If your prospects are part of the corporate and business sector, but you never studied business — or your prospect pool’s specific industry — have no fear! As prospect researchers, we are adept at diving into the unknown, absorbing and synthesizing information as we diligently wade through profiles, databases and more.  

But it also doesn’t hurt to get a head start with some tips, tricks and resources. My intention in writing this article is to provide some of the resources I have found useful in the prospect research process for my university’s business school and corporate/foundation relations development officer. Hopefully these potential sources and databases will help build out your wealth capacity and analysis skills!

3 Useful Tips

1. If you work at a college or university, investigate what the campus library has to offer, particularly the databases they may access. Faculty and staff are allowed to use library resources for research and instruction.  

There are many database choices at my campus library I find useful for my corporate and business school research. If there is a business librarian at your school, connect with them to see what resources are available. If not in an academic setting, use your local public library and investigate what databases they have to help with your research. Some local universities and colleges will allow you to pay a membership to the school library and gain some access to their databases. (You might even find some of the same resources at your local public library!)

2. If you want to understand your corporate relations development officers and what their job entails, consider checking out the Network for Academic Corporate Relations Officers (NACRO). 

NACRO is a professional development community for individuals working in higher education and tasked with facilitating collaboration within the industry. If your organization can swing sending you to their annual conference, consider checking the program out and attending. I was very lucky to attend one of their conferences and learned a great deal about the types of research that helps corporation relations officers. 

3. For definitions of business terms, try using Investopedia, a free resource. When a term stumps you, go there and see what they say.  
Favorite Resources: Free and Subscription-Based

Corporate and Business Sources

• Wallmine: A free account will allow access to most of the information you need (paid subscriptions are also available). Searching for a public company by name or ticker symbol yields a page devoted to that company. Executive bios, executive compensations, stock filings, current and historical stock prices, and recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings are all there. 
  • Caveat: In fact, there are a number of sites other than Wallmine that will scrape SEC filings for their information and then provide that in a searchable format.  Not all are created equal — but there are some that are better at searching for stock sales while others are better at bios and compensation information. Always check www.SEC.gov to make sure the stock holding information Wallmine (or any other site) reports is current. There can be a slight lag time between the two sources.
• Wall Street Oasis: This resource provides salary information on investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, consulting, accounting, corporate finance, financial planning and analysis and more. From intern/summer associate to top dog in these industries, this is a great resource. Sign up is free, but their affordable paid subscription will allow downloadable tables of the salaries of the top firms in each category.
• Crunchbase: This has start-up information, including funders (by name) and basic information on private company data. Private companies are difficult to research well because they are not required to file the same reports as public companies.
• PitchBook: This is the leading resource for comprehensive data, research and insights spanning the global capital markets. Public and private company information is included within the database. Pitchbook is very robust and contains executive/director bios, top executives on merger deals, financial data on public companies, some private company information, explanations of trends in various industries, etc. The subscription is pricey, so check if your library has purchased the database if you work for a college or university.  
• OpenCorporates: In the spirit of transparency, OpenCorporates is the largest free database of corporate data. Providing corporate insight freely to promote and foster trust in the corporations that are a daily part of all of our lives. Check out an Apra Connections article all about OpenCorporates here.

Alumni and Individual Sources

• LinkedIn: Even if you only have a free account, you can still search for alumni based on where they live and by industry. LinkedIn has gradually been adding more and more data fields so you might even find some information about volunteerism, or other prospect affinities!

Foundation Sources

• Foundation Directory: This resource has all the information on grants and foundations, with filters based on corporate sponsored foundations. It’s fee based, but can often be accessed at public libraries. Check to see if your campus library has access.
• ProPublica: To get you started when you don’t have access to Foundation Directory. You can view the 990s of foundations.

Compensation and Salary Guides

• Robert Half 2023 Salary Guide: Covering many industries, each year certain industry salary guides can be downloaded for free. Robert Half is just the start — many search firms and consultancies will publish their industry- or region-specific salary guides. This can be particularly helpful for those esoteric professions or locations outside of your normal research scope.

Please feel free to contact me with questions about these sources or about any other sources you find. I will be delighted to hear from you and happy to help you if I can.

Tracey Harwell Robertson
Associate Director of Prospect Research, Emory University

Tracey Robertson is an experienced research analyst at Emory University working within their advancement and alumni engagement division. She supports the law school, the business school, and the corporate and foundation relations teams.