5 tools you need for your wealth screening process

Before you make "the ask,” you need to know how much your supporters can give.

Wealth screening is the practice of tailoring your outreach strategy to your donors’ respective income levels.

By gaining a deeper understanding of your supporters’ assets, you gain a clearer picture of their capacity to give.

Wealth screening is often used to uncover major gift donors within your audience (after all, the top 50 largest donors in the U.S. gave a whopping $28 billion to charity in 2021). And the top 1% across income distribution are responsible for roughly a third of all charitable giving.

However, soliciting these high-net-worth individuals isn’t the only benefit wealth screening offers. In fact, the average American household donates $2,581 to charity annually—a figure that can significantly impact your organization. Plus, the average online donation ranges between $79-$118, a number many income brackets can afford.

Translation: Wealth screening isn’t just about uncovering major donors. It's about customizing your messaging strategy to match a potential donor’s income level, increasing your chances of securing a gift to your organization.

That said, wealth screening can be a tricky process. And you’ll need the right tools and technology to incorporate it into your larger fundraising strategy. Below, we dive into several wealth screening tools available on the Givebutter platform.

5 tools to make wealth screening easier

Wealth screening allows you to capture donor data related to supporters’ assets, income bracket, and total net worth. Below, we dive into five tools you’ll want to implement into your wealth screening process.

1. Donor Search 🔍

To better understand a donor’s capacity to give, you’ll probably need to invest in wealth screening software.

Fortunately, Givebutter offers a native integration with DonorSearch, one of the most trusted wealth screening platforms available. With DonorSearch, you can access the platform’s rich prospect research data and store it directly within your customer relationship management (CRM) platform (more on this below).

DonorSearch is leveraged by nonprofit organizations of all sizes, fraternities and sororities, religious organizations, and many others to help estimate supporters’ giving capacity. The platform stores past giving history, actionable insights, and other wealth tools in one place, so you can tailor your ask amount to the individual. Plus, wealth data for all prospective donors is stored directly in your Givebutter contact profiles.

2. Givebutter’s nonprofit CRM 📊

Once you acquire wealth data from DonorSearch, you need a place to store it—this is where Givebutter’s built-in donor management tools and CRM comes in.

If you plan to make wealth screening a key component of your fundraising strategy, you need a CRM platform. A CRM platform allows you to keep a database of all current and potential donors in one place, offering you a clear depiction of your audience. Plus, it provides an in-depth profile of each supporter, allowing you to view past donations and communications with each individual.

Givebutter’s donor management suite includes the world’s first completely free CRM, built exclusively for nonprofit organizations. Givebutter’s free tools makes donor management easier, allowing you to quickly build contact profiles, implement activity tracking (like past donations!), and record custom fields like income level, net worth, real estate ownership, or other wealth markers.

3. Segments 👯

Once you’ve gathered data on a donor’s wealth and stored it in your CRM platform, it’s time to cultivate an effective outreach strategy.

Custom segments allow you to divvy up your database based on several different traits, such as geographic location, past donor history, demographics, or—in this case—wealth indicators. By segmenting your list based on supporters’ respective assets, you can customize your messaging to each group, getting you one step closer to your fundraising goal.

For example, for individuals earning an annual income of $50,000 today, you might send out a quick text blast that reads, “Donate $20 today!” For households earning between $100,000-$250,000, you might ask for a gift in the $100-$500 range. Finally, for the few major donors on your list, you might ask for a substantial gift in the four-to-five figures (these asks are particularly common under special circumstances, such as a capital campaign).

4. Double the Donation 💰💰

Your wealth screening services will often have data related to supporters’ occupations. And if your screening results show a potential donor owns their own business, you might consider soliciting them for matching gifts.

Matching gift campaigns can be an excellent way to increase corporate gifts to your organization, as a company pledges to match donations up to a certain dollar amount. Shockingly, $4–$7 billion matching gift revenue available to nonprofits goes unclaimed each year.

Givebutter’s integration with Double the Donation makes it easy to solicit corporate gift prospects. With Double the Donation’s 360Match Pro platform, nonprofits can easily identify match-eligible donors. From there, you can seamlessly integrate corporate matching into your larger fundraising strategy, whether you’re launching an SMS campaign, hosting a ticketed event, or embedding a donation form on your website.

5. Automated thank yous 📬

It’s no secret that a small “thank you” can make a large impact on your fundraising campaign.

In fact, research shows that first-time donors who receive a thank you within 48 hours of donating are 4X more likely to give again (that’s a 400% boost in retention!).

Fortunately, Givebutter’s automation tools allow you to send thank yous after every online contribution. And you can easily customize these automated receipts with a special message expressing your gratitude for their gift.

If a major gift donor makes a sizable contribution to your organization, an automated thank you might not be enough. You can use ThankView to send personalized videos to your donors in these cases. With ThankView’s integration with Givebutter, you can send personalized videos at scale to anyone who contributed to your campaign. Or, you can leverage the new send with video feature to record a thank-you video on your webcam, then fire it off to major supporters.

Launch your wealth screening strategy with Givebutter

Wealth screening allows you to tailor your outreach strategy to a supporter’s net worth. However, implementing a wealth screening strategy can be tricky—which is why you need the right tools to get you started.

Fortunately, Givebutter is the all-in-one, donor-centric platform that makes it easy to incorporate wealth screening into your fundraising strategy. With Givebutter, you get integrations like DonorSearch, 360MatchPro, and ThankView to research and thank new donor prospects. Plus, Givebutter comes with 130+ fundraising tools, a built-in CRM platform, and marketing automation to help store donor data and customize your outreach strategy.

Ready to see how Givebutter can transform your fundraising strategy? Take a tour to get started.