A multibillionaire Latino businessman who graduated from a major university in California is tapped for a contribution by his alma mater every year. “He’s very brown, very Mexican-looking, and owns a funny-sounding company,” said Armando Enrique Zumaya, founder of Somos El Poder, an Alameda, California-based consultancy that advises Latino nonprofits on fundraising and advocates for equitable prospecting.

The requests come by mail. The suggested donation is just $100.

“I’ll tell you half a dozen stories like that,” Zumaya said. “Prospecting is failing because we’re overwhelmingly looking for rich, old, straight white guys.”

The ill-suited university request highlights a disconnect between an institution and potential funders. This disconnect is not an isolated case. The prospecting field is rife with systematic structures that eliminate communities not traditionally viewed as viable prospecting sources. Transformation is needed towards equitable prospecting.

“If you’re only looking for public wealth, you will not find a lot of people of color,” Zumaya said. “A lot of our wealth is in families, and it is very private.”

Before an institution can gain access to these sources through equitable prospecting, fundraisers need to understand the cultural and racial ways wealth is gathered in each community.

These paths are less likely to include indicators that would cause a prospect to rank high on donation propensity algorithms. Add to that the fact that these populations are traditionally under-solicited, so they do not have extensive donation histories. As a result, these prospects do not surface through traditional fundraising research practices or on third-party prospecting lists. Implementing equitable prospecting means changing this.

The algorithm biases are not the only barriers. “If a donor does make it into a database, often a development officer or researcher will see that person, look him up and dismiss him,” because that person does not fit the traditional major donor profile, Zumaya said regarding barriers to equitable prospecting.

Should a nonprofit’s fundraising team overcome these obstacles, its members can still sabotage the nascent relationship by not acknowledging the prospect’s culture, failing to engage in equitable prospecting. For instance, outside of New York or California, prospects of color might not embrace the directness of New York or California-style outreach, Zumaya said.

Read the full article about equitable prospecting by Richard H. Levey at The Nonprofit Times.