How to Create a Prospect Research Template
There are many different structures that your main prospect research product can take. Some shops offer a small but mighty profile. Others include everything but the kitchen sink. What works and what doesn’t will depend on your specific organization, the strength (and weaknesses) of your data, and the resources you have to allocate to product completion. With that in mind, a good starting point may look like this
Section One- biographical overview. This section should be facts and figures about your prospect that are easy to look up and should already exist in your database. Information like age, current job, address, contact info. This information gives context to who the person is. A brief introduction before diving into the details. And if your fundraiser is prone to skimming the profiles you send them, well at least they will get the important bits first.
Section Two- a written narrative about the prospect. This narrative should include where the prospect is from, where they went to school, and how they started their career. After overviewing their professional affiliations, it is important to pivot to where the overlap is with your organization. Are they an alum? Trustee? Longtime volunteer? This section should end with detailed highlights of that.
Section Three- The most important section is the alignment piece. This alignment should be tied to something specific your organization is working on. The question you should be asking yourself here is; of all the organizations that this prospect could support, why us? Perhaps they are an alum and have been engaged since they graduated. In addition to that if they were to give, identify potential areas of where their gift would go. The important point here is not to be 100% accurate but to coalesce all the information you have found on the prospect and identify their passion areas. Once the fundraiser is able to make successful contact, they can provide more information based on their conversation. But for starters, this is good for now.
Overall, there is no right or wrong when developing your prospect research template as these products will look different based on the context in which they are created and most useful. And that will look different on a case by case basis.
