Due diligence is a crucial element of any fundraising campaign. It verifies that a company or individual is who they say they are, provides important details regarding their past and relationships, and helps investors evaluate your company’s potential for success before making the decision to invest in your company.
You can be successful by conducting thorough due diligence, regardless of whether you are a business looking for investment or a charitable organization. The ability to conduct due diligence early in the process allows you to quickly identify and weed out bad partners before you invest your time and energy in forming relationships that might not be worth it.
For instance the case of a donor who has had a history of controversy or has taken part in actions in the past, this might be a problem. Having the ability to conduct due diligence on potential donors in the early stages of the process allows you to find out prior to committing your valuable resources to a relationship which may not be compatible with your company’s values or goals.
A great due diligence program is quick, thorough, and organized. It should be able take in huge amounts of public information from various sources, such as news media websites as well as social networks and even grey literature–and deliver digestible reports that can be easily shared across teams. It should also be able automatically search through millions of documents and provide an organized, clear overview of your business that is easy to read and share.
