Donor Search: Donor Search Basics/Overview

What is Donor Search FAQ

1. Donor Search is a third-party company that provides wealth and philanthropic giving history information pulled from a variety of sources including the FEC Political Database, the SEC Political Giving Database, and the IRS 990PF Profiles.
2. The Donor Search-CRM integration will search the Donor Search database for your existing contacts and populate wealth and philanthropic giving information to the contact’s record if matching information is found.
3. Donor Search information can be valuable in donor prospecting. If you do not know an appropriate ask amount for a contact, knowing information on the contact's past giving history (amount(s), frequency, and types of charities/organizations given to) will be useful to help you craft an appropriate ask.
4. Donor Search matches your contacts to the Donor Search database based on: First Name, Last Name, Mailing Address Line 1, City, State, Zip, AND Country (these fields are all required to pull Donor Search information for a contact) (Donor Search can only match donors who live in the United States).
5. Since there could be multiple people with the same first and last name living in the same city/zip code, Donor Search also provides an overall rating (called a “Propensity to Give Score”) for each contact record, which is an overall score of how likely the contact is to make a major gift. DS1-1, DS1-2 and DS1-3 are high scores indicating that the individual has above average major gift potential; DS3 is the lowest score. You can find out more about the Propensity to Give score at: https://www.donorsearch.net/donorsearch-ratings-system/
   

   

6. The Donor Search integration was automatically turned on for all clients who had logged into their CRM v2 account within the last 30 days as of March 22, 2017. For all other clients, the Donor Search integration must first be turned on to be used. To do this, from the Main Menu, select Fundraising and then Donor Search Wealth Profiles, OR from the Main Menu, select Add-Ons and More and then on the Integrations tab, select Donor Search
   

   

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7. Donor Search integration is a “pay per use” service, with users charged per contact record searched/scanned. You will only be charged for Donor Search when you scan records (to populate initial data or to update existing data).
8. Donor Search provides three levels of wealth and giving information on contacts: 
   - Recent Donors Scan (Free): Scan recent donors (those who donated within the last 24 months) and populate summary level data.
   - All Contacts Scan (25¢/record): Scan selected/all contacts in your system (including or excluding recent donors) and populate summary level data.
   - Detailed Scan (35¢/record): Scan selected/all contacts in your system (including or excluding recent donors) and populate detail level data.
   

   

9. For All Contact Scan and Detailed Scan, you can select your saved search to limit the contacts to be scanned, you can exclude recent (within last 24 months) donors and you can limit the Scan for new contacts only or you can Scan for all eligible contacts.

   

10. After scanning, Donor Search Summary Level (Free scan/All contact scan) information will appear on the View Contact screen in its own widget titled "Wealth Profile." You may have to turn the widget on in the widget settings in order to see it; you can find this widget in the Fundraising: Info category in the widget list (under the gear icon in the upper right of View Contact).
    

    

    

    

11. By default, Donor Search information is viewable ONLY by system Admins. Other users' access to the Donor Search information can be set in the User Roles/Permissions area.
    

    

12. If you have bought the Detailed level Donor Search data (Detailed Scan), click the View Details button to see the detailed donor profile (to upgrade or downgrade your Donor Search subscription/data access level, see our Donor Search: How to Upgrade/Downgrade Your Scan tutorial).

    

13. This will show the contact’s detailed summary level giving history (by category). To see a definition for each item, see our Donor Search: Wealth Information Profile Terms/Definitions tutorial.

    

    

14. To see the drill down of each category (the specific donation details rolling up into each category's summary), click the Detail Profile Button in the upper right to see the details of individual donations made by the contact, grouped by category.

    

     

15. You can search your database/contacts based on Donor Search wealth information in Advanced Search and in Reports using the Wealth Information category.
    
16. You can refresh/update the wealth/donor information as frequently as you like (see the "Donor Search: How to Add/Update Donor Search Wealth Information to Contact Records" tutorial for details). Generally, it is not necessary to rescan contacts more frequently than every 6-12 months.
17. You can scan the Donor Search database for all existing contacts or just for contacts added to your CRM since the last time you scanned the Donor Search database or for targeted contacts using an advanced search.

    

18. See also our Donor Search: Frequently Asked Questions tutorial.