New online community for prospect research fundraisers
Howard Lake | 19 September 2007 | News
A team of prospect research specialists have launched fResource.org (to be pronounced ‘free-source’), a website “to help you in your fundraising by providing key information on products and tools that you can use to find new funding and develop existing streams”. Although produced in the UK it is designed to have a international audience.
The site aims to promote prospect research but also develop into an online community where fundraising researchers “share and exchange ideas about finding funding sources and the products and services that can help us do our jobs”.
The site is free to use although registration is required to access some facilities. The site aims to be funded though display and recruitment advertising and some paid-for services.
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Built using Open Source content management system Drupal, the site offers tools to enable users to contribute their own resources and links, and to rate them.
Registered users can:
· communicate with other users via the site
· add content to the site such as new products and resources, articles, organisations, news stories and events
· track what they have added and uploaded
· subscribe to email alerts to keep track of relevant new resources
· write reviews of products and rate them out of 10
The site will also allow users to become a “fResource champion for a particular product”, which allows them “to show your expertise and share it with others”.
Matt Ide, creator of the site and founder of Manchester-based prospect research consultancy Hands on Research, describes it as “the world’s first online community for prospect researchers and fundraisers to share knowledge and experience of funding resources and tools.”
The rest of the team consists of Caroline Presho, Marketing Manager; Richard Sheppard, Lead Developer; and a team of five associate editors in the UK, Israel and New Zealand.
During its development the site had attracted subscriptions from 385 people around the world. In its first two days, despite the server going down for a short while, the site had already received at least 10 new contributions including job vacancies, publications, and organisations.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.