Donor research is essential to building effective fundraising strategies, identifying the right prospects, and making the perfect ask. Tools like DonorAtlas (and others) make donor research easy, but frankly do cost thousands of dollars.

Luckily, there are a variety of lesser-known free resources we’ve seen fundraisers and researchers see success with! In fact, DonorAtlas even uses some of these sources–along with lots of other harder-to-access, less-free data :)

1. 1The Million Dollar List

   

   The Million Dollar List, compiled by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, documents publicly announced gifts of $1 million or more. Unfortunately, the data hasn’t been updated since 2015, but the website is still a very useful starting point, offering tens of thousands of historical giving records.

2. 2Bloomberg Billionaires Index

   

   Wondering where UHNW individuals are spending their money? The Bloomberg Billionaires Index tracks the net worth of the richest individuals globally in real time, including details on their business holdings, investments, and philanthropy.

3. 3Perplexity

   

   Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine (with a free tier!). Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity summarizes information from multiple online sources and is generally more up-to-date than other AI platforms like ChatGPT. It can be a helpful starting point, but as with any off-the-shelf AI model, it certainly has limitations to be aware of–for example, it could hallucinate and make up data, it is limited in its response length,and, of course, it’s not specifically designed for donor research.

4. 4Google News Alerts

   

   Have a donor, foundation, or topic you want to receive regular updates on? Google Alerts are free and easy to set up, and will notify you whenever your subject of interest shows up in the news (for example, there’s a new press release about a gift they made).

5. 5Google Advanced Search

   

   Want to research an individual or organization, but not finding relevant information? Try putting keywords into your Google searches using Google Advanced Search. With Advanced Search, you can add on “annual report,” “990,” “philanthropic giving,” “political giving history,” or other specific terms that will narrow your results. Here’s a guide to getting started!

The bottom line

These resources won’t replace a full research platform like DonorAtlas, but they’re fast, free starting points when you’re building a list, filling in a profile, or staying current on top prospects.