Oriel.
Prospect research for major gift officers

A meeting-ready brief on any prospect, delivered before your next meeting.

Give us a name and where they work. We'll send back the document a great researcher would hand you before the ask.

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oriel research

Margaret Crane &
David Crane

Managing Partner, Wellington & Co. · Trustee, Williams College · Greenwich, CT
Capacity — Five-Year HorizonModerate confidence
$500K / $2.5M
Recommended Ask
$1,000,000
5-year pledge, structured commitment
A confirmed prior gift would sharpen this estimate. The existing relationship is the floor.
The Three Things— if you read nothing else on this page, read this
1.Active Hartley Foundation trustee, grants & investment committees. Not ceremonial. Art conservation is the household's clearest philanthropic lane.
2.Giving flows through the Crane Family Foundation. Structure the ask as a multi-year grant commitment through the foundation, not a personal check.
3.Wellington partnership economics imply $4–8M annual comp. This is the window when partners fund sustained institutional gifts.
Page one of a real Oriel brief
From the field
"I stopped opening the wealth screen after the second Oriel brief. It tells me what to do with the meeting."
Director of Major Gifts · Independent School, Northeast
· · ·
The difference

A wealth screen tells you a number.
Oriel tells you what to do with the meeting.

What a wealth screen gives you
A capacity score, no reasoning attached.
A net-worth estimate based on real estate and equity filings.
A list of past gifts to other organizations.
No view of priorities, motivations, or what to say.
A printout you skim in the parking lot.
What Oriel gives you
A capacity range with the reasoning written out, defensible to your VP.
A recommended ask, structured for how this person actually gives.
The three things that matter most about this prospect, and what to lead with.
Competing priorities, philanthropic lanes, and discovery questions.
A document written to be read, in the voice of a trusted colleague.
· · ·
What's in every brief

Six things, every time.

i.
A capacity rating with the reasoning.
Not a score. A range, with the evidence (comp economics, real estate, business interests, prior giving) written out so you can defend it.
ii.
A recommended ask, structured.
Dollar figure, vehicle, and term. Calibrated to how this person actually moves money: personal check, family foundation, or DAF.
iii.
The three things that matter most.
If you read nothing else before the meeting, read these. The lead, the lane, and the leverage.
iv.
Competing priorities.
Where else this prospect's attention and dollars are going right now. The other organizations in the room with you.
v.
Conversation hooks and discovery questions.
Specific, drawn from public statements, board service, and giving history. Things to actually say across the desk.
vi.
Source citations you can click.
Every figure, every claim, linked to the document or filing it came from. Where the evidence is thin, the brief says so.
· · ·
The obvious question

Isn't this just ChatGPT with a logo?

No, for two reasons, and the first one is the data. ChatGPT can read what Google indexes. It cannot pull a county assessor record, cross-reference an LLC filing to a holding entity, parse a 990-PF Schedule B, or follow a deed transfer through a family trust. Oriel runs a research pipeline that touches assessor rolls, secretary-of-state filings, foundation tax returns, SEC forms, and property records directly: the same sources a working prospect researcher uses, queried at the source rather than scraped from whatever happens to surface in a search result.

The second reason is judgment. Oriel was built by a career prospect researcher. The logic (what to look for, how to triangulate capacity, when to commit to a number, when to caveat) is a direct distillation of practice. Every claim is sourced. Every figure is reasoned. ChatGPT will hallucinate a board seat and confidently quote a 990 that doesn't exist; Oriel cites the filing and links to it.

Read the full comparison
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