Advice on How to Get Info on Private Charitable Foundation

Joanne Felci 2 · August 2017

Hello!

My VP asked me to find out if a donor, that usually gives through his charitable foundation, has ever given capital campaign gifts to other organizations

I've run him through WealthPoint, and of course nothing came up.

Any thoughts on how you would go about researching this? I've done a couple searches on his name and foundation name and of course are finding nothing.

Ryan Hyde · August 2017

We use a company called DonorSearch that looks this kind of info up for us, but I'm not sure how you'd do it on your own. Theoretically all they're doing is looking for public info though, so you could do a search for his name in quotation marks in Google and just spend an afternoon trawling through false positives I suppose :P Sounds like a good time.

Joanne Felci 2 · August 2017

Thanks Ryan!

I looked into DonorSearch and really liked what they offer but we do not do Prospect Research enough and already have the ResearchPoint subscription

I did a lot of google/bing, etc. searching not much out there...we will see

roger berg · August 2017

Hi Joanne-

Is the donor's Foundation required to file a 990? Not all types have that requirement and if not you won't find them on Guidestar or any similar site (since they pull their info from 990's) The Google suggestion could work - assuming that the donor's gifts to other campaigns weren't anonymous. I'm always surprised (and pleased) with the number of annual reports that are on line - sure makes it easier!

Good luck!

Roger

Deborah Drucker 2 · August 2017

Joanne Felci:

Hello!

My VP asked me to find out if a donor, that usually gives through his charitable foundation, has ever given capital campaign gifts to other organizations

I've run him through WealthPoint, and of course nothing came up.

Any thoughts on how you would go about researching this? I've done a couple searches on his name and foundation name and of course are finding nothing.

A couple of thoughts:

Foundation Center has a free version that may be helpful in locating capital campaign gifts, as it allows you to search by keyword (there is also a paid version, but it sounds like you are looking for free resources.) You have to sign up to use it. The link is here: https://fdo.foundationcenter.org/

Another good resource is nozasearch.com. While you need a paid subscription to search on individual and corporate giving, the foundation giving search is free. If you click on the "More Options" button the search criteria window expands, and you can search on "Gift Category" for Capital Gift/Campaign Gift."

Also, I don't know how familiar you are with Google searches, but you can narrow down your search by using "site:.org" and "site:.edu" to pick up only documents on nonprofit or educational websites and "filetype:pdf" if you want to limit your search only to annual reports in pdf format. This may speed up your search somewhat. Also be sure to use all permutations of your donor's name and the foundation name, as s/he may be listed in the annual reports in different ways ("John Doe," "John C. Doe," etc.).

Hope this is helpful!

Joanne Felci 2 · August 2017

Thanks so much Deborah!!

Advice on How to Get Info on Private Charitable Foundation

Comments

Categories