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July 31, 2009

The Problem of Too Many Potential Donors

Boston

Wealth-screening services take a charity’s donors and check them against databases of publicly available information on real-estate holdings, stock ownership, charitable contributions, and other data. The information that the searches uncover can help an organization identify donors who have sufficient assets to make a large contribution.

But one of the challenges is that “even a moderately successful screening” is likely to identify more potential donors than the organization’s fund raisers can get to right away, Troy Smith, associate director of prospect research at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, N.C., told participants here at APRA’s annual conference.

APRA is a membership organization for fund raisers who focus on researching prospective donors and managing information about contributors.

“It’s a good problem to have,” said Mr. Smith. But the question then becomes what to do with those donors until a fund raiser can start to build a deeper relationship with them.

An organization might be tempted to stop soliciting such donors for annual gifts until someone can interact with them personally, but Mr. Smith thinks that would be a mistake.

“Give them opportunities to continue to give,” he said.

What a group might want to do is move them into a special society for big annual-fund donors where they will receive special mailings, or start inviting them to special events.

Said Mr. Smith: “Find ways to warm them up until [gift officers] can get to them.”

— Nicole Wallace

Friday July 31, 2009 | Permalink

Comments

1. Does it seem like a problem to give the names of an organization’s donors to a third party to screen for wealth indicators? I wonder if donors would be comfortable knowing their names are being shared with a wealth screening organization.

   Is there any protection to make sure that those names don’t become a part of someone else’s data base that can then be categorized by giving preferences and made available to other clients.

   I would have a problem being profiled in this way without my knowledge.

   — annetta    Jul 31, 04:36 PM    #

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