Note from ProspectResearch.com: The below article was previously published in Blackbaud’s Fundraising Well newsletter. Things are not always as they seem.  When a prospect researcher searches a database for prospect information and finds nothing, is there truly nothing to be found?  When the researcher finds something, are the data comprehensive and accurate?  The answer to [...]

“What is that prospect worth?”  Behind the closed doors of development offices, you often hear this question.  Let me just get this point out of the way.  As a human being, every person is of indescribable worth, intrinsically valuable and precious.  This is true regardless of the person’s wealth.  Even in those closed-door conversations, this [...]

The power of information is not in its availability, but in its collection and organization.

My friend posted an alarmed message to a listserv about a new data service he read about in the Wall Street Journal this week.  “We now have NO privacy with Rapleaf,” he said.  I was, to say the least, intrigued.  I immediately read the WSJ article and went to Rapleaf.com to see what the fuss [...]

On October 7, Kate Lindsay Breck posted a provocative blog about the ethics of using information gathered from social media sites in prospect research (“Facebook and Prospect Research: Too Big Brother?”).  Liz Rejman referenced Kate’s post in her session on social media at the APRA Canada meeting last week.  Liz also referenced a post by [...]

Most people are familiar with the concept of the 6 degrees of separation.  It’s the idea that everyone in the world is connected to each other by no more than six relationship jumps.  I know Joe, who knows Gail, who knows Mary, who knows Jim, who knows Bill, who knows President Obama.  There have been [...]

Past giving predicts future giving.  This is one of the fundamentals of development.  If you know nothing else about your prospects except what they gave in the past, you can use that to make a pretty good guess about who will be loyal in the future.  There’s a lot you can do to improve your [...]

Although we now know that the Great Recession ended in June of 2009, the felt effects of the recession continue to be seen in painfully slow economic growth and the public’s pessimism about the economic future.  This sense of malaise also extends to philanthropy, of course.  If the donors don’t feel prosperous, they have a [...]

The National Bureau of Economic Research told us last week that the Great Recession actually ended in June 2009.  Happy days are here again!  Fundraisers can finally breathe a sigh of relief, kick back and wait for the gifts to roll in like they did three years ago. If you believe that, I have a [...]

Raymund Flandez blogged at Philanthropy.com about reactions that prospect researchers at the APRA conference had to an article in the Wall Street Journal that came out in May.  That article questioned whether the activities of prospect researchers constituted an invasion of privacy.  The prospect research community was a little sensitive about this as you might [...]