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How to Leverage Corporate Data to Find More Major Gift Donors

Earlier in August, iWave hosted a webinar by Claire Kerr of Fronstream called Serious Business: Digital Strategies to Boost Corporate Support.  Last week, we published a post about how to attract financial support from corporations and their related charities.

This week, let’s consider some opportunities to use corporate data in a different way.  Here’s how to use iWave’s corporate data to identify company owners and employees who might be great major gift donors.

Database USA

Harking back to last week’s example, let’s try a DatabaseUSA search for Ford executives.  Ford’s CEO (who lives across the country) may not contribute a major gift to your local animal shelter, but what about the owner of the local Ford dealership?  To help, Database USA has one of the most comprehensive databases when it comes to small and mid-sized companies (and their executives).

Information you can find includes:

  • Home address
  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Age
  • Employer or company ownership
  • Income

You can also learn more about the companies themselves.  Try searching by number of employees, sales revenue, contact information, credit rating, and more.

Dun and Bradstreet

As one of the most trusted names in prospect research, iWave’s Dun and Bradstreet dataset provides unparalleled depth and breadth of information on corporate executives and the publicly or privately owned businesses where they work.

With millions of records at your fingertips, your Dun and Bradstreet searches are sure to bring back valuable insight.  Try filtering your searches by “job function.”  This is especially helpful when your cause relates to a specific type of job.  Fundraising for a children’s coding camp?  Try looking up software engineers and software company executives in your city.

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is a premium dataset that offers contact details, executive biographies, company information, cash compensation, and detailed insider trades share information.  As an added bonus, you can filter by alma mater to either focus or expand your searches.

Other search options include adding a biography keyword, fiscal compensation, officer status, and certifications (from Certified Public Accountant to Chartered Portfolio Manager).

Matching Gifts

Imagine a new donor contributes a small gift to your organization.  In iWave, you learn the donor’s employer offers a gift matching program with a 1:1 ratio.  That means if your donor writes a check of $1000, the company will cut a check for the same amount.  Suddenly you have a charitable gift of $2000!

In iWave’s Matching Gifts database, provided by HEPData, you can find a wealth of information about gift-matching programs, including:

  • Matching ratio (1:1, 2:1, etc.)
  • Minimum and maximum dollar match amount
  • Eligibility requirements (employee status, permitted nonprofit types, deadlines and restrictions, etc.)

But here’s the catch: not all employees know the details of their company’s matching program, or maybe aren’t even aware a matching program exists!  That’s why a quick gift-matching search is a necessity.  If you discover a great matching program, reach out to your donor or prospective donor and get them involved.

Complete the Puzzle

So, you’ve identified a number of new prospects thanks to corporate data.  But what do you know about their philanthropic history?  How about their wealth capacity?  You may have picked up a few clues for sure.  But chances are there is much more you can learn.

Check out these other blog posts to learn how to create a holistic big picture of your prospect’s giving potential:

Prospect Ratings: The Pillars of Fundraising Intelligence

When, Why, and How to Use Political Data

Best Practices for Leveraging Real Estate Data

When, Why, and How to Use Wealth Data

Predicting the Future With Past Giving

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About the author: Ryan McCarvill joined the iWave team in 2016. Ryan enjoys meeting and learning from nonprofit professionals, researching trends in the nonprofit community, and offering strategies for development teams to use iWave’s solutions to meet and exceed their fundraising goals.

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