Introduction

fr&c’s giftsearch is a database of donations and donors to Australian nonprofits, all of them reported in the public domain, compiled by Fundraising Research & Consulting’s staff.

It’s designed to help fundraisers and researchers in the not-for-profit sector to find good information on philanthropic giving in Australia,  and save you time when researching a prospect or donor’s known philanthropic giving.

It contains records of over 90,000 philanthropic gifts, company sponsorships and trustees for a range of Australian nonprofits

“Nonprofits” includes charities, universities and schools, museums and arts organisations, as well as campaigning organisations

The database includes

·         Donor’s name

·         Recipient organisation’s name

·         Recipient’s postcode

·         Recipient organisation’s type (for example – “Education/Training” or “Arts/Culture”)

·         Where the information is available it also contains the donation value or donation band (for example “$5000-$10000”)

·         Year that donation was made/recorded

The database includes the names of trustees and patrons of leading Australian nonprofits.

We include, for some records, additional notes on the donation – for example where the specific purpose of a gift is given in the public record.

For every record we show the website or document from which the information was sourced. NB these links are all current at the time the data is uploaded, but FR&C has no control or responsibility for any subsequent changes to the source website - so please be aware that some of these links will inevitably go out of date.

The database is fully searchable on any of these fields, and any combination of these fields. Users can search by name or partial name, for example, or put together a search combining recipient type (“Arts/Culture”) with amount (“More than $1000”).

Search results can be exported, instantly, into an Excel file. NB there is an export limit of 500 records per search.

2.    Running some basic searches

The database is fully searchable on any field, and any combination of these fields. Users can search by name or partial name, for example, or put together a search combining recipient type (“Arts/Culture”) with amount (“More than $1000”).

The search engine allows searches on a full name, or on partial name. In the “Donor Full Name” enter all or part of the name of the person you are searching for. (For example, to find donors whose surname is Smith or Smithson or Blacksmith, search for “smith”.)

SEARCH ON DONATION VALUES REQUIRES THAT YOU ENTER THE VALUE WITH NO $ SIGN AND NO COMMAS.

3.    Exporting data

When you have found the information you want, you can download it direct to an Excel spreadsheet – look for the button at the foot of the search results.

NB there is an export limit of 500 records per search.

Please note that the donation values in the database are in text format so won't sort by value while you're in the online search - you can sort your results by value once you've exported them to an Excel file

4.    Running more complex searches – some examples of searches combining different criteria

Find donations by cause:

You can search on any cause, or “Activity Type” of charitable activity. So, for example, a search on “Environment/Conservation” will find all the donations in Donor Search that have been made to environmental organisations.

Remember that you can instantly export your search results into an Excel file. Just click on “Export to CSV”.

Find donations to a specific charity:

In the Search form, click on “Recipient Name” in the search box and enter the name of the charity, or any part of its name. Click Search.

Build lists of prospects who support a particular type of cause:

In the Quick Search box, click on “Recipient’s Activity/Type” in the drop down list and select the type of cause (for example “Health” or “Welfare”). Click Search. 

If you want to search for recipient organisations who are classified in more than one activity category, for example "Arts/Culture" and "Education/Training", you can use the boolean search box to do this - for this example you need to type in "+arts" followed by a space and then "+education". The search won't work without the space before the second "+".

Build lists of prospects who have given to nonprofits in a defined geographic area:

In the Advanced Search page, chose the “Recipient Postcode” search box. Enter the postcode for an area that interests you. For example, “2000” will find all the recipient organisations in the Sydney CBD.

Choosing the “postcode starts with” option and entering “20” will find all recipient organisations whose postcodes begin with “20..”, so it will find Sydney CBD and also the wider Sydney area covered by those postcodes.

Note that the search is for the recipient organisation, not the donor.

Check your donor’s other philanthropic interests:

You have a supporter or donor and want to find out her other donations and affiliations.

In the Quick Search box, click on “Surname” in the search box and enter your supporter’s surname. Click Search.Or, in the Advanced Search box, enter your supporter’s name in the “Donor Full Name” search box and click Search.

Some notes on specific points about the data

1. Donation values:  Please note that the donation values in the database are in text format so won't sort by value while you're in the online search - you can sort your results by value once you've exported them to an Excel file. SEARCH ON VALUES REQUIRES THAT YOU ENTER THE VALUE WITH NO $ SIGN AND NO COMMAS.

2. The 'year' field: Some organisations whose data we have included don't specify the year a donation applies to. Where a donation appears in the annual report for a specific year or is otherwise reasonably attributable to a particular year, we have put that year in the database in the 'year' field. Where that is not the case, for example where a general 'honour roll' is listed with no donation dates, the date in the 'year' field is the year it appeared on the website or annual report, and you will find a note in the 'notes on donation' field which gives further details where those are available

3. How far back does the data go? We started work on compiling the data in 2009, so most of the data is from the last couple of years and does not go back further than that. However we are continually adding both new organisations and data, and older donation data as well.

    Any questions which aren’t answered here?

      Contact us via the FR&C website, or email us at info@fundraisingresearch.com.au, or call us on +61 28005 1952 or +61 2 8003 7337