Higher education

The University would conduct extensive prospect research and cultivate the relationship until a certain point where they would ask for a gift. At that stage, if something adverse came up in due diligence it could create a complicated situation for the fundraisers to unwind. Moreover, they’d already invested a large amount of time and effort into a gift they’d then have to turn down.  

Xapien optimised the operations team's process by building due diligence into prospect research from the start. Instead of spending hours on manual research, Xapien surfaces all relevant information about a prospect in minutes. This means due diligence can be done upfront without holding up the prospect research process. By combining the two processes early on, it helps the fundraising team focus their efforts on which prospects to approach for donations. 

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Dartmouth College’s donor prospect management team conducts thorough research on over a thousand potential donors every year. This helps protect the college’s academic leadership, board members, and overall organisation from reputational risks.

The analysts used to use Google as the primary research tool and distributed lengthy PDF reports to committees which caused delays in fundraising efforts.
Now analysts use Xapien. They simply enter the prospect’s name and press go. Detailed, readable, and easily shareable reports are ready in under ten minutes. Xapien surfaces any potential reputational risks so analysts can focus on providing strategy and advice, and not just gathering information.

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The Operations team had one Research Assistant carrying out the entirety of their prospect research, which carried a lot of unnecessary risk. While great at finding information, the researcher didn’t have enough experience to interpret and assess various risks and there was a risk they might something. The research process was also entirely manual, which was time-consuming and, in some cases, patchy. The researcher would end up spending most of the time looking up information on databases and search engines, and then writing up the results, leaving little time for analysis and interpretation. 

Xapien alleviated all these risks by automating the fact finding. Now, Paula and her team spend more time interpreting the risks that Xapien surfaces and categorises rather than collating the findings. They’ve gone from 4 to 5 hours of reading hundreds of articles online to running a comprehensive report in 15 minutes. Paula’s team can deliver value to the rest of the organisation by adding strategic advice on top of their insights. They stopped wasting time on less problematic cases at the outset and instead prioritised risky subjects and developed strategies for how the University could deal with them. 

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The donor due diligence process involves different teams collaborating. First, the prospect research team delves into a prospect's background, while the fundraising team examines and sends requests for additional investigation. Afterwards, the due diligence team carries out a personalised background check and risk assessment, which can take up to two days. But the real challenge starts when concerns arise after a relationship has been established. At that point, a significant amount of resources has already been invested in the process.  

Xapien's automated background reports provide a full picture of any person or organisation, anywhere in the world, in 5 to 10 minutes. The platform reads and analyses data from across the internet to deliver consolidated, insightful reports including flagged risks, wealth estimates, assets, and associates. By integrating due diligence with prospect research, the two processes work hand in hand instead of holding each other back. Armed with this knowledge, Cambridge University can confidently move forward with fundraising, knowing they have a solid understanding of their prospects.  

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The research team endeavours to dedicate as much time to proactive research—finding new prospects and exploring emerging leads—as they do to reactive research, which involves investigating existing individuals in the pipeline. However, with over 20 fundraisers to support, achieving this balance is a challenge – more time is spent responding to reactive fundraiser requests than carrying out new-name identification, which limits the organisation’s ability to expand into new areas.  

With Xapien, the information that would sometimes take the research team up to half a day to uncover through desk research can now be found in just 10 minutes. This timesaving enables research profiles to be written and delivered in half the time, freeing up researchers to engage in proactive research.  

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