Database Screening

If you are looking for major donor prospects for a new programme, to meet your campaign targets, or simply to refresh your donor pool, then one of the most effective first steps is to look at your existing donors and supporters. Existing supporters are already demonstrating an affinity to your organisation – if they also have the capacity and the inclination to support you at a higher level then they represent your best major donor prospects.

Using our bespoke and GDPR-compliant Database Screening service, Factary can help you review and understand the capacity, affinity and inclination of your existing supporter base, in order to identify and prioritise the best and most likely potential major donor prospects in your database.

Our approach to the Screening process

Factary have completely revolutionised the way we undertake Database Screenings – this is the most exciting development in Database Screening provision in the UK for decades.

We have devised an all-new bespoke approach which no longer relies on matching your dataset against a finite number of potentially wealthy individuals. Instead, we make use of a wide variety of tools and methods to prioritise your entire donor dataset, identifying which of your prospects not only have sufficient wealth to give at a major donor level, but who also show strong motivations to give or demonstrate a deep connection to your cause.

We undertake a variety of techniques in our new Screening approach. These include:

  • making use of socio- and geo-demographic factors to help identify the potential capacity and/or affluence of your supporters;
  • overlaying a variety of data points to identify charitable or professional interests and affiliations; and
  • analysing client data which denotes connection to the cause, such as donation history or affinity data.

Finally, using our own custom-designed combination of scores and data points based on these techniques and more, we prioritise the database, identifying potential major donors from the wider pool of supporters.

The entire process is bespoke; we can tailor it to your needs based on the data you can provide to us.

Screening results and reports

Following the initial Database Screening process, you will receive your preliminary results, providing a clear and prioritised dataset of supporters. This will allow you to segment and identify individuals or groups of supporters that might represent excellent major donor prospects.

Following on from this, you would then choose which of the potential major donor prospects you want Factary to report on.

We provide a wide variety of levels of reporting depending on your needs. Please do contact us for sample reports, pricing or more information about our Screening process generally.

A note on data security

Data security is of the utmost importance to us. Our staff is trained in all relevant areas of GDPR compliance and are fully aware of their responsibilities when handling and processing your data. We provide safe and secure methods of data transfer and storage. We make no use of data other than for the purposes of carrying out processing instructions. We do not keep data longer than is necessary; all original client data is destroyed at most three months after the completion of a project. This data is not retained, shared or sold while it’s in our possession.

If you’d like to read more about Factary’s approach to data security, please have a look at our privacy policy.

General Data Protection Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in May 2018, outlines how all organisations are to legally process personal data, and the rights of data subjects. The GDPR is of particular importance to the prospect research community; Factary has been heavily involved in sector-wide initiatives to understand how prospect research fits within the ethical and legal boundaries of the new regulation.

Compliance with data protection guidelines

We understand that compliance with GDPR is paramount for the future of prospect research. For this reason we undertook a thorough review of Factary’s own data processing, including our approach to Database Screening. Our aim was to eliminate any risk to our clients when they undertake a Screening with us, but also to improve our Screening approach and make it more efficient and effective in identifying potential major donors.

From 2017, we have entirely updated our approach to Screening. One major change is that we now no longer hold a database of wealthy individual prospects, as this was deemed to be high risk under GDPR – not only for Factary but also for our clients. Our approach to Screening is now built on processes which are not only GDPR-compliant but which provide clients with a potential major donor pool based on a rich variety of factors.

We want to ensure that clients understand their data protection obligations, and that they have undergone and implemented all the necessary organisational compliance requirements before undertaking a Screening with Factary. If you are uncertain about how to go about this, or need help with reviewing your GDPR-compliance status, then please get in touch and we’ll discuss how Factary can help.