20+ Essential Prospect Research Tools & Resources
Prospect research helps nonprofits discover donors with the highest capacity and affinity for supporting their mission. There are a variety of prospect research strategies that an organization might use, including working with a consultant, taking a wealth screening-focused approach, and conducting do-it-yourself research.
We’re going to focus on the third option, do-it-yourself research, and the tools a nonprofit like yours can use to generate the most useful insights. At Donorly, we help small to mid-sized nonprofits fundraise beyond their size using donor data. After years of experience in the field, we’ve encountered a wide variety of tools to help along the way, many of which are in this list.
In this guide, we’re going to cover our top recommendations for prospect research tools and additional prospecting resources for your team. Here’s what we’ll cover:
Are you ready to discover the top prospect research tools and services to fuel your strategy? Let’s dive in.
The Donorly Approach to Prospect Research
When you're conducting prospect research, a little help from professionals can give you the kickstart you need to drive your team to success. If you've already explored our comprehensive guide to donor research, you know that taking a big-picture approach to prospect research is the key to refining your strategies and making more targeted decisions.
This is the philosophy that guides our services here at Donorly. We draw from a wide variety of prospecting resources and tools (including many on this list) to do the heavy lifting before your team gets to work putting new insights into action.
By partnering with Donorly, your nonprofit gets access to its own dedicated development professional and researcher. Our holistic, human-centered approach to prospect research means that all of the data we provide you is verifiable by at least two sources.
We can fill the role of an in-house researcher for your nonprofit or offer supplementary data and guidance if you’ve already got a solid development process in place. Either way, a partnership with Donorly means that you won’t need to subscribe to multiple prospecting tools or resources, which can quickly become costly, especially for small shops. Digging into the data is our job.
Plus, we offer comprehensive fundraising support, as well. We can help plan and execute a data-driven campaign that drives your mission forward. Our full range of services includes:
Research subscriptions. Get the customized support you need at the scale that’s right for your nonprofit.
Development staffing. Looking for a grant writer, major gifts expert, or all-around development pro? We’ve got you covered.
Campaign feasibility studies. We’ll help you understand your readiness for your next major campaign and test your plans using stakeholder input. We also offer capital campaign counsel services to support your nonprofit once your initiative is underway.
Telefundraising training. Telefundraising is more effective than ever when backed up with the right tech and research strategies. We can guide you through a modern telefundraiser from start to finish.
The Fiscal Year Fix. This top-to-bottom fundraising regimen will assess your fundraising processes, outline improvements, get the ball rolling, and give you access to our prospect research expertise.
By bringing together all the best tools and data to make more informed decisions, monthly support from Donorly will bring expert guidance and big-picture insights to your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy.
Want to learn more about the tools we use to deliver results for nonprofits? Let’s walk through a few of our favorite prospecting tools and resources.
Our Favorite Prospect Research Tools
DonorSearch
As a leader in prospect research data, DonorSearch provides one of the most comprehensive databases for prospect researchers and development teams at enterprise-level nonprofits.
Like Donorly, DonorSearch also believes that the most useful insights come from a big-picture view of prospect research. Their database offers an unrivaled level of detail for both traditional wealth markers and more alternative philanthropic markers. They offer data screening services and useful CRM integrations, as well.
What makes this a smart donor research tool?
DonorSearch’s research database compiles a full range of individualized donor data points, including:
Charitable giving histories
Political contribution information
Demographic and property data
Employment background
Plus, prospect generator tools from DonorSearch allow researchers to view the donor lists of other organizations, helping to immediately identify potential supporters interested in similar missions.
Candid
The Foundation Center and GuideStar have combined into a new resource: Candid. This resource’s mission is to give people, donors and nonprofit professionals alike, the information they need to make change.
501(c)(3) nonprofits are required to publicly provide their financial statements, but scouring the IRS website for historical data or nonprofits’ sites for annual reports can be incredibly time-consuming. Having a single place to search for the financial records of any nonprofit plus other information on their structure, leadership, and history is a major plus for your prospect research team! That's where the GuideStar portion of Candid comes in handy.
Candid also provides information about grantmaking foundations, requests for proposals, and more. Maybe your organization is looking for another nonprofit to partner with, or maybe you’re researching a grantmaking foundation. Either way, Candid can fuel that research.
What makes this a smart donor research tool?
Candid is an invaluable tool for donor research when you want to learn about major prospects who have played significant roles with other nonprofits in the past. Wouldn't you want to learn more about the missions that inspired them to get involved? Candid connects prospect researchers with:
Nonprofit organization contact information
Revenue and expense data for the current year
Balance sheets from the past 5 years
Searchable IRS 990 forms from the past 3 years
Listings of CEO, board chairs, and board members
Plus, if you’re looking to conduct research for grants rather than prospective donors, Candid has you covered there as well.
SEC and FEC Filings
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Election Commission are both important donor prospecting tools for savvy researchers.
The SEC requires all public companies that do business in the US to provide and disclose key information, including quarterly and annual reports and stockholder records. The FEC offers a full database of registered political contributions made to political campaigns throughout the country.
What makes this a smart donor research tool?
Official records of business and political actions are invaluable for your prospect research in a number of situations. For example, they can assist with:
Estimating the value of a business that a prospect owns or works for
Exploring the owners of publicly traded stocks, a traditional marker of wealth
Analyzing the philanthropy programs and annual budgets of potential corporate partners
Learning more about the interests and desires of a prospect through their history of political contributions
Exploring a prospect's employer or connections between companies that have conducted business together
When it comes to reviewing official data about your prospects, government agencies can be an invaluable resource.
360MatchPro
When starting the donor prospecting process, don't forget to consider the world of corporate philanthropy! 360MatchPro is a leading corporate giving resource for mid- to large-sized nonprofit organizations. With access to their comprehensive corporate philanthropy databases, your donor prospecting team can easily identify new opportunities to grow donation revenue.
How? Through matching gift and volunteer grant programs. Businesses looking for structured ways to support their employees' philanthropic interests match their donations or volunteered time with grant funds. All the employee needs to do is file a request.
What makes this a smart donor research tool?
Using Double the Donation’s comprehensive database of corporate philanthropy information, 360MatchPro provides automated tools that can create built-in revenue boosts for nonprofits. These features also double as extremely effective donor prospecting resources through:
Automated identification of matching gift eligibility for existing donors
Tracking and messaging tools to drive matches to completion
Intuitive reporting and data automation features to help guide next steps
Some corporate giving programs can be particularly generous, so it pays to do your research. Some companies match donations at a 1:1 ratio, others a 2:1, and still others at a 3:1! You never know what funds you might be missing out on until you’ve conducted effective research. If you already have a shortlist of prospects who are eligible for corporate matches, that opportunity to boost their impact can be a powerful motivator to give.
Instrumentl
Instrumentl is an all-in-one tool for grant discovery, tracking, and management, ideal for grant writing teams of all sizes. Connections and opportunities found through grantmaking institutions can be invaluable for your larger prospecting efforts.
We at Donorly often set up projects for our clients using Instrumentl because of its top-notch, personalized grant recommendation algorithm. Their matching algorithm considers the different facets of your initiative and filters through hundreds of grant opportunities for you to review and prioritize.
The platform also provides reminders for upcoming deadlines, and the ability to conduct further research into foundations and 990 reports, such as reviewing past grant recipients and giving trends.
What makes this a smart donor research tool?
Instrumentl consolidates multiple complex workflows into an intuitive, centralized source of truth. The platform provides:
Personalized suggestions for active grant opportunities
A comprehensive database that includes private, corporate, and government funders
Foundation profiles and searchable 990 reports
A built-in grant tracker to manage upcoming and historical grant opportunities
Downloadable reports for your board or grant team to review
Grants are critical pieces of the nonprofit funding puzzle. An active and efficient grant writing process can also serve as a valuable prospecting pipeline, uncovering new connections between your nonprofit, funders, prospects, and other organizations.
Donorly is a proud partner with Instrumentl. You can try Instrumentl for yourself for 14-days free. To save $50 off your first month, use the code DONORLY50 when upgrading.
Additional Donor Prospecting Tools and Resources
Zillow
Zillow is a real estate marketplace with which you can view currently listed and previously sold properties. Property ownership is a traditional indicator of wealth, so this is a valuable resource when screening for giving capacity.
With the addresses of a prospect’s properties, Zillow makes it easy to discover their estimated market values. This can give you insights into prospects’ approximate giving capacities and appropriate asks to make once you’ve developed relationships.
LinkedIn is a professional networking site, in which users update their current and past employment information, connect with other professionals, and discuss their professional interests.
There are a variety of valuable insights available via LinkedIn. For example, you can discover a prospect’s employer, something you can use to discover whether their gifts will be match eligible. Plus, you can discover the business connections your prospects have—such as companies they own and colleagues they work with currently or in the past.
RelSci
RelSci is built around the idea of relationship science, or mapping and analyzing the connections between prospects, places, and organizations that can lead to your next major gift.
This platform helps you identify new prospects through its real-time, people-driven database of influential individuals, continually updated by a team of over 500 researchers. A range of additional tools makes it easy to refine your organization’s strategies over time and tap into the personal relationships that can drive your asks to success.
TouchPoints
TouchPoints recognizes that effective prospect research is built on clean, accurate data. Because of this, they specialize in ensuring a nonprofit’s database is kept up-to-date for effective research.
They’ll update addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, business connections, wealth information, and more. This is done through ongoing monitoring of your donor records and notifications when information is outdated. With these services, they’ve helped a variety of large organizations— including World Vision, The YMCA, and the American Heart Association.
ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer
Digital journalism hub ProPublica offers an extremely valuable resource for prospect researchers: the Nonprofit Explorer database.
This resource compiles summaries of tax returns from tax-exempt organizations across the United States. With easy-to-access insights into nonprofits’ revenues, expenses, and annual reports, you can learn more about prospects with known affiliations with other organizations, including charities, universities, hospitals, and foundations.
LexisNexis Real Estate Property Records
Similarly to Zillow, LexisNexis Real Estate Property Records can be used to research real estate holdings.
In addition to valuations, you can review detailed property sales information and county tax assessments. With billions of records available, this database can be a game-changer for nonprofits looking to enhance their prospect data using real estate insights.
Marquis Who’s Who
Marquis Who’s Who is a database containing biographies of professionals who stand out in their fields.
If, after your initial round of research, you’re looking to better understand your top prospects, this can be a great database to do some digging. With over 1.6 million biographies available, you can research top professionals in business, law, science, the arts, government, and more.
Double the Donation
Double the Donation is an ideal prospect research tool for small to medium-sized nonprofits looking to build their corporate matching gifts revenue.
With Double the Donation, you can embed a matching gift search tool directly on your nonprofit’s donation forms. This allows supporters to search their own match eligibility directly from your website’s giving page, creating a new funnel to begin developing more comprehensive insights into your donors’ corporate connections. Additionally, with this comprehensive database, you can search for any prospect’s match eligibility and discover prime matching gift opportunities within your database.
Tax Assessors Site
The county tax assessors site for your prospects’ counties is a valuable resource for discovering real estate information—especially if your nonprofit doesn’t have the funding to invest in dedicated database software.
The amount of information you can access varies by county. That said, you can often search by location address or owner name and uncover the value of the prospect’s property. As with the other real estate resources, this is valuable for estimating the giving capacity of your key prospects.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s report on How America Gives, while last updated in 2017, is a valuable resource for conducting prospect research.
This report examines charitable giving by geographic location. It splits taxpayers into four earning levels and analyzes how they gave as represented by itemized deductions on their tax returns. While the data is a few years old, the key trends remain valuable when examining major giving with regards to geographic location.
The Million Dollar List
If you’re seeking a campaign-altering major gift, The Million Dollar List is a great place to start your research.
This resource compiles records of all publicly-announced charitable gifts of $1 million+ since 2000. With this, your nonprofit can discover trends in major gift-giving, such as which types of organizations are receiving large gifts (and from whom).
WealthEngine
If you’re looking to conduct wealth screening rather than full prospect research, WealthEngine may be the service for you. Rather than starting completely from scratch, your organization may prefer wealth screening services to learn more about the supporters already in your database.
This platform uses machine learning to create pre-scored profiles of your donors. This allows your nonprofit to discover those with the highest financial capacity to give mid-level to major contributions and then zero in on those prospects first. WealthEngine’s goal is to help nonprofits convert prospects into donors faster.
Fundraising Report Card
Fundraising Report Card provides free fundraising analytics that can be valuable for small to mid-sized nonprofits just starting out with research.
This tool will allow you to identify major gift prospects within your database as well as analyze giving trends for your nonprofit overall. Beyond that, you can sync the data within Fundraising Report Card directly to your CRM for streamlined record keeping and further analysis.
National Center for Charitable Statistics
The National Center for Charitable Statistics features a free search bar that allows you to research details about nonprofits and the philanthropic center as a whole.
You can look up Form 990s of other organizations that are similar to yours to see where those organizations are generating revenue. Plus, you can view data trends surrounding the overall vitality of the nonprofit sector, year over year.
Facebook provides a window into your prospects interests, hobbies, and social connections. If your prospects have public profiles, this information is available for your research!
For example, if they’ve participated in birthday fundraisers, that’s a great indicator of prospects’ giving affinity for certain causes. You can see which pages they’ve liked to discern their interests, and you can see who they’re friends with to begin mapping social connections with the other donors in your database.
iWave
iWave’s fundraising intelligence platform is an invaluable prospecting resource. This software provides access to thorough wealth, philanthropic, and biographical information on prospective donors and compiles it into an easy-to-use interface.
With comprehensive data and intuitive screening tools, iWave helps nonprofits pinpoint ideal prospects before diving into new major campaigns, saving your team’s time and boosting your chances of success. Plus, these insights make it easy to gauge ideal ask amounts based on prospects’ data, helping you more efficiently plan your strategy from the start.
FreeWill
FreeWill offers a range of tools to help nonprofits discover and secure more opportunities to receive non-cash gifts, including bequests, qualified charitable distributions from IRAs, and gifts of stock and cryptocurrency. It even offers the option to directly promote your organization to prospects as they create or update their wills.
With an organized way to source and track these gifts over time, your nonprofit will have a clearer view of gift opportunities in your database and beyond. Non-cash giving is often under-prioritized by smaller nonprofits, but it’s an increasingly important part of growing your mission. FreeWill provides an easy way to get started or support your current planned giving research and cultivation efforts.
AlumniFinder
AlumniFinder provides educational institutions and other nonprofits with powerful data tools to help power their fundraising and stewardship.
Offering a full range of tools and services, including data enhancement and hygiene, wealth screening, and predictive analytics, AlumniFinder can be a valuable addition to your toolkit. They even provide free data quality reports to give your nonprofit an initial assessment of where you’re starting from and how much your donor and prospect records could be improved to drive stronger development results.
Final Tips for Your Prospect Research Strategy
Nonprofits of all sizes can succeed with DIY research, especially when they have a team member devoted to the task and leverage professional-grade resources like the ones in this list. The key to successful do-it-yourself prospect research is resourcefulness and patience - you need to prepare your team for success from the beginning.
If it’s time for your team to ramp up your research efforts, consider the following tips and best practices that might help along the way:
Create strong data management procedures. Prospect research is built on clean data. If you’re generating and compiling a large amount of data into an unorganized database, you’ll have a mess of information that will return much fewer insights than a more organized database would.
Start your research with donors you already have. Nonprofits often want to find prospects outside of their organization. While this is an important aspect of growing your capacity, there are likely many viable opportunities within your existing base! Consider which donors are already interested in your organization and may be able to give more than they are now.
Conduct wealth and affinity analysis. We recommend taking a holistic, research approach that combines wealth and affinity insights to get a comprehensive view of your prospects. When just researching one aspect or the other, you can’t truly know which prospects are the most qualified to be prioritized by your busy team.
Focus more heavily on philanthropic than wealth indicators. While you should examine both wealth and philanthropic factors, we do recommend weighing philanthropic elements more heavily. This is because a prospect could be incredibly wealthy, but have zero interest in your organization. On the other hand, a prospect with positive affinity indicators is still a valuable supporter even if they have a slightly lower giving capacity.
And remember, your team can always work with a consultant if in-house prospect research isn’t in the cards. For example, the Donorly team can function as an in-house resource, expanding your capacity for research and unveiling new insights for more efficient fundraising. To learn more about Donorly’s prospect research and other fundraising consulting services, contact us today.
To learn more about conducting prospect research for your organization, explore the following additional resources:
Choosing the Right Prospect Research Consultant: 5 Factors. Many nonprofits opt to hire a prospect research consultant. Learn about the key considerations to keep in mind with this guide.
Prospect Research: Everything Nonprofits Need to Know. Conducting research for the first time, or simply seeking a refresh? Check out our guide to donor research for a full rundown.
Finding Major Donors: The Definitive Nonprofit Guide. Identifying and building relationships with potential major donors are the most common reasons to conduct prospect research. Learn more about how to connect with and solicit these valuable supporters.
5 Ways to Use the Data in Your Donor Management Software. In this post from DonorSearch, you can learn the many ways to use data contained in your donor management software.
