Why ResearchPoint is a Prospect Researcher's best friend!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Target Analytics products, The Raiser's Edge, and ResearchPoint/WealthPoint are used by my organization. The Raiser's Edge is the database used by all Institutional Advancement staff. The ResearchPoint/WealthPoint module is used by the Prospect Research/Prospect Management team. The focus of my review will be how our team uses Target Analytics' ResearchPoint. It solves the business problem of data mining and prospect research for new donors to our institution.
Pros
- Seamless integration between verified prospect information in ResearchPoint and The Raiser's Edge's Prospect tab
- Easily decipherable and segmented real estate, business information, and gifts to other organizations
- A different data source update schedule than our other wealth screening vendors
- Clean and clear, customizable profiles with several places to add Notes
Cons
- Confirmed relationships needs to be a field that can be synced to The Raiser's Edge
- Philanthropic giving, when synced to the Prospect tab, needs to be able to be sorted by dollar value (like in Excel); this is a change that would need to happen in The Raiser's Edge
- With increasing competition from other wealth screening vendors, it would be useful if data sources were updated more frequently (i.e. real estate and giving).
Likelihood to Recommend
ResearchPoint is well suited for Prospect Research, especially if the user has Raiser's Edge as their main database given its integration capabilities with qualified data; however, it is not necessary. I used the Target Analytics product that came before ResearchPoint (The Researcher's Edge) as a stand-alone prospect research database for about a year. For small shops that do not have a prospect researcher or prospect research team, it could even be used by gift officers looking for new prospects or for wealth data on their known prospects.
Once systems are in place, the content is fairly intuitive and easy to navigate. The product is really a one-stop-shop, find prospects, wealth screen them, verify the data (the product saves you time by verifying a lot for you already), sync your findings to The Raiser's Edge, and if you'd like, export or print a professional-looking profile to a .pdf for your president or gift officer.
