Improving Your Data and Finding New High Net-Worth Prospects

Prospect Visual Success Story: In just one day we enriched our discovery pool with two $1m+ prospects

My name is Kate and I am Director of Prospect Research at the Red Organization. For more than a year we had been searching for data visualization tools and other ways to find new perspectives of our data. We had even done a demo of Prospect Visual previously, but did not buy the product – until recently when we had a one-day trial subscription of Prospect Visual and had amazing results. We found two new prospects rated at one-million plus!

The Search for Data Visualization

As we explored products that could visually represent our data, we recognized the power of viewing data in different ways. For example, when we viewed our prospects visually on a map it gave us insights we never got when we looked at zip codes. What we did not find was a product that could help us identify more connections between our prospects and key donors and volunteers - visually or otherwise. After seeing Prospect Visual at various conferences, we decided to do a trial subscription.

What we really wanted was to have a tool to show connections between our discovery pool and key volunteers. The discovery pool is what we call our prospects who are not assigned to a gift officer yet, but research believes they have great potential. Generally, who doesn’t want to identify more prospects through connections?

A Winning Trial

Prospect Visual populated our trial subscription with people it had identified as our alumni. As I was scrolling through this list, focusing on names which had the highest number of connections, I recognized a name from New York. At first I was sure it was a false match, but I confirmed that she was indeed a legitimate alumna. It turned out that she graduated in the early 1980’s along with quite a few other alumni that have fallen off our radar because we do not have good contact information for them.

In one day with Prospect Visual we discovered two lost alumni, researched them to find that they had high capacity, and added them to our discovery pool. Because these two prospects were now in the discovery pool, when one of them attended an event in New York, the gift officer was alerted and was able to engage with her. That would never have happened without Prospect Visual. Now both prospects are assigned to a gift officer.

Adding Real Value

We very recently purchased Prospect Visual and expect to have even more robust success. The Red Organization is in a campaign, and as we move forward, having a product that can deliver new information, not just regurgitate what we already have in our database, is very valuable. For example, one of our goals is to improve the integrity of our data, especially in the area of relationships. Using Prospect Visual, we can identify those relationships and add them into our database.

I am still so impressed that in just a day of playing around on Prospect Visual we found two $1M+ prospects that we had not heard of before. We successfully used those two prospects as a way to sell the product to senior management. We are excited to use Prospect Visual to revolutionize the way we can work with volunteers and prospects!

Prospect Visual Strategy Guide: Improving your data and raising money too

Step 1: Make sure your original import is in order

You need to have your internal connectors already imported into Prospect Visual and properly tagged. Consider importing people such as your trustees, advisory board members, closest major gift donors, and anyone else who is willing to introduce you to others. You may also want to include the other people in your database you are trying to reach, such as prospects and people with no contact information. When you send your file to Prospect Visual, include the names, employer name, and up to three additional affiliations of which you are aware

User Tip: If you need help with tags, don’t be shy about contacting your Prospect Visual representative. Tags are essential to using the product efficiently.

Step 2: Search for alumni in the global database using Targets

Follow the instructions below to find alumni that may have disengaged or have been “lost” as the years have gone by. If you are an organization that does not have alumni, contact Prospect Visual for how to adapt this process for your organization.

Click on the Search tab and look up the name of your school in the Companies search box. You can select “exact search”, but we recommend trying “keyword search” first.

Select the box next to your organization and click the blue “Select One or More Company” button.

Under Match Seniority, “x” out the default choices and then type or choose Education. This searches for everyone who attended your school. You will need to decide if you want to check the box for “Include Past”. If you click on the Advanced Filters button you will be able to select one of your tags to limit the group of people that will be mapped against everyone in the database who has attended your school. If you do not select a tag in the box, all of the people in your Contacts will be mapped.

Click the blue “Search Connections” button and be patient for the results to load, especially if you are mapping against all of your Contacts. After you have had a chance to look at the results, if you would like to save these new names from the global database, click on the orange “Save as Target” button. Choose the Target name and save. You can now click on the Targets tab any time to choose and view this group.

User Tip: If your search yields no results, try it again, but this time check the “Include Past” box.

Step 3: Map your key connectors against your Target

The name of your Target acts as a tag. This means you can click on the Connections tab and map the Target against your other tags to find connections. For example, you might choose to map your Target against your trustees.

User Tip: Contact Prospect Visual to find a quick and easy way to create tagged groups that represent your discovery pool or assigned prospect pools. This could add another level of strategy when you map the connections.

Step 4: Import the relationships into your database

If one of your objectives is to add relationship information to your database, contact Prospect Visual to develop the best process for doing this with your database software.