© Martin Green

Basic Prospect Research For Philanthropy Staff at TNCTeri Fahsl and Susan Alden, Worldwide Office Prospect Development Department

What do we mean by prospect research?

• Seeking out publicly available information on a prospect’s assets, interests and affiliations.

• Looking for any connections with trustees, volunteers, major donors or staff who might provide a fast track to access and engagement.

• Using the information found to guide strategy for cultivation and solicitation.

Prospect research is not…

• Calculating the exact net worth of an individual, finding all of their assets, or uncovering the nature of their wealth. The best we can hope for is to find enough wealth indicators to arrive at an estimate of major gift capacity. We use an industry standard of 10% of known assets to estimate capacity.

• Reporting every reference found to a prospect, regardless of whether the particular information is needed, or whether or not the source is reliable.

• A replacement for a discovery visit, the most valuable and rewarding research activity of all! You can learn more from one visit than you can from hours of online research.

Research at each stage of the process

• Prior to the discovery visit- A very brief search, to prepare for the visit.- To help prioritize a group of prospects in a prospect pool.

• After the discovery visit- A more detailed search, using the information learned

during the visit as a starting point.- To guide cultivation strategy; to find the best

connection to add to the relationship management team.- To help determine the ask amount, the best time to make

the ask, and what project to solicit for.

Research at each stage of the process (continued)

• When solicitation is imminent

- Fill in any gaps in your research.

- Check for recent news about the prospect.

- Consider how new information found along the way will affect the solicitation.

“Research” during the discovery visit

• Watch and listen for wealth and interest indicators of all kinds. Ask questions!

– Note the location of real estate, both their primary home and any others they might mention.

– Note the kind of vehicles owned (cars, planes, boats, etc.), and other evidence of expensive hobbies and valuable collections.

– Come prepared with questions that will encourage the prospect to talk about their employment, business affiliations, family, club memberships, travel, recreational and vacation preferences, pastimes, philanthropic interests and plans, and what attracts them to TNC.

– After the visit, record your observations in detail in the prospect’s Team Approach record as soon as possible; this helps focus and confirm later online research.

How do you start?

• First, see what you already know about the prospect…

– Check the membership database record, particularly the address, account diary, giving history, ratings, classifications, relationships, etc.

– Check your program’s hard copy files.– Check the WO Profile Library – this Internet resource provides “read-

only” access to thousands of completed profiles. – Ask your program’s licensed P!N user to check the P!N database, to

see if the prospect is profiled there.– Ask the requestor of the research for any additional information that

could help guide your research.

Reporting the information

The Prospect Development team uses a number of reporting templates which you might want to use. Or, you may create one to suit your own needs.

• We have emailed you several templates-- these and other templates are available for download at the Prospect Development webpage:

– Quick qualification worksheet (Excel)– Memo and Profile templates (Word)– And additional variations.

• Less is more! Often one page of truly useful information is more valuable than multiple pages of detail that may overwhelm the reader.

General search advice

• The more common the name, the more detailed your search language will have to be in order to focus the search for your prospect.

• If at all possible, always start with a full name (correctly spelled!) including middle initial, nicknames, spouse name where applicable, and a primary address. This will help in choosing the right search language and confirming if the information you find is indeed referring to your prospect.

Starting online research

• In the next group of slides, we will suggest some free websites to visit to find various kinds of information. Fortunately, there are quite a few available! You may already use some of them.

• We suggest that you create a folder of bookmarks called “Research,” where you collect the URLs of the sites you find most useful, so that you may access them quickly for searches.

• You might want to use a checklist to keep track of which sources you’ve checked for a given profile (we emailed an example.)

• Over time you will no doubt find great new free sites during your searches. Please share them with us via the donor screening mailbox!

General search engines

Search engines may help you find references and links to much of what you want to find, such as:

- The prospect’s employer - Board service or gifts to a nonprofit organization - Participation in clubs or meetings - Obituaries of family members. These often contain

valuable genealogical information. - Other details based on publicly available information

What is available varies widely by prospect, however, so it may take as long to find a little as it does to find a great deal (especially when the prospect has a common name). For example, searching on the name “Mark Miller” in Google results in about 1,190,000 hits!

General search engines (con’t.)

It’s a good idea to use more than one general search engine on lengthier research projects, as they will not all return the same results.

Aside from our favorite Google, these search engines are helpful as well:

- Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com/“All the best search engines piled into one.”

- Clusty http://clusty.com/

- Ask.com http://www.ask.com/

Google -- a great place to start

- Google http://www.google.com/

- Cheat Sheet http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/cheatsheet.html

- Web Search Help Center http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics

- Advanced Search http://www.google.com/advanced_search

- Google Imageshttp://images.google.com/imghp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wi&q=

- Try searching in a variety of ways, such as:

• “john jones” +chicago• “john and elaine jones” +donor +illinois• “john t. jones” +director

Addresses and phone numbers You may locate this information via the general search enginesmentioned, or try:

WhitePages.com http://www.whitepages.com/

Dogpilehttp://www.dogpile.com/dogpile/ws/index/qcat=wp/_iceUrlFlag=11?

_IceUrl=true

Biographical information

Ziggs http://www.ziggs.com/Search.aspxProfessional biographies of executives, from company or institutional websites.

Business Biographieshttp://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/

NNDB http://www.nndb.com/Profiles of noteworthy people in business, politics, entertainment, sports, etc. Very good for finding connections.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_PageThis online encyclopedia may provide useful details to search further upon, but use it with caution, since anyone may edit entries. Articles with citations noting the sources of the information are the most reliable.

Business/Company sites

- Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/To find insiders in a particular public company, search by company, then click the “Insider Roster” link.

- Bizjournals http://www.bizjournals.com/For local business news. (Some content is free; further content is fee-based.) The annual fees are low, and the subscription benefits many, if you often need information about wealthy local business exec prospects not featured in NYT or WSJ.

- Hoovers http://hoovers.com/Search by company or by executive name. (Some content is free; further content is fee-based.)

Business/Company sites (continued)

- Please note that many private companies do not have entries at sites such as those above. In those cases, try the company’s website or use a search engine to find news articles.

- Be sure to check for company websites, in any case, if you find out where your prospect is (or was recently) employed!

Salary sites

• JobStar Central http://jobstar.org/tools/salary/sal-prof.phpA collection of salary surveys by profession.

• Salary.com’s Salary Wizard http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_newsearchexp.aspEnter job title and zip code to find estimated salaries for a given profession in a given region.

• CompanyPay.com http://www.companypay.com/Compensation of top executives of public companies.

Is the prospect a doctor or a lawyer?If your prospect is listed on any of these sites, information such as employer, area of specialization, contact information, education, and professional affiliations might be included.

AMA directory of physicianshttp://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/html/patient.html

*Martindale-Hubbell directory of lawyers http://www.martindale.com/

FindLaw directory of lawyershttp://lawyers.findlaw.com/lawyer/lawyer_dir/search/jsp/name_search.jsp

Rich Lists

• Forbes 400 http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/16/forbes-400-billionaires-lists-400list08_cx_mn_0917richamericans_land.htmlForbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans.

*Also at the Forbes website at http://www.forbes.com/lists/ are additional lists such as the world’s billionaires, the nation’s most expensive homes and zip codes, and the largest U.S. charities.

Real Estate

These sites may help you estimate the market value of a home. Please note that not all states or counties post assessor’s records online.

Zillow http://www.zillow.com/

Bank of America Real Estate Center http://realestatecenter.bankofamerica.com/REPORTAL/homepage.aspx

HouseFronthttp://www.housefront.com/

Real Estate Tax Assessor Databasehttp://www.pulawski.net/

Stock Information

MarketWatch http://insiders.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.asp?siteid=mktwSearch by your prospect’s name to find his or her stock holdings in a public company; they will appear if they are an insider (a senior executive, a member of the board of directors, and/or an owner of 5% or more of the company’s outstanding stock). (Most of the wealthiest 1% of Americans are insiders of public companies.) Other company insiders will be listed (connections!), and a history of the prospect’s recent stock transactions is also available.

SECInfo.comhttp://www.secinfo.com/Search by prospect name, company name, etc.

Philanthropy

An Internet search on your prospect’s name is the best way to identify philanthropic giving, but it may take significant time…

Focus your Google search by limiting your results to websites of schools or nonprofit organizations, where donor lists and annual reports are mostlylikely to appear. Like this:

“john t. jones” site:edu“john t. jones” site:org

Donor lists and annual reports often appear as pdf files, so another way to focus your search is by using the Google Advanced Search to limit your results to pdf files.

A general Google search, without limiting, may also find major gifts that might have merited a press release or mention in a newspaper article.

Political Giving

NewsMeathttp://www.newsmeat.com/

CampaignMoney.comhttp://www.campaignmoney.com/advanced.asp

Search by your prospect’s name to find federal campaign contributions.

– Listings usually provide an address and current employment, and may serve as an indication of the direction and intensity of an individual’s political inclinations. (Many wealthy donors give to more than one party, however.)

– These are not tax deductible gifts, so frequent and generous giving here is a good indicator of wealth (this prospect is willing and able to give when his interest has been engaged.)

Foundations

Both these sites allow you to look at 990s, the IRS form that foundations

file showing trustees, assets, grants awarded, etc.

Guidestar

http://www.guidestar.org/

(Some content is free; further content is fee-based. More small foundations are covered here than in the resource below)

Foundation Center Online

http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/

(Some content is free; further content is fee-based.)

Other Helpful Sites

Gary Price’s List of Listshttp://www.specialissues.com/lol/Everything from Electronic Business magazine’s 40 highest-paid electronics executives to ARTnews magazine’s top 200 art collectors.

ZoomInfohttp://www.zoominfo.com/This site bills itself as “the premier business information search engine, with profiles on more than 35 million people and 3.8 million companies.” Search by individual or by company.

Other Helpful Sites (continued)

Librarians’ Internet Index

http://www.lii.org/

Search or browse Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians.

Washington Post Business Glossary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/specials/glossary/index.html

A glossary of business terms.

U.S. Postal Service Website Zip Code Finder

http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp

Find a zip code for an address, or all zip codes in a given town.

Other Helpful Sites (continued)

ZabaSearchhttp://www.zabasearch.com/advanced.php/Good for finding middle initials or middle names of prospects so that you may focus your search.

MeasuringWorth.comhttp://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/Determine the relative value of an amount of money in one year compared to another. For example, if your prospect inherited $10 million in 1960, get an estimate of the equivalent in today’s dollars.

Other Helpful Sites (continued)

They Rule

http://www.theyrule.net/

Graphically shows the connections between individuals. Keep in

mind that the data is from 2004.

NewsVoyager

http://www.newspaperlinks.com/voyager.cfm

Links to websites of local newspapers across the United States.

Your local public library card might give you access to resources (such as

Who’s Who), on the library’s website.

Other Helpful Sites (continued)

Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement. http://www.aprahome.org/This is the trade association for prospect research professionals; the site offers a variety of valuable resources and information. We recommend you join yourlocal chapter (very inexpensive), as they are great sources of information, and offer mentoring and networking opportunities all year long.

PRSPCT-L http://www.aprahome.org/APRACommunity/PRSPCTLList/tabid/305/Default.aspxA listserve for conversation and collaboration on all aspects of prospect research. A great place to ask questions, and learn about best practices amongst participating information professionals (mostly US and Canada, a few international)– benefits both beginning and experienced researchers!!

Researchers’ Websites

These sites, maintained by prospect research professionals, are portals to many helpful sources.

David Lamb’s Prospect Research Pagehttp://www.lambresearch.com/

NETSource@USC (University of Southern California)http://www.usc.edu/dept/source/

Research Bookmarks from Northwestern Universityhttp://www.development.northwestern.edu/research/bookmark.html

*Stanford University Development Researchhttp://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/

Researchers’ Websites (continued)

University of Vermont Prospect Research and Reference Tools

http://www.uvm.edu/~prospect/index.html

Wheaton College Prospect Research Links

http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Tools/ProspectResearch/#addre

Portico Web Resources for Advancement Professionals

http://indorgs.virginia.edu/portico/home.html

Let’s write a sample profile

• “John D. Nature”

- The membership database first (of course!), and other internal sources such as the WO Profile Library–

- *Company website- *Google http://www.google.com/- *MarketWatch http://

insiders.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.asp?siteid=mktw- *Real Estate Tax Assessor Database http://www.pulawski.net/- *Guidestar http://www.guidestar.org/- Who’s Who (from public library website)

When your research is complete…

- Summarize your key findings in the prospect’s membership database record.

- Enter a classification indicating that you have done research on the

prospect.

- Create an Interaction, and copy and paste your findings into it.

When your research is complete… (continued)

• If your research results and/or notes from a visit indicate the level at which a Major Gift Capacity Rating should be set, please e-mail the Donor Screening mailbox .

• If your notes from a visit indicate the level at which a Potential Rating should be set, please record the appropriate rating in the prospect’s membership database record. Instructions for rating entry can be found on the Prospect Management webpage.

• For the most up-to-date information about ratings, see the “New Capacity, Interest & Attachment Ratings” guide at the Prospect Management website.Please visit the site regularly to keep up to date on the latest information on ratings.

When may I request research from WO Prospect Development?

• WO strategic gifts officers and senior management may contact our Associate Director of Prospect Devt.

• Market leader programs may contact their market leader researcher directly.

• International program staff may contact our international prospect development manager to consult on identification of non-domestic prospects, and domestic prospects with global interests.

When may I request research from WO Prospect Development (continued)?

• Non-market leader programs may submit requests for research on prospects with the capacity to give $1 million or more (individuals with assets of $10 million or more).

• All requests from non-market leaders must be on the Field Services Request Form; fill out the form and e-mail it to the prospect development mailbox.

• Following receipt of the Field Services Request Form, a researcher will call the requestor to discuss the request, and provide an estimated date of completion, based on current workload and dept. priorities.

Prospect Research Forum

Fundraising staff with an interest in research issues are invited to

join the Prospect Research Forum, a resource where members can

ask questions, share new resource/website discoveries, and hear

what other chapters are doing. WO research staff provides expert

advice and other content on an ongoing basis.

Please remember… • Prospect research is an art, not a science. If you asked three researchers to profile the

same prospect, you would receive three different profiles (not carbon copies). None of them would be “wrong”, just different. The most important information from a fundraising perspective, however, would be included in all three profiles, if all have the same training, resources and time for searching.

• Don’t get bogged down by details or hung up on a given profile. Set yourself a time limit for researching each prospect, based on the fundraising stage and other priorities, then stick to it!

• Be objective when presenting your research. Keep your own personal perspective out of your profiles. Show respect for your prospect. Always be guided by the thought, “Would I want the prospect to read this in his or her profile?” Be factual, but be sensitive.

• Label your profiles “confidential” and treat them as such. For guidance, see the Statement of Ethics of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA). http://www.aprahome.org/portals/0/APRAStatementofEthics.pdf