Donor Wealth Screening

We were recently asked if Idealware had done any research or comparisons about donor wealth screening service providers.  Unfortunately, we haven’t looked deeply into that topic, but did cover it a little in our Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits, excerpted here:  

“You can also buy more detailed demographic data to help assess donors’ income levels, often called “wealth screening data.” For instance, which donors live in a high-wealth Zip code, or own yachts? What’s the assessed value of their houses (if that information is public)? What political contributions have they made? If you have a very large database, some vendors can even mine your own data to help predict your top prospects.

Wealth screening services like LexisNexis for Development Professionals, WealthPoint, WealthEngine.com, Target Analytics and PRO Prospect Research offer multiple types of data, and many can provide information on either a single donor (through a web interface) or an entire list.”

Overall, we feel that donor wealth screening is a useful tool, but seems to be more within reach for larger organizations such as museums, hospitals and universities with sizable budgets and large lists.  If you do decide to do wealth screening and you don’t have a big budget, consider using it on your own list as an evaluation tool to find out more about your current supporters- who is a potentially major donor masquerading as a small donor?  Wealth screening can be problematic as a prospecting tool for a general pool of people who are not necessarily associated with your cause.  The tools will identify wealthy people, but can’t tell you who is likely to give, and especially can’t tell you who is likely to give to your organization. 

You can also use wealth screening tools to find out more about individual donors (say you were going to a house party and wanted to learn more about the people on the guest list) but we are unfamiliar with the price for use in this manner- do fees make one-time prospecting in this way impractical for small organizations?  

It seems that donor wealth screening is a cost effective and proven method for organizations with substantial money for prospecting, but is it practical for those with smaller budgets?  What are the work arounds that some of you at smaller organizations use to find out the giving capacity of your donors and potential donors?