Ben Franklin and Prospect Research:  Time is Money

by Susan Cronin Ruderman, Ed.M.

If Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) were alive today, he could be a prospect researcher.

Ben Franklin had all the characteristics that tend to make a good prospect researcher.  He was inquisitive, inventive, and persistent.  And like non-profit managers everywhere, he realized that one’s time has a monetary value.  “Time is money,” he wrote in his “Advice to a Young Tradesman”(1748) as a reminder that sitting idle meant the loss of income that might otherwise have been earned by working.

In fundraising, we take a slightly different interpretation of “Time is money.”  We might instead declare that “Time makes up for money; money makes up for time.”  Successful prospect research requires some degree of both time and money, but an imbalance on one side of the equation can sometimes be compensated for by a surplus on the other.

Suppose you have an unexpected opportunity to meet with a major gift donor, but lack the kind of background information that prospect research can provide.  Perhaps you have too little time, but some magnitude of money in your budget.  In this instance, you might choose to hire a consulting firm to prepare a profile on the potential donor.  Or you might decide to use some of the available funds to purchase fee-based news searches or other electronic information from either your public library or an information broker (see the web site of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) at http://www.aiip.org/index.html for referrals to providers of outsourced information searches.)

But how many non-profits suffer from a surplus of money?  Not many. And few non-profits seem to have an excess of time available either, although with shrewd use of volunteers and interns, sometimes there are more human resources available. 

Let’s look at some of the instances where a trade-off between time and money can be made.  In other words, what types of information can be accessed in different forms depending on budget?

Biographical information

 

Those fortunate enough to have access to Lexis/Nexis Universe for Development Professionals (LNUDP) can access the Marquis Who’s Who publications online.  In addition to these biographical sources, LNUDP offers a selection of other resources useful for prospect research, including comprehensive newspaper archive searching.

 

But with its five-figure price tag for the full-featured database, LNUDP is often outside the range of feasibility for smaller budgets. 

 

Fortunately, most public libraries offer at least on-site access to the electronic versions of Who’s Who and associated publications, often through the Gale database known as Biography Resource Center.  Policies regarding admission to (and use of resources within) academic libraries will vary, but all public libraries are, by definition, open to the public.

 

Some public libraries will allow off-site access to the Gale databases with possession of a local library card and/or password.  In other words, you can use the database from your office or home.  To inquire whether this service is available from your library (or regional library network), contact the reference desk at your nearest public library.  For links to the web sites of libraries in your area, see the National Center for Education Statistics’ database at http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/library/.

 

Financial information

 

Again, Lexis/Nexis provides “one-stop shopping” for a variety of prospect research tasks.  There is also a credit card option that allows the user to purchase single “pay as you go” searches for occasional use.  See http://web.lexis.com/xchange/ccsubs/cc_prods.asp for details.

 

But much of the fee-based information can be replicated to some extent for free.  It will simply take longer.

 

For public companies, the EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval) database of the SEC remains the most authoritative source.  This database, located at http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm, remains free, but does not permit personal name searches.  In other words, you can easily find records for “Microsoft” but wouldn’t have such an easy time searching “Bill Gates” to see what companies he is affiliated with. 

 

A solution to the lack of good searchability is to use the more robust search engine of the fee-based TenKWizard (http://www.tenkwizard.com/).  In TenKWizard, you can search for free to identify the relevant companies linked to an individual.  Then you would retrieve the full-text filings from the SEC’s EDGAR for free.  EDGAROnline People Search (http://www.edgar-online.com/people/) can be used in a similar manner.

 

For basic company information, Hoover’s (http://www.hoovers.com/) still provides some good free background information, despite its conversion to more of a fee-based service following its sale to Dun & Bradstreet.

 

For private companies, there is no good free web alternative.  Indeed, reliable coverage of private companies at any price is a dicey proposition.   Larger libraries will often have access to Ward's Business Directory of U.S. Private and Public Companies, or D&B Million Dollar Database, or American Business Disc, all of which offer some degree of private company coverage.

 

Real estate information

 

Fee-based sources for this information include Lexis/Nexis; KnowX (http://www.knowx.com/); and DataQuick (http://www.dataquick.com/).  Often the fee-based services provide more extensive information, greater searching flexibility, or coverage of geographic areas not included in the free web sites.  For example, free resources might allow searching only by address and not by owner name. 

 

For a list of web sites that link to local assessors’ databases, see Portico at http://indorgs.virginia.edu/portico/personalproperty.html, or SearchSystems.Net at http://www.searchsystems.net/freepub.php.

 

Even when there is no free internet database, many counties or municipalities will provide real estate assessment information over the telephone.  And those that

neither provide web access, nor accept telephone inquiries, will sometimes respond to a written request.

 

Philanthropic information

 

Prospect researchers are always on the alert for information that speaks to a prospect’s philanthropic inclination.  News of major gifts elsewhere can fill in an important part of the puzzle.

 

On the subscription side, vendors such as iWave, through its product PRO (Prospect Research Online; http://www.iwave.com) and Waltman Associates, through its product The Donor Series (http://www.donorseries.com/) offer some coverage of gifts to other organizations.

 

Searches of newspapers can sometimes turn up reports of gifts, as can specially-crafted Google searches (e.g., using the prospect’s name in conjunction with relevant words such as “donor” or “gift.”  If you are not familiar with advanced searches on Google, take a look at http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html before trying this technique.

 

But the phase of identifying giving elsewhere is always haphazard.

 

Time and money again

 

Fee-based services stay in business because they offer something that can’t be easily compiled for free.  Sometimes fee-based services offer exclusive access to information, while others “massage” the raw data to make it more user-friendly.  If you are doing only a small amount of prospect research, you may not notice any negative effects from using several free sources instead of one (expensive) mega-database.

 

But if you are working at higher volume, the time savings in purchasing some of the relevant tools can more than make up for the cost.  Ben was right—time is money.

 

Copyright Susan Cronin Ruderman, 2004.  All rights reserved.  Not to be reproduced in any form without permission of the author.