In my role at DonorAtlas, I have the privilege of working with hundreds of organizations—small nonprofits, major universities, and foundations of every size. That vantage point means I get to see which fundraising approaches actually move the needle, and which ones just keep people busy.

It also means I get to meet people like Mike Esposito, CFRE, a consultant who brings a particularly thoughtful, practical approach to helping organizations build stronger, more effective fundraising programs.

Mike also happens to be one of the best-connected people in the New York City fundraising community. He serves as the Co-Chair of AFP-NYC’s Fundraising Day NY conference and is the founder of Mike Esposito Fundraising, a consulting agency that helps nonprofits with fundraising strategy, planning, and execution. What stands out to me about Mike is that his approach to prospecting keeps working client after client—he is a master at surfacing donors nonprofits might never have otherwise seen.

After watching him work for the past few months, I felt that all fundraisers could benefit from understanding Mike’s approach.

I sat down with Mike to talk about where philanthropy is headed and, more specifically, the million-dollar question: where can nonprofits find the donors most organizations overlook?

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that your next major donor is going to be someone completely new to the organization.

When nonprofits think about prospecting, there can be a tendency to immediately look externally for high-net-worth individuals who care about their mission. But some of the best prospects may already be much closer to the organization than you realize.

They could be current donors who have significantly greater capacity than their giving history suggests. They could be family members, children, or grandchildren of existing donors. They could be people connected to your board, volunteers, or other supporters. Or they could be individuals who have already demonstrated an affinity for organizations doing similar work.

So before I tell an organization to build a list of dozens of new names, I usually want to understand who is already in their orbit and what opportunities they might be overlooking.

When I was speaking with said organization there was a sense that once someone passed away and left a gift, that was essentially the end of the relationship. That’s not true.

One of the strategies I have suggested repeatedly was researching the donor’s family and looking for opportunities to build relationships with living family members. Are there children, grandchildren, a spouse, or other relatives who may share that connection to the organization? Oftentimes, the answer is a simple yes.

Now, truthfully, that doesn’t mean you assume the family will continue giving. You still have to cultivate those relationships. But instead of viewing a bequest as the end of a donor relationship, you can ask the bigger question of whether it might be the beginning of a relationship with the next generation of that family.

I think the wealth transfer should push nonprofits to think more intentionally about families, not just individual donors. That is where your hidden donors may lie.

Well, if someone has been giving to your organization for 20 or 30 years, ask yourself… Do you know their spouse? Their children? Their grandchildren? And more importantly: Have you created opportunities for those family members to understand why the organization has been important to them?

The goal isn’t to assume that philanthropic priorities will automatically transfer from one generation to the next. They often won’t. But nonprofits have an opportunity to build those relationships before the wealth transfer happens, rather than trying to introduce themselves afterward. It’s about being proactive.

To me, that means thinking about donor relationships more broadly and asking how you can engage the next generation while the original donor is still actively involved.

I’ve been using AI-powered prospect research, which has given me the ability to identify “similar donors” that may have been harder to find in the past.

For example, I might build a prospect list of 20 people who have the right combination of capacity, geography, and philanthropic interests. Rather than starting from scratch to find the next ten, platforms like DonorAtlas can analyze those prospects and surface additional people who share similar characteristics, including where they live and the types of organizations they support. That’s helped me expand prospect lists and uncover people I might not have found through a traditional search.

Another example is relationship mapping. If I’m researching a donor who is passionate about and deeply engaged with one of my clients, I might use DonorAtlas’ relationship mapping tool to identify other philanthropic individuals in their network. Then I can help my client present the donor with a targeted list and ask whether they would feel comfortable making any introductions. It will populate alumni, board connections, even spousal networks.

Yes, AI in prospect research helps me personally see connections and patterns faster. But the fundraiser still has to determine whether the relationship makes sense, how to approach it, and ultimately how to cultivate it.

Look at your existing donors, board members, volunteers, families, corporate partners, giving-circle members, and others already connected to your organization. Then ask: who else is connected to these individuals?

One donor can potentially lead you to a spouse. A board member can lead you to a colleague. A planned gift can lead you to the next generation of a family. A giving circle can introduce you to 20 other philanthropically engaged people.

Prospecting shouldn’t just be about finding wealthy people. It should be about finding pathways to people who have both the capacity and a reason to care about your work.

Hard question. However, I think we’re going to move from traditional wealth screening toward much more sophisticated relationship intelligence.

We’re already seeing tools become better at identifying spouses, family relationships, professional connections, philanthropic patterns, and other relationships that would have taken a researcher significantly longer to uncover manually.

But I don’t think technology alone will determine which organizations are successful. The organizations that will consistently grow their donor base will be the ones that combine better data with strong fundraising fundamentals. They’ll use technology to identify possibilities, but they’ll still invest in relationships, personalized outreach, cultivation, and stewardship.