Oriel vs. ChatGPT on a private business owner: the same prompt, both outputs in full
ChatGPT is a general-purpose model trained on the open web. Oriel is a prospect research system built by a practitioner. On easy prospects (public executives with SEC filings and donor-wall listings), the gap is narrow. On the hard prospects that actually make up a major gift portfolio, the gap is the entire product. Below is the same prompt run on a private business owner, shown in full on both sides, with nothing removed and nothing cherry-picked.
The prompt in both cases: Prepare a prospect research brief on Raymond Delacroix, founder of Delacroix Industrial Coatings in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Include capacity estimate, giving history, and meeting prep. ChatGPT was given access to web search. Oriel was run through its standard v4 workflow. Neither result was edited.
Raymond J. Delacroix
Raymond Delacroix: background memo
Raymond Delacroix is the founder and owner of Delacroix Industrial Coatings, a privately held specialty coatings manufacturer headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to the company's website, Delacroix Industrial Coatings provides protective and decorative coatings for industrial equipment, infrastructure, and automotive components. The company was founded in the late 1980s and has grown to operate two manufacturing facilities, including a second plant in Greenville, South Carolina acquired in 2019.
Mr. Delacroix is listed as a member of the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, a prominent regional business forum. A search of public sources indicates he has been involved in the local business community for several decades, and local press has occasionally mentioned him in coverage of Michigan manufacturing.
According to an alumni news release from Aquinas College, Mr. Delacroix and his wife established a named scholarship supporting first-generation college students in the sciences. Beyond this scholarship, public information about his philanthropic activities is limited. No private foundation appears to be associated with the Delacroix family in available databases.
Because Delacroix Industrial Coatings is privately held, specific financial information about Mr. Delacroix's net worth and compensation is not publicly disclosed. Given the apparent scale of the business and his demonstrated philanthropic interests, he is likely a significant prospect for a five- to six-figure gift, though specific capacity cannot be determined from public sources alone.
Potential conversation topics could include his professional background in manufacturing, his involvement with the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, and his interest in supporting education. It may be helpful to ask about his business philosophy and his family's charitable priorities. Further research would be recommended before a major solicitation.
Raymond J. Delacroix: brief excerpt
Delacroix's documented giving runs through a single named vehicle. In 2019 he and his wife Catherine endowed the Delacroix Family Scholarship at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids with an initial gift of $750,000, subsequently increased to a reported endowed value of $1.1M in the college's FY 2023 financial report.1 A named endowed scholarship at that level is a floor, not a peak. It tells you his comfort zone on a single institutional commitment, and it tells you he is willing to hold a commitment for the long term. The range above is built from it, not around it.
The operating business is privately held and does not file publicly, but the real estate tells a usable story. Delacroix Industrial Coatings' Grand Rapids facility sits on a 14-acre parcel owned by DIC Holdings LLC, a separate entity from the operating company, whose sole listed manager is Raymond Delacroix personally.2 The separation of real estate from operations is a common structure for owners preparing for an eventual sale; it makes the business easier to transact because the buyer isn't also buying the dirt. His primary residence in Ada Township was last assessed at $2,340,000 in the 2025 Kent County roll.3
The succession signal is live. His son Matthew Delacroix joined the operating company as director of operations in 2022, per the company website and his LinkedIn profile.4 A founder-owner in his mid-sixties bringing an adult child into the business is the beginning of a three-to-seven-year arc that typically ends either in a family transition or a sale. Either outcome affects giving capacity materially. The range should be read as pre-liquidity; a sale event would move the ceiling into the low seven figures within eighteen months of close.
The scholarship is the opening, and the question is about the college, not the gift. "What drew you back to Aquinas for the scholarship? Was it someone specific there when you were a student?" invites him to talk about formation and mentorship rather than money, and the answer will tell you whether education is a core value or an instrumental one. The second hook is Matthew. Do not ask about succession directly. Listen for whether Delacroix refers to the company as "we" when his son comes up, and for whether the son's title is spoken with pride or with evaluation. Both are information.
ChatGPT is not wrong about Delacroix. It is insufficient. Nothing in the left column is a hallucination, and a reasonable MGO could paste that output into their notes and walk into a meeting with it. They would be underprepared, but they would not be misinformed.
The scholarship appears in both outputs. Only one of them treats it as the binding capacity signal.
That difference is not about information retrieval. It is about practitioner judgment: knowing that a $1.1M named endowed scholarship is a documented capacity floor, knowing that real estate held in a separate holding LLC is a succession signal, knowing that an adult child joining the business is the beginning of a timing question, and knowing that the conversation in the meeting should start with the college and not with the company. None of those are facts ChatGPT failed to find. They are frames it does not have.
What this page is not
This is not the claim that ChatGPT is useless for prospect research. On public-company executives with SEC Form 4 filings, donor-wall hits, and active press coverage, the gap between a careful ChatGPT session and an Oriel brief narrows considerably, narrow enough that on some prospects a fluent researcher with ChatGPT and forty-five minutes can close most of it. Oriel's claim is not that it wins every prospect. It is that it wins the ones where practitioner judgment is the work.
The long tail of most major gift portfolios is made of private business owners, inherited wealth, real estate principals, and limited partners in funds that never file publicly. On those prospects the gap is the whole product. On the public-executive head of the distribution, it is a preference.
If you want to understand the system the Oriel column was produced by, how it works walks through it end to end. And if you're already running iWave or DonorSearch and wondering where Oriel fits alongside them, after the screen is the page for that question.