Northwest Research

Here are some easy to use resources for people doing prospect research in the Greater Seattle Area:

Library Resources

http://www.kcls.org/databases/a_z.cfm

The King County Library has many resources you can use from home. I would recommend using the Biography Resource Center, ABI Inform Trade and Industry, General One File. Factiva, Proquest for Washington State Newspapers, Dun and Bradstreet Million Dollar Database and Reference USA. If you use these you will find basic biographic, business and financial information. If you use the Washington State Newspaper Database, you won’t need to  use Seattle PI or Seattle Times sites.

Seattle Public Library, has Foundation Directory Online available only in the library

KCLS has a number of nonprofit resources at their nonprofit resource center

http://www.kcls.org/philanthropy/

For property information

King County IMAP can provide you with property values.

http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations/gis/Maps/iMAP.aspx

KNOWX will provide “pay per view” property record information

http://www.knowx.com

For Large Corporations

Insider trading information can be found here

http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.asp

Marketwatch or Google Finance, Yahoo Finance can also provide you with biographies and salary information for publicly traded companies.

For Philanthropic Information

Free Foundation Giving Information can be found at Nozasearch

https://www.nozasearch.com/

But you must have an annual subscription for individual donors. If you can afford it, try

http://www.donoryes.com/

DonorYes.com is a free prospect research tool, allowing researchers to locate previous gifts that your prospective donor has given. This tool only searches .org and .edu domains – where most charitable gifts can be found.

http://www2.guidestar.org/

Guidestar provides 990s for foundations and other nonprofit organizations

http://www.opensecrets.org/

Open Secrets provides political giving information

For Donor Connections

Zoominfo has biographies that often include current and past civic and philanthropic involvement

http://www.zoominfo.com/

and of course our planetary database

http://www.google.com

What are your favorite sources for searching in Seattle?

I’ll be an exhibitor at the Northwest Development Officers Association conference on January 28th. If you are an established client or have an interest in learning more about donor research, please stop by.