Know Your Donor. Know Your Donor. Know Your Donor.

For giving outside your organization, start with tray.com for political giving. If the person has a family foundation, get the 990 for the organization and see what she gave to and how much. A great source for giving of all kinds is 
taxexemptworld.com.

● Get information from the donor. Probably the best source of information you can have is driven by your curiosity. When you have contact with the donor, asking a lot of questions about interests, inclinations, involvements and passions is a key to finding out what motivates her. Avoid zooming in on the information that relates to your nonprofit. Instead, find out what makes the donor tick. Asking what she is interested in giving to your organization may not, at first, yield as much information as asking what interests the donor pursues in all of her giving. The most successful fundraisers are those that can, over time, secure relevant information that informs their approach to the donor. General and genuine curiosity and interest in the donor yields far more information, and trust, than pecking away at what you want to know about what she thinks about you. Keep this important principle in mind.