There are two types of corporate giving:

1) Sponsorships or other giving to organizations who would like to be associated with your non-profit, such as a children’s clothing company giving to a children’s hospital. This is an example where a gift to your organization can help the corporation’s image and ultimately its profits.

2) Giving that reflects the interests of the owners or majority stock holdings (such as an alum who is a CEO having the company give to his Alma mater).

Here are some strategies I use when hunting for corporate giving information.

When looking for corporations with an interest in a particular segment of the nonprofit world, I’ll often use Foundation Directory Online . I use this at my local library, which is a cooperating collection. If you are a smaller nonprofit without funds for research resources,  the Foundation Center’s Cooperating Collection are free funding information centers in libraries, community foundations, and other nonprofit resource centers that provide a  of Foundation Center publications useful to grant seekers.

I’ll also look at organizations whose endeavors are similar, to see if there are any companies, particularly local companies, that may have a general interest in my nonprofit.

If I am looking for information on a particular company, in addition to the sources listed above, I often use Donoryes. DonorYes.com is a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) designed to take a little of the legwork out of donor research.  The search limits results to .org and .edu URLs, where the majority of online charitable giving content is located.

I almost always search a company’s name using Newsbank America Newspapers through the library, and (or you can use the commercial version at www.newslibrary.com using search teams such as “company name” and the word “donor” or “sponsor” or “philanthropy” Sometimes you can get enough out of the Keyword in Context to not have to buy the article.

I’m a subscriber to  Nozasearch, which provides personal and company giving for a fee, as well as Donorsearch, which has a terrific gift database as part of my subscription. I’ll also check a company’s website, particularly its corporate responsibility and its news sections.

According to the website, the current list is a record of publicly announced charitable gifts of $1 million or more from 2000 to 2010 given by U.S. residents to domestic or international entities across a range of charitable subsectors. The list is updated on a quarterly basis. It contains only publicly announced gifts.

The website allows a person to download the entire dataset, which could be very useful when looking for particular types of principal gift donors.

Enjoy!

Endgame, the site of Seattle area activist researcher George Draffan, has a terrific set of links as well as some corporate profiles

http://www.endgame.org/links.html

Crocodyl

http://www.crocodyl.org/

is a collaborative wiki created by activist nonprofit organizations as well as individual contributors.  This site has great information and corporate profiles.

Both these sites are well researched and have an activist bent, making them particularly useful when performing due diligence before accepting gifts or making grant requests.

Enjoy!

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?

http://www.noza990pf.com/

I’m finding it more useful than Guidestar for historical foundation information. Guidestar only provides the last 3 years of 990 for a foundation, but I’ve found information since 1999 on Noza’s 990 database.

Thanks to Planet Money for pointing out the article.

I found this great new blog, supported by DonorSearch. It is called “New Major Gift Research” and it can be found at http://www.donorsearch.net/new-articles/

This blog provides a summary of known new major gifts over the previous week, and it even has an RSS Feed. It looks like a great place to look when someone asks about recent gifts.