There are those donor prospects where there is simply an overwhelming amount of information. And then there are those prospects whose digital footprint exhibits a strict minimalist aesthetic! I want to tell you a story about the latter.

Identification and Qualification

In the beginning, there was a donor couple. The woman had volunteered with the organization and the total of their three gifts was under $1,000. But, alas, the screening rating popped at $1M to $5M! And so, the prospects were called upon by a development officer (“DO”).

In that first discussion the DO learned about the woman’s volunteering and what her philanthropic interests were. There was so much affinity for the organization’s mission! Off to the prospect research professional for a profile!

Note: In that research request the DO shared the information from her qualification call. This really helped us understand why research was needed.

But their Digital Footprint is… an Outline

At first glance, the prospects are member managers of a hot mess of limited liability companies (LLCs) and there are pretty clear indicators that it is all about real estate.

With care, a list is compiled of companies and real estate owned. There isn’t time to really dive down every rabbit hole, but this is Florida. And the Florida Government-in-the-Sunshine law means that it’s really quite simple to search state incorporation records.

But there is no company website. No news articles or interviews or much of anything about any of those companies or the family. No LinkedIn profiles. No public giving whatsoever. No board service. No foundation. No mention in a church bulletin. No alumni mention. Nada.

(And it takes so long to look for information that doesn’t exist! >>sigh<<)

Incorporation Records and Real Estate Can Yield Clues

But we have those incorporation records and sometimes we can get them to talk–even without advanced interrogation techniques!

For self-made business owners, there is usually a primary business that behaves like a parent to the other LLCs, even if there is technically no legal relationship. Below is an example of our company table:

Company Name	Incorporation Years	Managers	State
Aspire Research Group LLC	2009-Present	Jennifer Filla	FL

And sure enough, there was one LLC with an incorporation date in the early 1990s, while the rest of the companies were incorporated in the 2000s. Also, a rough glance at the types of real estate owned personally and by the various entities was suggestive of a variety of revenue sources.

There were commercial properties such as warehouses, as well as residential addresses. It seemed like they might be owning and renting. I’d guess they are doing some property management as well. The last company incorporated in this year, 2021, had two unknown individuals as member managers, but the prospect was the registered agent for service of legal process.

How can we assess their capacity?

If you have ever performed prospect research, then you know that private company ownership can be difficult to value because there are so few things we can know with any degree of certainty. And here,the couple didn’t even bless us with a company website and corresponding business description. Forget about revenue numbers or employees.

This is where we grabbed our Q-tip and duct tape and built a capacity rating!

We knew one value: Excluding the primary residence, personal and company-owned real estate had a total estimated market value of around $12M. According to the Capgemini World Wealth Report, in 2019 Q1, 15.8% of a HNWI’s household wealth in North America was invested in real estate.

$12,000,000 * 15.8% =$75,949,367 estimated net worth

This rough calculation led us to place the prospects into our Ultra-HNW Wealth Tier, suggesting a gift capacity of $3M to $10M.

Prospect Research Value-Add

We didn’t find a lot of information, but thankfully, the prospects used their home address on the incorporation records and real estate mailing addresses, and they did not hide their identities behind a state like Delaware, which does not require that the LLC member managers’ names be disclosed.

The DO had done a great job of qualifying for philanthropy, interest, and affinity. We found just enough information to make an educated guess on capacity.

The story ends with the DO being handed the profile to create a strategy to make a first significant ask for a gift from the prospects.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck…

Sometimes prospect research professionals get lost in the details. I’ve heard conversations about rigid guidelines for creating “highly defensible” capacity ratings. I propose that prospect research can better support major gifts fundraising if it views the prospect management process as more like a relay race.

• In the story told here, research identified a high-capacity donor–and passed the prospect “baton” to the DO for in-person qualification.
• The DO did a great job of learning what research often cannot, the passions and feelings of the prospect–and then passed the prospect “baton” back to research.
• Research translated the data discovered (minimalist as it was) into a story of wealth–and passed the prospect “baton” back to the DO for a first solicitation.

There are many donor prospects out there in the world who value their privacy, or who otherwise don’t have a huge digital footprint for researchers to discover. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great prospects.

It means we didn’t find a lot of information…

(And it takes so long to look for information that doesn’t exist! >>double sigh<<)

… and we need to better leverage the little bit of information we did find.

By working like a relay team with the DO, we can still uncover and qualify those prospects who don’t have a lot of public data, but who look like a “duck”–who walk and talk like a philanthropic individual with high capacity who cares about our organization and its mission.