Resources online for updating constituent records

Payal Sen

Hello again,

I am interested to know more about what platforms do you guys use to update constituent records other than linkedin, beenverified, whitepages and general web search.

I have seen in certain cases these are not enough.

Thank you

Karen Diener

I've often used those sources to help confirm information that I already have, but not necessarily add new information such as a change of address. LinkedIn is generally pretty reliable, but I would be wary of looking for people / addresses / phone numbers on other websites. That information is not intentionally added by the person, but is rather scraped together by other services and you are very likely to end up with incorrect data.

Carlene Johnson

Many organizations use AlumniFinder even if they don’t have traditional “alumni.” It’s essentially a data‑hygiene and people‑finder tool that lets you bulk‑search or individually search constituents to update addresses, emails, phone numbers, and other contact information. It’s useful for any nonprofit that needs accurate supporter data, not just schools.

Payal Sen

Thank you, so when constituent records are added how are those people researched later for further giving. How do you gather the relevant data on that.

Steve Townsend

For prospect research I use a general web search but most of the info usually ends up coming from LinkedIn. How much you can find depends on how much information you have to begin with - as a school we start out with a lot of info on parents, less so on alumni. I'm afraid I don't have any other specific platforms I use, and sometimes I don't find anything. Sorry, that's not very helpful.

Nissa Rolf

I agree with Karen, some of those (free) online websites are great for confirming data, but not always reliable enough to add new data. That being said, truepeoplesearch.com is one that I gravitate towards.

Seconding Alumnifinder! Used it at a previous institution.

Robin Kuehn

Our organization has paid for some outside services, and iWave works pretty well. Many of them try to sell themselves as your new CRM and are rather annoying to get data in and out from. In my opinion, if Blackbaud could build a robust version of a public record search tool as an add-on for RENXT, it would make them extremely competitive.

Rachel Kauer

I'm guessing you mean individual constituents rather than organizational constituents (in which case we don't use anything special beyond LinkedIn and Google searches to contribute), but in the off chance you need to gather details or research on organizations' constitution records too, I highly recommend IQCause and ProReblupica non-profit explorer.

Both are free to sign up for and have great basic info on personnel, foundation vs. daf sponsor status etc. I have found them very helpful when we've been looking into individuals' giving sources to gain insight into the DAFs, Family Foundations, and Private Foundations used by our donors.

Dariel Dixon

@Payal Sen When you use these resources, how do you confirm the data is correct before adding it to a record? I'm not a big fan of adding unverified information to my database, as that's a good way of creating data integrity problems.

Payal Sen

@Dariel Dixon the only way to verify is to meet them in person.

Dariel Dixon

@Payal Sen It's a bit of a catch 22, isn't it? You can't confirm the information until you get in contact with them, but you may have problems contacting them unless you use the unverified data.

You have to really calculate the risks and determine how confident you are in the data before entering. Unfortunately, there's no way to flag the data after entry as unverified or of lower confidence. I think I would only enter the data if I had a super high confidence in it (enter made up percentage here).