Top 15 Prospect Research Tools for Clever Fundraisers

Gain valuable insights into supporters’ giving habits with these tools for wealth screening, employer enrichment, workplace giving appends & more.

Key Takeaways for Modern Prospect Research Tools 💡

Expanding Beyond Static Wealth Data

Although legacy prospect research relies heavily on real estate assets and stock holdings, modern fundraising intelligence prioritizes dynamic employment and business affiliation data.

Leveraging Integrated Technology

High-performing development teams connect prospect research software directly with their CRM and online giving tools to automate identification and outreach in real time.

Implementing AI & Predictive Analytics

AI-driven tools can now predict donor retention levels, propensity to give, and more, allowing teams to focus on high-yield major donor and workplace giving opportunities.

In the modern nonprofit landscape, relationship building remains an art, but identifying whom to build relationships with is a science. Gone are the days of relying solely on word-of-mouth recommendations or manual research to build a prospect list. Instead, today’s most successful development teams rely on prospect research tools (or “fundraising intelligence”) to drive their strategy.

These tools go beyond simple wealth screening. The best platforms now integrate dynamic data points, like real estate assets, political giving, and employment data, directly into your fundraising tools. This allows you to prioritize outreach based on hard evidence rather than intuition, and make a larger impact overall.

Below, we’ll explore the top prospect research tools that are redefining how nonprofits find and secure major gifts and more.

Note: This blog post focuses on our reviews of leading prospect research solutions. For a closer look at the basics of prospect research and fundraising intelligence, take a peek at our Ultimate Guide.

Platform	Best for…	TL;DR	Read the full review
DonorSearch	Conducting prospect research and wealth screening	Prospect research tools that provide valuable supporter insights and easily sync back to CRM systems	Skip to this section.
Dataro	Leveraging AI-driven predictions	An artificial intelligence platform that helps nonprofits make the most of their data and conduct effective campaigns	Skip to this section.
Windfall Data	Accessing up-to-date net worth insights	A data science company that empowers connections with major giving prospects through precise net worth data	Skip to this section.
Double the Donation	Uncovering business affiliations	A fundraising platform built to scale corporate revenue through employer data insights	Skip to this section.
Insightful Philanthropy	Delivering curated donor news updates	A news alert service for nonprofit fundraisers built to provide helpful major donor intelligence	Skip to this section.
Donorly	Receiving research-based consulting support	A consulting firm that helps small and mid-sized nonprofits overcome barriers in prospect research	Skip to this section.

Our Favorite Prospect Research Tools: Detailed Reviews

DonorSearch — Best Prospect Research Tool for Gauging Capacity & Affinity

Prospect Research Tool Overview

DonorSearch’s wealth screening and prospect research services help nonprofits learn more about their donors and round out their donor profiles. They host the world’s largest philanthropic database and can use it to match your donors’ information with reports on income, real estate holdings, philanthropic connections, stock ownership, and more. This means you’ll be able to take a comprehensive approach to prospect research and get to know your donors beyond just their wealth information.

Their services integrate with nearly any CRM or donor management software, helping you identify major gift prospects, planned giving candidates, and grateful patients.

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

DonorSearch is at the forefront when it comes to machine learning in the nonprofit world. The DonorSearch AI analyzes patterns in donors’ wealth factors and giving behaviors to create predictive models. These models can help you identify which donors are most likely to respond to stewardship efforts, enabling you to better allocate your major giving officers’ resources.

Prospect Research Software Price

To find out more about DonorSearch, request a demo to review the software and get a quote.

Get Started With DonorSearch

Windfall Data — Best Prospect Research Tool for Accessing Net Worth Insights

Prospect Research Software Overview

Windfall strives to help data-driven organizations effectively identify, understand, and engage affluent consumers with financial data. Their technology uses deterministic inputs and proprietary algorithms to deliver a net worth figure at the household level to help nonprofits prioritize, segment, and engage donors with the greatest giving potential.

Windfall identifies donors’ giving affinity so nonprofits can prioritize their leads, discover previously overlooked donors, and maximize the impact of their outreach. Plus, Windfall integrates with the industry-leading matching gift tool, Double the Donation!

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

Windfall updates its dataset on a weekly basis to ensure your nonprofit has the latest data. Beyond net worth, Windfall also gives nonprofits a deeper understanding of their constituents with a range of personal and household attributes, such as career level and business relations. By providing wealth insights in conjunction with Double the Donation’s matching gift insights, Windfall helps organizations drive high-value matching gift opportunities.

Prospect Research Software Price

Request a demo to learn more about Windfall’s pricing structure.

Windfall Data is a top prospect research tool.

Get Started With Windfall

Dataro – Best Prospect Research Tool for Leveraging AI-Driven Predictions

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Dataro’s artificial intelligence and machine learning platform can be a game-changer for nonprofits’ prospect research and everyday fundraising efforts. It regularly analyzes the donation and engagement data in your CRM, running it through advanced machine learning algorithms to generate propensity scores and rankings for your donors.

Dataro uses these scores and rankings to make predictions about donor giving behavior and add them directly to your CRM. For instance, Dataro can help you immediately identify the donors who are most likely to give again or have the potential to become major donors.

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

Dataro stands out for its ground-up approach to fundraising AI. Many nonprofit software providers offer piecemeal, AI-style prospect scoring systems, but Dataro takes a proven and comprehensive approach. For instance, Greenpeace retained 64 at-risk donors in a single month after using Dataro to predict who would be the most likely to lapse, resulting in an extra $23,040 for their mission.

Prospect Research Software Price

Dataro allows nonprofits to purchase their tools separately or together. Create a free demo account to take the platform for a test drive and get a pricing quote!

Get Started With Dataro

Double the Donation — Best Prospect Research Tool for Uncovering Business Affiliations

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Double the Donation’s workplace fundraising tools help nonprofits increase revenue from company giving programs like matching gifts, volunteer grants, payroll giving, and even corporate sponsorships.

Supporters are prompted to enter their employer’s name in an intuitive company search tool. If their employer has a giving program, they’ll be directed to the appropriate forms and guidelines to submit a request.

Not to mention, organizations can now leverage our employer data enhancement services to ensure their database is filled with complete, accurate, and up-to-date company information and workplace giving program insights.

Double the Donation - Best Prospect Research Tool for Workplace Giving

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

Corporate philanthropy is a powerful yet particularly underutilized funding source for nonprofits and schools. Gaining valuable information about supporters’ workplace giving eligibility through our corporate giving database will empower you to raise more for your organization.

Prospect Research Software Price

Double the Donation has several service offerings depending on the size of your nonprofit and the specific features your team is looking for. Check out our pricing page here to explore our product plans and request a personalized quote!

Get Started With Double the Donation

Insightful Philanthropy – Best Prospect Research Tool for Curating Donor News Updates

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Insightful Philanthropy’s news alert service delivers crucial, real-time updates about major donors to help fundraising teams cultivate donor relationships and inspire greater giving. Powered by more than 14,000 news and information sources from 200 countries, Insightful is the most comprehensive source of donor information that nonprofit fundraisers can access.

This data includes philanthropic activity, life events, including the richest collection obituaries and funeral home notices available, along with other background information about prospective donors that nonprofits typically overlook. Automated alerts make Insightful the easiest way to gather unique donor data that drives meaningful connections and, ultimately, major gifts.

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

Insightful Philanthropy offers a unique view of donor data that nonprofit fundraisers can’t afford to miss. While other prospect research providers analyze wealth information, Insightful unlocks a new perspective of potential donors by tapping into sources like local news outlets. This comprehensive view of donor data empowers fundraisers to steward deeper connections with prospects and encourage greater generosity.

Prospect Research Software Price

Request a demo to see Insightful Philanthropy’s software in action and get a quote.

Get Started With Insightful

Donorly – Best Prospect Research Tool For Consulting Services

Prospect Research Tool Overview

The Donorly team, led by Sandra Davis, isn’t a prospect research tool per se, but rather a team of data experts and consultants ready to power your fundraising strategy. While Donorly takes a holistic approach to full-service fundraising consulting, donor research is at the heart of all of this firm’s efforts.

With Donorly, your team gains access to the donor research tools and databases used by top fundraising offices and Donorly’s own team of data experts. Along with the prospect research tools, you’ll get access to Donorly’s in-house research team. They’ll turn data into insight about your donors—whether it’s their assets, giving habits, or affinity to give—and empower your team to fundraise beyond its size.

Why We Love This Prospect Research Provider

Donorly recognizes that the needs of small to medium nonprofits go beyond prospect research. Because of this, their team can outline a custom donor research plan for your team and provide other comprehensive consulting services. Whether you need assistance with a capital campaign or embedded staffing, Donorly is ready to supply your team with the data it needs.

Prospect Research Software Price

Donorly’s solutions are fully customized to fit the needs of your nonprofit. Contact their team today to learn more about pricing.

Donorly is a top prospect research tool.

Get Started With Donorly

Other Donor Prospect Research Tools for Nonprofits

Signal by EverTrue

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Signal by EverTrue is a donor engagement, major gift pipeline management, and prospect research tool all in one. Signal aims to help nonprofits, healthcare organizations, higher education institutions, and other types of nonprofits connect with their entire donor pyramid through always-up-to-date information surfaced through Signal’s social listening tools and wealth prospecting resources.

Thanks to Signal, nonprofits can get the latest information on all of their donors, whether it’s a change in address, a career move, or just a mention of the nonprofit on social media. Plus, with Signal’s comprehensive donor profiles, all information is automatically stored in one centralized system.

Why We Love This Provider

Along with providing information on prospective major donors, Signal is also designed to help nonprofits organize and build out their major giving programs. Thanks to task assignment, tracking, and oversight tools, major gift officers can manage all of their prospects with ease, while fundraising leaders can get insight into how their major gift program is performing as a whole.

TouchPoints

Prospect Research Tool Overview

TouchPoints provides updated donor data to help medium and large nonprofits increase donations and build stronger relationships with their supporters. Their technology enables nonprofits to update their old databases with correct information such as donors’ current names, addresses, telephone numbers, and more.

TouchPoints aims to provide nonprofits with the most up-to-date data possible to ensure that they stay in touch with current donors and reconnect with lapsed ones.

Why We Love This Provider

In addition to keeping your donor data up-to-date, TouchPoints offers a valuable service in helping nonprofits keep up with a recent trend: donor-advised funds. TouchPoints can identify which of your donors are part of a donor-advised fund or have used one in the past.

GivingDNA

Prospect Research Tool Overview

GivingDNA is an all-in-one tool for fundraising analytics, data visualization, and wealth screening.

GivingDNA examines your donors’ profiles and its own database together to get a holistic view of your supporters. This allows it to identify which donors are at risk of lapsing, who can be upgraded, and who might even be major donor material.

Why We Love This Provider

GivingDNA focuses on improving donor retention above all else. Rather than constantly replacing your donors, GivingDNA helps you identify at-risk donors before it’s too late and create data-driven plans to re-engage them.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Prospect Research Tool Overview

The Chronicle of Philanthropy isn’t software but an online news source for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. Along with regular news stories about the latest trends in the world of philanthropy, subscribers also receive access to a database of gifts of over $1 million. This data includes donors’ names, hometowns, and sources of wealth, as well as the recipient, cause, gift type, and gift value of the donation.

Why We Love This Provider

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is the go-to resource for staying informed about what’s happening in philanthropy. Whether you want to read up on giving trends or peek at some big data, the Chronicle of Philanthropy is the resource for you!

SEC EDGAR Search Tool

Prospect Research Tool Overview

The SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system (also known as EDGAR) is a robust database maintained by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that allows development teams and prospect researchers to uncover critical financial insights on public company shareholders.

Fundraisers can access corporate proxy statements (Form DEF 14A), initial ownership statements (Form 3), and insider transaction reports (Form 4) to reveal insider stock holdings, executive salary and bonus structures, direct business affiliations, and more.

Why We Love This Provider

EDGAR delivers verified, real-time public data directly from corporate filings. This financial intelligence helps fundraisers evaluate major gift capacity and identify high-value corporate leads.

Not to mention, the EDGAR database is free to search and available to the public on SEC.gov.

FEC Fillings

Prospect Research Tool Overview

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) can provide your nonprofit with information about a donor’s political giving. All you have to do is insert a prospect’s name and any other identification details you might have.

If that prospect has given to a political committee or campaign, you’ll be able to see which candidate or party they contributed to and how much they gave.

Why We Love This Provider

Political giving can help determine a prospect’s willingness and ability to give a major gift. Plus, you can assess a donor’s affinity for your cause if there’s a connection between a political candidate’s positions on issues and your nonprofit’s work.

Even better, FEC filings are available to use in your prospect research efforts at no cost!

Candid

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Ever wonder who helped fund another nonprofit similar to yours? Candid can provide answers. Candid compiles Form 990s for over a million nonprofit organizations, allowing users to search for nearly any charitable organization and discover who is funding them.

Why We Love This Provider

Along with donor prospect research, Candid also functions as a powerful grant research tool for uncovering foundation funding opportunities that align with your nonprofit’s work. And organizations can register for free to gain access to Form 990s for the last three years.

Prospect Research Tool Overview

If you need to round out your donor profiles with business information, LinkedIn is the most ideal (and free!) option around. Depending on how much they’ve filled out their profile, a donor’s LinkedIn page can tell you their educational and business connections.

This information can help you map out more connections between your existing donors and your potential prospects.

Why We Love This Provider

Because LinkedIn is a near-universal resource for people in any career, it’s an easy tool for nonprofits to flesh out their donor profiles. While basic access is available at no cost, the platform does offer advanced features through its “Sales Navigator” functionality that are available to nonprofits at a 50% discount.

The Million Dollar List

Prospect Research Tool Overview

If you need to find potential major gift prospects, check out the Million Dollar List. Compiled by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the Million Dollar List is a collection of publicly announced contributions that are at least a million dollars.

The available data goes all the way back to 2000 and can be filtered by donor, recipient, and location. They also have charts, graphs, and lists that can be used to search and analyze data.

Why We Love This Provider

The information in the Million Dollar List is completely free, which means organizations can download all of the Million Dollar List’s data to have it on hand for their major gift prospect research.

WealthEngine

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Designed for businesses and nonprofits alike, WealthEngine powers millions of pre-scored wealth-screened profiles for donors, customers, and prospects. These profiles can be adjusted to rate donors on their potential giving capacity, estimated annual donation total, total assets, cash on hand, and more.

Why We Love This Provider

WealthEngine provides data and helps keep your database clean at the same time. It detects inaccurate data and corrects it for you, saving you time resolving errors or, even worse, reaching out with false contact information.

iWave

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Small nonprofits and enterprise-size organizations alike can find the data they need with iWave. Rather than relying on just one database for your donor information, try searching over 40 at once! Search a donor’s name and iWave will scour its extensive network of data sources to find the data you need.

Then, use this data to build comprehensive donor profiles in seconds. With iWave’s intelligent profiles, data is pulled together to share donors’ demographic information, giving capacity, and philanthropic history.

Why We Love This Provider

Along with donor wealth screening, iWave also has grant screening tools. These provide nonprofits with comprehensive information on foundation and corporate grantmakers so they can decide whether they’re a good fit for the grant before spending time and resources putting together an application.

Leadership Connect

Prospect Research Tool Overview

Much of prospect research is about who your donors know, and Leadership Connect lets you take a look at exactly that.

Specifically, Leadership Connect allows organizations to map government officials, which can be essential for advocacy campaigns. However, its networking and relationship maps can help you visualize any connection, such as managers and direct reports, education, family, and board and association memberships.

Why We Love This Provider

Getting warm introductions is the key to earning major support. Leadership Connect’s networking maps help you track who your donors know. If one of those would be willing to give your nonprofit an introduction, you could be just a few steps away from securing a major giving prospect.

Final Thoughts & Additional Prospect Research Resources

Modern prospect research is no longer just about identifying individuals with the highest net worth. Today, the most successful development teams are looking at a fuller picture of donor engagement. By combining wealth screening with complete workplace giving intelligence, nonprofits can build deeper supporter relationships and unlock transformational revenue streams.

Equipping your development team with the right tools to scale your fundraising intelligence enables you to prioritize outreach based on real data rather than intuition. Connecting these insights directly to your CRM, online donation forms, workplace giving tools, and volunteer management systems helps you build a more sustainable, scalable strategy for your organization.