Relationship Mapping with Prospect Visual and The Raiser's Edge

- originally posted on 1.29.2014 at Joe's Blog

Relationship mapping, at its core, is about making connections between constituents. It is vitally important for fundraisers to know the connections of their best prospects because people inherently trust people they already know or with whom they have common connections. This can be a powerful component of your ability to build long-term relationships with supporters.

In the past, revealing relationships has been difficult and time consuming. However, getting access to “big data” and new technology advancements have changed this. In many cases, it is no longer necessary to perform in-depth research on individuals to reveal relationships as part of the prospect research process. The information that a major giving officer, board member, trustee, or other non-profit organization representative would need about a prospect is available at your fingertips.

Highly connected people can be great assets and advocates for your organization even beyond their personal capacity to give. A great place to start is by analyzing key relationships with your board members and/or volunteers. How may they be connected with some of your best donor prospects?

With all of this in mind, you may be asking: HOW do I get started finding out about relationships and connecting the dots among my supporters in The Raiser’s Edge®?

Prospect Visual is a data-driven relationship mapping solution that visually reveals connections between your key contacts and top prospects. Organizations can tap into this vast collection of proprietary data to analyze, prioritize and leverage key relationships from amongst their current constituent base with the goal of accelerating prospect development.

As of today, Prospect Visual has relationship data on 90+ million professionals from around the globe and is able to track over 165 billion relationships – allowing users to discover their strongest connections to targets from within their organization's network.

A Consummate Collaboration

In the pursuit of developing a clear, uncomplicated and seamless solution for customers, Prospect Visual embarked on a partnership with Omatic Software, who have a rich history of providing innovative tools that help enhance the experience of users of The Raiser’s Edge. By combining their services with the skill and expertise of the Omatic team, Prospect Visual has created a powerful app that allows for the integration of Prospect Visual into The Raiser’s Edge platform.

A Myriad of Possibilities

The Prospect Visual App is a unique relationship mapping solution which, when integrated into the prospect development strategy, allows users to:

• Enrich existing constituent and prospect data from within a proprietary database of 90+ million professionals.

• Analyze donor networks and map mutual connections to prospects.

Discover new, previously unconsidered prospects that are already closely connected to you.

Influence the Influencers

Understand the key influencers who can broaden your existing networks and maximize the opportunities that have the greatest potential. With the Prospect Visual App, users of The Raiser’s Edge gain instant access to spheres of influence of every existing constituent and discover new warm paths to prospective donors.