Due diligence is a vital aspect of any fundraising effort. Due diligence validates the identity of a person or business as well as provides information regarding their past and relationships, and allows investors to look over your business prior to investing in you.

You can make a difference by conducting thorough due diligence, regardless of whether you are a business seeking an investment or a philanthropic institution. The ability to run due diligence early in the process enables you to quickly spot and eliminate bad partners prior to investing your time and energy in forming an alliance that may not be Deal Flow Management worth it.

For instance when a donor has controversial associations or actions in the past, this could be a major issue. Being able to conduct due diligence on potential donors in the early stages of the process will allow you to learn before you commit valuable resources to a relationship that may not be in line with your company’s values or mission.

A great due diligence process is swift, thorough, and well-organized. It should be able to take huge amounts of public information, such as news websites and social networks, or even grey literature, and provide digestible reports that can be easily shared across teams. It should be able automatically to go through millions of documents in order to present an organized and clear picture of your company that is easy to read and to share.