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Welcome to Europe, where we now have one currency, one frontier, and one and a half prospect researchers.

OK, that last part is not really true. In continental Europe we have at least 10 prospect researchers, myself included. The United Kingdom has more than 200. We are few in number because prospect research is still a very new profession here. We have a long way to go before we can implement the techniques that North American prospect researchers take for granted. We’re learning fast, however, and the research picture is changing–both for better and for worse.

Prospect research in Europe faces historical, linguistic, cultural, and organizational barriers, to name a few. Below I’ve described some of the most common challenges researchers confront and the tactics I’ve used to overcome them.

A culture of privacy

The chair of a very generous Dutch foundation told me that he didn’t want to see a research report on prospective donors to the foundation. Creating a list of names was intrusive and could cause embarrassment to himself and others. Continue doing the research, he said, but no reports please.

This attitude toward prospect research reflects not only its novelty in Europe, but also a long-standing fear people have of being persecuted because of their association with certain groups–a fear of being on someone’s ‘list’” This feeling is particularly strong in Spain, which has recent memories of a harsh, selectively murderous dictatorship, and the Netherlands, which suffered from its occupation by the Nazis during World War II.

In response to these fears, in 1998 the European Union initiated data protection legislation, but each nation’s implementation of the law has varied in strictness. Spain has seen a number of high-profile court cases, for example, attacking the national telephone company, Telefónica–also the country’s main provider of mailing lists - for leasing lists of names without specific permissions from clients, a common business practice in the US or UK. Frankly, it’s a no-win situation for prospect researchers because the data protection authorities are uncertain of how to deal with the non-profit sector.

As individual prospect researchers we must use subtlety and care to produce useful information that does not appear to be too personal and to ensure that our working practices are well within the court’s definition of privacy. Typically, I have to share different levels of information with different people; my Dutch foundation Chair, for example, would get to see a very limited summary of key names and publicly-available data, whereas his Head of Fundraising would be shown more personal data. In both cases I have to strictly exclude certain categories of data including trades-union membership, religion and hearsay.

Parlez-vous prospect?

Some of the biggest barriers to prospect research have nothing to do with privacy legislation, however. Take language: today’s united Europe communicates in more than a dozen languages.

To work “across Europe” a prospect researcher should be able to read at least four languages and preferably be able to speak them, too. Yes, some material is in English, and some programs and Web sites will translate almost anything into Pidgin English, but one day you’re going to come face to face with Wie is wie in Nederland (Who’s Who in the Netherlands) and realize that an evening class in Dutch would have been helpful.

Mastering several languages will help prospect researchers take full advantage of the limited resources available to them in Europe.

Directory Enquiries

Tracking down even the most basic information can be difficult for those unaccustomed to European conventions of names, titles, and addresses.

Names and titles. In Frankfurt, the friends of Dr. Ing. Herbert Schlickendorf don’t call him “Ing.” That’s part of his title: “Dr. Ing.” means he has a doctorate in engineering. This construction is common in the Netherlands, Belgium, and German-speaking countries.
In Madrid, Vicenta Filball Almirall is not “Señora Almirall,” she is “Señora Filball Almirall.” Spanish surnames for men and women consist of both the paternal and the maternal surname, in that order. European aristocratic titles can be even more confusing. “Michael Pearson” may go by “Lord Cowdray,” an entirely different name that will wreak havoc on your institution’s database. This peculiarity of the aristocracy arises because the first Lord or Baron or whatever was typically awarded the Barony of a geographic area, and his title reflects that (‘Duke of Argyll’for example). The family continues to retain their regular surname (in that case, Cambell).

In Europe, Sutter publishes a series of “Who’s Who” books in English that can help you sort out this information. The Web site (www.whoswho-sutter.com/) provides the Italian and Russian editions as free searchable databases, and I hope Sutter will soon extend this service to its other national titles–though it will probably be for a fee. Publishers in other countries offer their own Who’s Who books, too, but the language problem crops up again: Who’s Who in Yugoslavia is a tricky read unless you happen to be fluent in Slav. Some countries also publish guides to etiquette or correct forms of address that might help.

Addresses and phone numbers. Europeans use post-office boxes much more extensively than North Americans. For example, my mailing address in Barcelona is “AP 393, 08461 St Esteve de Palautordera.” If you want to visit my office, however, you would go to “Can Parróquia, St Pere de Villamajor.” Don’t mail to prospects at their street addresses if they have a post-office box. Finding address and phone number information can be tricky. The Who’s Who books used to list many home addresses, but security worries are making this less common. Fortunately, the telephone companies in many European countries now have good Web sites that provide home address information. The German phone directory, www.teleauskunft.de, is available in English and French as well as German, for instance. Home address information for board members only is sometimes listed in company registers, like the one available at www.companies-house.gov.uk for British companies. For the UK you can also purchase an inexpensive electoral register, listing everyone entitled to vote in the UK with home addresses from various suppliers.

Finding income and assets

When clients ask me to research their prospects’ income and assets, I dream about living in the United States, where corporate information is so much more readily available. In Europe, even determined sleuthing will, at most, turn up a rough estimate of these figures. My best strategies for determining income are to

• Speak to head-hunters (otherwise known as recruitment consultants or executive-search firms) about the pay scale of jobs similar to the one your prospect holds;
• Scan the job ads for similar jobs that might list a salary range;and
• Use company annual reports, in some countriesat least, to establish the directors’ salaries.

There are an increasing number of “rich lists,” such as those compiled by the German magazine Bilanz (www.bilanz.ch), or the British EuroBusiness (www.eurobusiness.uk.com). These lists of the country or region’s wealthiest citizens contain just a few top names, however, and rely largely on shareholder information and secondary suppliers, such as Dun & Bradstreet, that are gaining ground in Europe.

For the more modestly wealthy, asset and income information are hard to establish with any certainty. Property assets are also more a matter for rumour and conjecture than hard analysis; my attempts to establish just how many hectares Baron von Landgros owns often resulted in failure.

Researching businesses

Business ownership and value are notoriously difficulty to find as well. While companies such as Dun & Bradstreet are making inroads in this area of data collection, the best resources for this type of information are country-specific and rarely translated into English.

European job titles are difficult to translate both because of language and because corporate structures are very different from those in North American. Most larger companies in continental Europe have two boards: an executive board and a supervisory board. The latter is subject to a wide range of legal requirements, such as the inclusion of a trade union representative, for example. The idea is to control the activities of the company’s executive by ensuring that important decisions, such as changes in share structure or company take-overs have to be passed by the supervisory board. A person sitting on either the executive or the supervisory board is described as a ‘director’ and her/his name appears in the annual report.
The Who’s Who books and professional directories can often help sort out prospects’ titles. K.G. Saur publishes a good selection of directories of professional bodies and their memberships; their coverage is world-wide. And some European professional directories are now online; try www.smlawpub.co.uk for a list of UK barristers from Sweet & Maxwell, for example.

Information on corporate owners and insiders is extremely difficult to come by. But there are some gems. For example, the wonderful Financieel Economisch Lexicon, published in Dutch by Elsevier, contains details on 25,000 Dutch companies, with contact information, financials, directors’ photos and biographies, and lists of significant shareholders. Articles in a country’s main business newspapers can also help.

Other resources

As your research delves into European prospects’ interests and philanthropic activities, the most productive searching methods require person-to-person contact. I’ll try Who’s Who first, and then go to the web. Then I pick up the phone.

I use the phone a lot, and it works. When making such calls, I always abide by the code of conduct of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement. I explain who I am and the purpose of my research, although normally I cannot reveal the name of my client.

Few European nonprofits have prospect lists - although many, if one delves deep enough, have lists of alumni, donors, clients, members or supporters. Because of the controversies over data that I mention above, and because of a long history of public, not private sector, funding there is little co-ordination within organizations of lists or data on donors and prospects.

Another methods of keeping up with prospects or identifying new ones is to monitor the media. The press in Europe is generally good, with lots of international coverage and a focus on people, especially in what we call the “yellow press”: the society magazines. Hello in the UK, Hola in Spain, Paris Match in France, and their equivalents are useful and, of course, an irresistible read! The German version, Bunte (www.bunte.de), is now creating a Web site about German society.

Tapping into peer networks

Fund raising is still fairly mechanical here in continental Europe. Too many fundraisers send a letter for solicitations they should be making in person. The personal approach is particularly important in the countries that border the Mediterranean, where almost all significant business is done face-to-face. These strong interpersonal networks make peer review (a.k.a. peer screening) a great technique for gathering prospect information.

In this process, a group of volunteers reviews a list of prospects’ names and then comments on what they know about each prospect, such as the person’s giving motivations, assets, and connections to wealth or to the campus. In Europe these reviews tend to feature a few bottles of good Rioja wine and a discussion of the institution’s best prospects over the course of an evening.

I suspect Europeans are more reluctant than North Americans to classify people by wealth–the subject is still taboo in many cultures. But peer reviews instead unearth other valuable information, like the extensive network of contacts, often across geographic frontiers, that links your volunteer leadership to the prospects you’re researching.

Persistence pays

European prospect research is not easy. It really requires knowledge of foreign languages and a willingness to go offline to pick up the phone, check the library, or speak to colleagues. You may not get all the information you need at once. But there’s always mañana.