Beth Bandy Research & Consulting

Tag: Fundraising

  • What are my go-to resources for global prospect research?

    What are my go-to resources for global prospect research?

    I am often asked – both by potential clients and other researchers – about my “go-to resources” for international prospect research. The assumption is that there must be a shortlist of subscription databases that I use for all of my client projects.

    That makes sense. After all, there are a handful of databases and other tools that streamline the research process here in the United States. For organizations with sufficient prospect research budgets, these resources can be incredibly helpful.

    But is there such a thing as a go-to database for international prospect research? After doing this work for more than 20 years, I don’t think so.

    Data availability, collection methods, public access policies, and language variations make it impossible for one subscription database – or even two or three – to cover the vast number of countries around the world. That doesn’t mean it is impossible to find data on international prospects, however.

    Often, the data I need for international prospect research can be found in databases that can be accessed for free or on a short-term subscription basis (per download, day, week, or month). The trick is to find these resources.

    To that end, I think international prospect research starts with a mental shift. Instead of asking what go-to resources I could use, I start my international prospect research projects by asking a set of go-to questions:

    • Who collects the data I need (and why)?
    • Is that collected data shared with the public?
    • If so, is it in a format that I can access electronically?
    • If not, what substitute data sources could I use to construct an accurate picture of a prospect’s wealth and philanthropic capacity?

    No matter where a prospect lives, these questions will help me quickly identify where I can find the data I need for the research project at hand. By asking these questions, I often find the full scope of resources that might provide the data I need, whether freely accessible or available for a fee.

    Which one(s) should I choose? That question will be the topic of my next blog post.


    Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

  • Five questions to ask when looking for new fundraising prospects

    Five questions to ask when looking for new fundraising prospects

    Over the last week, I have had several clients contact me about identifying new prospects for them. The organizations are different, from global NGOs to educational institutions, and they are looking for new donors in different places, from here in the US to countries around the world. These requests to find new donors made me want to share a few thoughts about the prospecting process.

    Schools, colleges, and universities have built-in prospecting pools. Generally, these kinds of organizations look for individual donors who are alumni or parents. This type of prospecting project starts by looking for overlooked prospects in an in-house database and build from there.

    For other kinds of nonprofits without a defined universe of potential prospects, the process of looking for new individual donors can seem a bit daunting. How do you start? Where do you end?

    In either type of organization, identifying new prospects involves answering these five questions:

    1. How many gifts do you need – and at what level?

    If you haven’t already identified your fundraising goals in terms of numbers of gifts at specific giving levels, start here. Knowing that you need X number of new donors who each can make gifts of at least Y dollars will help you focus your prospecting work. (If you need help with this step, please let me know.)

    2. Do your potential donors have the financial capacity to make gifts at the level you are seeking?

    There are lots of ways to assess financial capacity. Common methods involve finding asset values (such as the value of real estate holdings) or compensation and then plugging those numbers into standard (read: US-based) estimated net worth formulas. If you are looking at potential donors who live outside the United States and a handful of other countries, you may need to modify your formulas to make sure you are taking country-specific asset allocation norms into account.

    3. Have these potential donors made gift(s) at your target level in the past?

    Financial capacity alone does not a prospect make. If a prospect has the financial capacity to make a gift at the level you seek but has no interest in making large gifts, you may be wasting your time trying to cultivate this prospect.

    4. Would they be interested in your organization’s work?

    What kinds of organizations do they currently support, as a donor, a volunteer, or board member? Do the missions of those organizations have a similarity to yours?

    5. How could you connect with these potential donors?

    Of course, you will need basic contact information. Beyond that, however, you should understand how a potential donor’s network might cross paths with the networks of your board and staff. Who would be the best person to make an intial contact and why?

    So where do you find information that will let you answer these five essential questions? The best sources will depend on what kind of organization you work for, what type of project(s) you are trying to fund, and where your potential prospects live.

    If you would like to discuss your prospect identification needs, please be in touch. I can conduct prospect identification projects for you, and I also can help you start this process on your own through hourly consultations. For starters, you can schedule a free 30-minute introductory Zoom call with me. I look forward to helping you find the prospects you need to fund your organization’s important work.

    Photo: by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

  • Screening international prospects

    Screening international prospects

    I first ran this post as a series back in 2013. Over the last seven years, the limitations of automated international screenings have not really changed, but the resources available for the kind of screening I offer — involving brief research in English and local language(s) — have improved dramatically.

    Part 1: The challenges

    If you work in fundraising here in the United States, it’s likely that you have some experience with automated prospect screening services. These services help you identify new prospects, prioritize existing prospects, and give you an indication where further research is needed.

    Many organizations — including independent schools, colleges and universities, and hospitals — have large numbers of constituents living outside of the United States. Given the distances between the places where you work and they live, you probably don’t know your international constituents as well as you would like. That situation makes international prospect screening a much-sought-after service.

    Here’s the problem.

    Most screening vendors focus on the United States. There are a few services that cover constituents in Canada and the UK. Some vendors provide limited global data through a few sources like Who’s Who, or they focus exclusively on UHNWIs. If you want to screen all of your constituents (including those who fall below the UHNWI level) in places like Singapore, Brazil, or South Korea, you’re out of luck with an automated screening service.

    Why?

    The reasons have to do with the data and language issues I talked about last month in my series of posts, “How is International Prospect Research Unique?”

    Here’s the brief recap: Data collection, storage, and sharing standards vary widely from country to country — and sometimes even from city to city. On top of that, the languages in which these records are collected are numerous. Creating an automated screening service that covers multiple countries given these variables is a huge challenge. The major players currently offering US-focused automated screening services are certainly interested in expanding their geographic scope. For the time being, however, automated screenings for most countries and wealth levels are not a practical reality.

    Part 2: Customized international prospect screening services

    That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to undertake an international screening project, however. I do international screening projects regularly for my clients — a service I have offered since founding my company in 2011.

    These services draw on international research expertise rather than automation to help my clients prioritize their international prospects. What does this type of project entail?

    When clients hire me to screen prospects around the world, they start by sending me a list of prospects to be screened. We work together to determine the amount of time to be spent researching each prospect, with 15 minutes minimum being the norm. Within that time, I look for wealth and philanthropy indicators both in English and the prospect’s local language.

    Finding these details in more than one language, in a short amount of time, from diverse data sources requires a solid international prospect research skill set that includes the ability to understand where relevant data might be collected and shared online, as well as to search in multiple languages.

    Clients can choose the format in which they want to receive their screening results. A spreadsheet usually is the most useful. When a spreadsheet is chosen, one column is dedicated to brief research summaries, while other columns show prospect ratings and any other details the client would like to easily sort or upload into a database.

    The rating system used can vary by client. Some clients prefer to use their in-house rating systems, while others prefer to use a simple 1-2-3 system. Either way, the goal is to use a system that allows the screened prospects to be sorted and prioritized easily.

    Would you like to discuss your international prospect research needs and my screening process? If so, I would love to speak with you! You can set up a free consultation call with me by using my online scheduler.

    Photo: Paula May on unsplash