[Doug Creek]

Hello guys and gals,

My boss came to me today to request some information from you wonderful people... We are looking for a university on the west coast that uses RE, and has a prospect researcher position. We would be VERY interested in a meeting of the minds with you to share information and trade secrets and first borns... Feel free to leave messages here or to email me at the address below.

In all seriousness, we are adding this position to our staff, and would like to send the person to your campus(es) to learn how you use this position, what resources are available, how you store the information, and anything else you'd like to let us know about.

Also on this thread, I would like to open it up for people to list prospect research forums, websites, books, and anything else that you use to research someone. I would be wiling to compile this into a manageable list from responses and post it back to the forum as an attachment for people to access.

Thanks in advance!
Doug

[Judy]

Hi Doug and Everyone Else,
I too would love to hear info about prospect research so what you are proposing sounds timely, Doug. We are contemplating adding this position to our foundation staff. I'd also be interested in hearing about pay scale for the position if anyone has any information about that as well.
Thank you,
Judy

[Doug Creek]

As soon as I know our grade for the position (which has the annual salary) I'll let you know... hopefully we'll know within the next couple weeks since the anticipated start date is 7/1/06

[Judy]

Cool...much appreciated, Doug.

[smoore]

I am evolving into the position of database administrator and prospect research person for our small office. It would be great to know these details as I transition and to be able to negotiate my pay increase. Any information would be greatly appreciated Doug!

Thanks,
Stacey

[Elaine Tucker]

One one line resource for research is guidestar.com.

Subscribe and you can research non-profits and their boards etc.... If you have donors in your donor base then this is very valuable information if you need an "in" for grant purposes.... as well as some foundations may match funds dontated by their board members.

I'm viewing from home and the rest of my research notes are at the office. I'll try to remember to post more tomorrow.

Prospect research is part of my job.... along with the DB mgmt and... stewardship... and.... jill of all trades

Sorry I can't help you with any of the other stuff since it's all rolled into one job description, and Texas is Big, but it doesn't stretch to the West Coast ( or does it..... hehehehheheee)

[DebraGross]

Doug et al

I'd be happy to answer any questions, also as Research is part of my position, too.
Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) is a good place to start http://www.aprahome.org/. There is a 2003 Member Salary survey on their site - you do have to be a member to view it.
I also recommend the Research listserv:
PRSPCT-L@CharityChannel.com - great group of brainy folks (just like us) who share their expertise, frustrations, etc.
I have a long list of free and paid sites so feel free to contact me. Deb

[Judy]

Thanks everyone. This is so helpful.
-Judy

[rcreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Creek

Hello guys and gals,

My boss came to me today to request some information from you wonderful people... We are looking for a university on the west coast that uses RE, and has a prospect researcher position. We would be VERY interested in a meeting of the minds with you to share information and trade secrets and first borns... Feel free to leave messages here or to email me at the address below.

In all seriousness, we are adding this position to our staff, and would like to send the person to your campus(es) to learn how you use this position, what resources are available, how you store the information, and anything else you'd like to let us know about.

Also on this thread, I would like to open it up for people to list prospect research forums, websites, books, and anything else that you use to research someone. I would be wiling to compile this into a manageable list from responses and post it back to the forum as an attachment for people to access.

Thanks in advance!
Doug

Doug, I may be of some help to you (I'll try), although we are not a university, we are a hospital, we are on the West Coast.

Our Prospect Research coordinator falls under my group. The Prospect Research person uses several tools, these are all paid sites:

Lexis-Nexis - great tool for researching persons, businesses, obituaries
Big Online Foundation - you research other Foundations and Directors

Some free sites:
Foundation Center

These are just some of them. If interested in salary range, email me, and I will be more than happy to get you salary and job description.

Oh yeah TGIF!

Becky Creamer
Eisenhower Medical Center
rcreamer@emc.org

</IMG>

[RobertWild]

From sunny Australia...

This sounds like my position - I am a dual database admin & prospect researcher, currently employed by a south australian university.

You're welcome to email me (I think that I've set it up right) and I'll list my research resources (some are particular to Aus only). Note - Most are also free - there are a few that are pay by service, however our Uni Library subscribes to a few of these, so I can usually piggyback on their logins.

cheers

Rob

[Peter Gulka]

I deleted some posts to tidy up the thread and keep it on topic.

We are developing our research program here as well. We have a research assitant position in our org chart, and one of our Major Gift Officers has been assigned responsibility for developing the research program.

We are looking at sending all 120,000 of our records to BB Analytics for scoring, which should be a huge help.

[Doug Creek]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AyeCapn

We are looking at sending all 120,000 of our records to BB Analytics for scoring, which should be a huge help.

They did that before I got here, I wish we could dump it all and start over with a 100% cleaner database. They did it before we were really ready and so I have people that have several sets (not just one or two, some have like 5 or 6) of information because there was so much duplication in the database at the time... I'm trying to convince my bosses to dump it all and run it again sometime in the next couple of years to get a fresh set of information that's really useful...

Doug

[Elaine Tucker]

Doug,

I would push that if you could. If the data is stale - then the only thing it is doing is muddying the waters.

Some time ago (a couple of years?)... the school used the Grenzebach Glier & Associates service -- however I have not had the time to use any of the products - only a miniminal skim through the information -- in the 6 months I've been here.

We are thinking of going back to the vendor to see what our options are, what our contract says, if we've used all our updates (I think the serivce came with quarterly updates)... if not then we are going to ask for an "extension" to use what we paid for...

[Peter Gulka]

I was told by BB Analytics that they only "guarantee" the accuracy of the scores for about 18 months anyway.