AI-Powered Prospect Research

Finding Your Next Major Donor

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you mapped your donor universe into tiers and built a revenue model with realistic conversion rates. Now you’ll learn the AI-powered research techniques that identify which specific individuals have the capacity, affinity, and propensity to become your next major donors.

Prospect research used to mean weeks of manual searching — public records, real estate databases, SEC filings, nonprofit donor lists. A skilled researcher might evaluate 10-15 prospects per week. AI tools now evaluate hundreds in hours, cross-referencing data sources that no human could manually combine.

The Three Dimensions of Prospect Quality

Every prospect research effort — whether using AI or manual methods — evaluates three dimensions:

Help me build a prospect research profile for a potential major donor.

Known information:
- Name: [name]
- Current relationship: [board member/event attendee/current donor/no relationship]
- Known giving to our organization: $[X] over [X] years
- Known giving to other organizations: [any known gifts]
- Professional background: [what you know]
- Board memberships: [any known]

Research and assess:
1. CAPACITY INDICATORS — What suggests their giving capacity?
   (Real estate, business ownership, compensation if public,
   foundation involvement)
2. AFFINITY INDICATORS — What connects them to our cause?
   (Similar organization involvement, personal connection to
   our mission, public statements, social media)
3. PROPENSITY INDICATORS — Do they give regularly?
   (Known gifts to any organization, frequency, amounts)
4. COMPOSITE SCORE — Rate each dimension 1-10, weight:
   Affinity 40%, Capacity 35%, Propensity 25%
5. RECOMMENDED APPROACH — Based on the profile, suggest
   the best cultivation strategy

✅ Quick Check: Why does affinity receive the highest weight (40%) in the composite scoring model? Because donors who care about your specific cause convert at dramatically higher rates than donors who are merely wealthy. A prospect with moderate wealth but deep connection to your mission will almost always outperform a wealthy stranger. Affinity is the strongest predictor of whether a prospect will actually give.

AI Prospect Research Tools

The market has several specialized tools, plus techniques using general AI:

Specialized Platforms

Using General AI for Research

You don’t need a specialized platform to start. General AI assistants can help with research that would take hours manually:

I'm researching potential major donors for [organization type].
Help me build a prospect research brief.

Prospect: [name and any known details]

Please help me analyze:
1. What's publicly known about their professional background
   and business interests?
2. What nonprofit boards or advisory roles do they hold?
3. Have they made any publicly reported charitable gifts?
4. What connections might they have to [your cause area]?
5. What communication approach would likely resonate
   based on their professional profile?

Note: I want to use publicly available information only.
No private data or unethical research methods.

Building a Prospect Pipeline

Individual research matters, but the real power is systematic — building a pipeline of prospects at different cultivation stages.

Help me create a prospect pipeline from our existing database.

Current donors (top 200 by giving):
[Paste a list or describe the segment]

For this group, help me design a pipeline system:

STAGE 1 — IDENTIFICATION (AI screening):
- Which donors show major gift potential based on
  giving patterns? (increasing gifts, consistent timing,
  response to special appeals)
- Which non-donors in our orbit show potential?
  (event attendees, volunteers, subscribers who haven't given)

STAGE 2 — QUALIFICATION (research + outreach):
- For top-scored prospects, what additional research
  would confirm or disqualify them?
- Design a qualification conversation guide
  (discovery meeting agenda)

STAGE 3 — CULTIVATION (relationship building):
- Design a 6-month cultivation plan for qualified prospects
- Include: touchpoints, events, personal outreach cadence

STAGE 4 — SOLICITATION (the ask):
- When is a prospect ready to be asked?
- What signals indicate readiness?

STAGE 5 — STEWARDSHIP (post-gift):
- The thank-you and impact reporting plan
  (we'll cover this deeply in Lesson 5)

Pipeline Health Metrics

✅ Quick Check: Why should your prospect pipeline be 3-5x your annual major gift target? Because not every qualified prospect will give, and not every gift will be at the level you hope. If you need 10 new major gifts this year, you should be cultivating 30-50 qualified prospects to realistically hit that target.

Key Takeaways

• Effective prospect research evaluates three dimensions: capacity (can they give?), affinity (do they care?), and propensity (do they give charitably?) — with affinity weighted highest
• AI prospect research tools like DonorSearch AI and iWave can evaluate hundreds of prospects in hours, cross-referencing wealth, philanthropic, and behavioral data that would take weeks manually
• General AI assistants can handle basic prospect research using publicly available information — you don’t need expensive platforms to start
• Build a prospect pipeline with 3-5x your annual major gift target and track stage progression to ensure cultivation is working
• Context matters more than data: a $50K gift to another organization means different things depending on whether it was a memorial, board obligation, or genuine passion

Up Next: You’ll learn to use AI for grant writing — from finding the right funders to generating proposals that mirror funder language and maximize your chances of award.