Uncovering Donor Intent

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Tags: cross-reference data integrity donor intent Meredith Hancks prospect research
Categories: Fund Development Prospect Research
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Many years ago, a couple gave our institution some land. The land was subsequently sold, and the proceeds have been sitting in an endowment, but were never awarded. We need to determine how to honor donor intent and spend these earnings. The parts of this project that make it exciting:

1. The donors are both deceased and have been for quite some time.
2. The name on the account lists the woman with a name other than her actual name (this data entry error was realized later).
3. The donor records list no other relationships (in fact, there is no record for the wife either. Just one record, for the man, and it says he's widowed).
4. The gift was long enough ago that it doesn't show up in my database with any details, just a total.

Sounds fun, right? YES!

Let's say the request looked like this: James and Judy Mars Endowment Fund for Educational Research. Original land donation in 1975, which was subsequently sold and the proceeds created an endowment.

So here's where the journey took me...

I began my search by pulling records for all Marses in my database to see if there were relatives who just didn't get linked together. None. I also asked the requestor if we had any paperwork on this gift that might give me some clues. Then I looked up James Mars in Accurint. Found a listing that matched address of last record and birth date that I had. Clicked on the "relatives, neighbors, associates" link -no results. So I looked up Judy Mars. No records. Try just "J Mars," and only get the records I already found for James.

Next I checked in the SSDI to see if I could find a list of any family members or a link to an obituary for James or Judy. I found James' listing, which gave me his deceased date. But no records for Judy at all. At this point I received a file from the accounting office that had some copies of the original information. This is what gave me the info that the wife's name was Joyce, not Judy (another reason to type notes instead of relying on handwriting interpretation). And, we found a few letters back and forth that indicated the main interests that the Mars family had when giving the land to us involved studying the plant and animal life on that land. Also found an obituary for Joyce, which gave the names and locations of her children at the time. So I was able to reconstruct the donor profile and find names and spouse names for each child, along with current contact information, and also to determine that this family was giving us land for educational research purposes...specifically to study the land. There were provisions within the original documentation that indicated it might be sold at some indefinite point in the future, and it became clear that educational research within the field of ecology of the area would fulfill what the donors' original intent was with the gift. And now we have scholarship funds to use for scholarships ecology students!