprofit a better connected nonprofit. Your organization obtains a unified view of every interaction your organization has with clients, supporters, members, funders, volunteers, and affiliates.

Resources to Integrate

Contact DonorSearch to learn how to integrate today  

Custom Data Field Integration

With custom data fields specific to DonorSearch, importing your major gift prospect research is a breeze. Andar/360

Andar/360, a Helix Ltd. software product, has spent the past two decades establishing close relationships with their customers and has absorbed much of the United Way culture and unique business requirements. With over 450 years of United Way specific experience, the Andar/360 team speaks the United Way language and helps all departments work together in one collaborative platform that focuses your organization on your customer.

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02
Mar, 2015

By donorsearch

How Does Our Bulk Screening Work?

Bulk screening is our most popular service, as it helps many nonprofits to find the major gift prospects among their masses of donors. A bulk screening can save your nonprofit valuable time that can be devoted to other fundraising efforts.

What is a Bulk Screening?

You’re a busy organization and you have lots of donors. A bulk screening allows you to submit 2,000 or more donors to DonorSearch. We will research each donor and return comprehensive reports that detail philanthropic histories, wealth markers, and other vital information. Bulk screenings work great for:
  • Annual Screenings — If you only screen donors once a year, get as many comprehensive profiles as possible to maximize the amount of major gift prospects you find.
  • Grateful Patient Programs — New patients are continually admitted to your hospital, and you want to know who might be apt to donate in order to best allocate your fundraising efforts.
  • New Parent/Alumni Events — Similar to grateful patient programs, schools always have new parents who might donate, and identifying the best prospects fast allows you to focus your efforts on prospects with real potential.
  • Pledge Drives — Public broadcasting stations need to know which viewers are major gift prospects or else they could waste valuable amounts of their finite time seeking large gifts from the wrong prospects.
  • Preparation for a Major Gala — Potential donors might flock to your big event, but, unless you know who they are and whether or not they might be inclined to give, you might miss out on significant gifts.

The DonorSearch Process

Our bulk screening process is designed to return comprehensive results that cause the best prospects to rise to the top.

Step One

At DonorSearch, philanthropy comes first. We analyze your internal data on prospects’ previous donations. Evaluating these relationships lets us measure and compare the strongest predictors of future giving. We make a dedicated effort to ensure that you receive accurate results according to a schedule that you dictate.

Step Two

The difference between DonorSearch and other prospect research companies is our philosophy that philanthropists make the best prospects. If a donor has given generously to a similar nonprofit in the past, then that person is apt to give to another organization. Screening for philanthropy first means that you no longer have to assume which prospects are most inclined to give. DonorSearch screens records against 30 unique philanthropic and wealth databases in order to return the most detailed and accurate results in the industry. The incorporation of philanthropy histories may seem obvious, but other prospect research companies still value wealth markers first. While wealth screening can accurately identify valuable prospects, it does not predict if people are philanthropic. Philanthropy data demonstrates a previous history of giving, which separates wealthy prospects from wealthy prospects who actually donate to charitable causes. You want to allocate your finite fundraising resources to potential prospects and not just any old bloke with a large bank account. Also, without philanthropy data, you might overlook many potential major gift donors because they have less wealth than others on your list.

Step Three

After a philanthropy screening, DonorSearch conducts a wealth screening. This data highlights capacities to give, affinities to donate, and asset information, such as real estate and boat ownership. While philanthropy comes first, we value a dual approach. A wealthy prospect is more valuable if he’s philanthropic, and a philanthropic prospect is more valuable if he’s wealthy. When the two ideals converge, that’s when prospect research makes the heavy lifting of identifying your best major gift prospects feel like a walk in the park.

Step Four

The quality of your data matters, and DonorSearch goes the extra mile to ensure the most accurate screening results. In-house prospect researchers spend hours manually reviewing results to eliminate extraneous time that your staff would spend doing the work themselves. A computer screening typically results in 70% accuracy, but our assessment process raises the accuracy to an industry-best 90-95% accuracy. You can also talk to your DonorSearch representative about how to manually verify additional prospects.

Step Five

Sophisticated analytics provide modeling on all donors. The modeling relates:
  • Likelihood to donate to the annual fund
  • Major gift likelihood
  • Planned giving likelihood
A collection of ratings systems allows you to easily comprehend the best prospects from a mere three scores. These scores are derived from both provided and external giving information. Prospects are ranked by both their propensities and capacities to give.

Implementing Your Screening Results

While DonorSearch does the heavy lifting of providing the prospect research in a comprehensible format, it’s up to you to put it to work. Steps to effectively implement prospect research should occur before you receive your research and continue afterwards. These steps include:
  1. Prepare a Strategy — You want to have an idea of what you’re looking for in prospect data and how you might implement such information.
  2. Clean Up Your Data — It’s no use trying to organize new data among a mess of old or outdated information.
  3. Develop a Solicitation Plan — Outline a comprehensive plan for how you will utilize the data and target the top major gift prospects.
  4. Analyze Prospect Screening Results — Figure out who to target, what the best approaches will be for each prospect, and share the information among all relevant departments.
  5. Land Major Donations — Major donations take awhile to land, so get out there and start pitching to the major gift prospects who you so dedicated yourself to finding.

Prospect Research Training

In order to get the most out of DonorSearch’s bulk screening, it’s vital that you be well versed in our tool. We provide free, unlimited basic training as part of our service, so you can learn how to efficiently navigate and analyze your prospect lists. From My Portfolio to Integrated Search to our Prospect Generator, you’ll become well acquainted with our host of tools

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27
Feb, 2015

By donorsearch

New at DonorSearch: State Political Giving

DonorSearch users will now have access to a new, rich source of philanthropic data at no extra charge: state political giving from a database of 26+ million records.

By adding state political giving to the federal political giving that was already part of DonorSearch’s comprehensive philanthropy and wealth screening, prospect researchers and development officers will gain even more insight into donors’ giving activity.

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18
Feb, 2015

By donorsearch

ProspectView Plus Ratings Explained

Analyzing prospect research without donor ratings is like getting stuck in traffic. Eventually, you’ll get where you need to be, but it doesn’t have to take so long. With DonorSearch’s ratings system, identify top prospects fast to move forward with your fundraising.

How Does DonorSearch Score Prospects?

DonorSearch uses three rating systems to turn volumes of prospect data into intelligible identifiers. Our two unique scores are presented first, followed by a third universal scoring system: DS Rating — This proprietary scoring system provides a ranking of a prospect’s ability and propensity to make major donations. These scores range from as low as DS3 to as high as DS1-1, and account for a wide array of information, such as wealth markers, real estate holdings, and philanthropic history, in order to deliver a quality indicator of potential giving. Quality Score — Quality score is a confidence level that wealth and philanthropy records have been correctly matched to a prospect’s name and address. This is a threshold indicator, and any score above 17 equates to a high level of confidence. Common names, such as Michael Williams, can affect quality scores, as lots of people have these names, so it can be challenging to ensure that the records are correct. To ensure a consistent level of quality, we will manually review 100 prospects out of every bulk screening – if you want to learn more please contact a DonorSearch representative. RFM Total — This universal rating system provides an internal analysis of the relationship you have with each of your prospects, which is a fancy way of saying that RFM measures existing donor loyalty. RFM includes how RECENTLY the prospect donated, how FREQUENTLY the prospect gives, and the total amount of MONEY given. Each category is scored on a 100-point scale for a total score out of 300. 300 is the highest rating and indicates the greatest likelihood of donating.

Where Can I Find the Ratings on my Screening Results?

The gold color is the distinctive mark of the DS Rating System in your screening results, the ‘Overall’ column is the prospect’s quality score, and RFM Total is labeled as such.

Why Did We Create Our Ratings?

You could lose a lot of time analyzing prospect research. DonorSearch’s proprietary ratings make it simple for researchers to identify high-quality prospects. DS Ratings differentiate between ‘wealthy’ prospects and ‘wealthy + likely to give’ prospects by incorporating philanthropic history into the equation, alongside traditional wealth markers. This means that your donors are rated according to their capacities to give, as well as their affinities for charitable giving. Prospects with money are not as beneficial as prospects with money who want to donate.

DS Ratings Explained

From highest to lowest likelihood to give:
  1. DS1-1 — Exact match as a donor giving $5,000 or more to a nonprofit or political organization found in our giving history archive. A DS1-1 rated prospect may have markers of wealth or may only be matched to a significant giving history, and have no notable wealth markers.
  2. DS1-2 — Exact match to exceptional markers of wealth: LexisNexis real estate holdings of $2 million+, D&B business executive at firms with revenues of $5 million+, GuideStar Foundation Trustees, SEC Insiders, and Market Guide Executives.
  3. DS1-3 — Exact match to lower, but notable markers of wealth, including LexisNexis real estate holdings totaling $1-2 million, D&B business executive at firms with revenues of $1-5 million, or political giving in excess of $10,000.
  4. DS1-4 — Exact matches to LexisNexis real estate holdings of $500,000-$1 million.
  5. DS1-5 — Exact/very likely matches to individuals giving elsewhere, but at levels less than $5,000.
  6. DS2 — Possible/unconfirmed matches to key databases including foundation trustees, SEC Insiders, Market Guide executives, and business executives.
  7. DS3 — No noteworthy matches to giving history or wealth indicators.

How to Use the Ratings

Sorting prospects is as easy as clicking your desired category. For example, click the DS Rating box to bring your top-rated donors to the top of your list. Don’t you love it when the things you want just come to you? Higher DS ratings hold significant fundraising importance, according to our research:
  • DS1-1 donors were over 15 times more likely to donate than the average individual.
  • DS1-2 donors were over 5 times more likely to donate than the average individual.
  • DS1-3 donors were over 2 times more likely to donate than the average individual.

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09
Feb, 2015

By donorsearch

What Determines the Cost of Prospect Screening Services?

// We all want to understand why we’re paying for what we’re paying for. From an exquisite steak to concert tickets to mortgages, any time we make an investment, we want to know what we’re investing our hard earned money in. And we deserve to know.

Even though we can’t solve all the world’s mysteries of cost, we can help in one area: prospect research costs. 

Let’s unravel the mystery of the factors that determine the cost of prospect research.

We’ll unravel this mystery by answering five key questions:

  1. Who needs prospect research?
  2. How do nonprofits know if prospect research is worth the cost?
  3. What services go into the cost of prospect research services?
  4. What are the additional services?
  5. Why is prospect research worth the cost?

Click on any of the links above to jump to a particular section. Otherwise, scroll through to learn all about the factors that influence the cost of prospect research and to decide if it’s the right fit for you.

And if you need to learn more about prospect research on the whole, make sure you check out Prospect Research — The Ultimate Guide!

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