Factary launches database of donors and supporters

Howard Lake | 18 September 2009 | Blogs

• Tagged with:
• Charity Commission
• funding
• Giving/Philanthropy
• Major gift
• Prospect research

I have just had a trial of “Phi”, a new product from Factary (www.factary.com). It is a database of donors and supporters (trustees, patrons, etc) which currently contains over 100,000 records. Chris Carnie at Factary tells me that the information in the database has been collected from websites, accounts and other public domain sources, and that every record includes a link to the website or document from which the data comes.

You can search the database by a number of fields, and can search by several fields (e.g. amount and cause, and location). You can download the information into a csv file. Charities can subscribe for £500 + VAT. Freelancers pay more, with substantial discounts for introducing charity subscribers.

I think that this is a very interesting development, and is a resource that could prove very useful for researchers and fundraisers. I have been working on a similar project myself for a few years, and have been pipped to the post. However, I have a few reservations about this product. When I discussed this idea with someone a few years ago, I groaned when I was told that such a database would need c 1 million records. I am still nowhere near that, having slightly fewer records than Factary.

I am not that keen on the layout, and clicking on the source link doesn’t open a new page, so don’t wander too far. If you are checking for particular locations for the recipient, then check the region, and postcode, and city, if possible, to be sure to collect all the possible matches. Not all records include a donation amount.

If you are interested in subscribing, then ask for a trial, or for advice on how many records there are that meet the criteria that you will be using.

Finbar Cullen
ResearchPlus

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.