Broadening your alert horizon

There’s such a great sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing a prospect research profile. You can dot the i’s, cross the t’s, hit ‘save’ and move onto the next assignment.

But if you think about it, that moment is really the starting line. What happens after that?

Well, an opportunity for us to have a conversation with the front line fundraiser assigned to that prospective donor, to begin with.

• Did the profile answer all of your questions?
• Is there any further work to be done?
• What questions remain unanswered in the work that the fundraiser can discover on their next visit?

And most importantly, this signals the beginning – or deepening – of the relationship between your organization and the donor. The gift. Stewardship. Continuing engagement.

That profile is just the beginning.

If that prospective donor is one of your organization’s top volunteers – a trustee, for example, or a top 100 donor or prospect – your work as a researcher isn’t complete, either. You probably already know that it’s time to set up an alert so that you don’t miss important news about that person (or their company, or their foundation).

And there are lots of places that we all usually go to set up alerts (including Google/Bing, Lexis Nexis for Development Professionals, iWave, RelSci, and others), but I wanted to show you three other resources that you may not have tried yet to get alerts of a different kind:

Google Trends: In addition to setting up alerts in the search engine, also consider setting up an alert (called a ‘subscription’) in Google Trends. That way, if your alert trends as a topic, you’ll be one of the first to know that something is up. This works great for people, topics, and companies.

Mention: I’ve written about Mention a few times before, and it’s because we use it here at HBG. Besides the usual news alerts, Mention allows you to receive updates from mentions on the web, on blogs, social media, videos, and more, which allows you to cast a much wider net. Their Boolean search is kind of wonky, but once you get the hang of it you have access to a wider range of channels than just a search engine. Results can be delivered via email or RSS feed (which is super handy: set up a free StartMe page to manage all your RSS alerts/feeds). Mention is a fee-based resource, but they offer a 30% discount for nonprofits.

Twitter: If you’re following an account on Twitter, you can set the service to send you a mobile alert whenever that account tweets. Follow this hyperlink to watch a short YouTube video of how to set it up.

What other off-the-beaten-track alert resources do you use?