ProspectAI at Scale: Bulk lists, Exporting and Favorites

A bulk list is how you research more than one person at a time. Instead of running searches one by one, you give ProspectAI a group of people and come back to a finished set of reports. Once the research is done, bulk export gets it out of Dataro as a single file, and Favorites holds the shortlist worth pursuing.

There are four ways to build a bulk list, and the right one depends on where your list already sits.

Where bulk lists live

Open ProspectAI from the sidebar at https://app.dataro.io/v3, then select the Bulk lists tab. Each list shows its name, the number of contacts in it, its status, and when it was created. Status reads Enriched when the whole list is done, or Processing with a percentage while it is still running.

Click any list to expand it in place. You get every researched donor in the list with their CRM ID, capacity estimate, research date, and confidence, so you can scan the whole batch without opening reports one at a time.

Route 1: a CSV upload

Use this route when your list came from somewhere other than Dataro: a wealth screening, an event guest list, a spreadsheet a board member sent through.

To upload a bulk list:

1. Click + New bulk list.
2. Download the CSV template before you build your file.
3. Fill in the template with your rows. A single upload handles up to roughly 2,500 rows.
4. Drag your file into the upload area.
5. Check the credit cost shown before the file is processed, then confirm.

The CSV template

Always download the template fresh. It is not a static file: its headers are generated depending on whether you are including your CRM contact ID column, and reusing an older file is where header mismatches come from.

Two columns are worth understanding before you build the file.

Column	What it does
CRM contact ID	Maps each result back to the matching record in your CRM. Include it whenever your list came out of your database, which is almost always.
linkedIn_url	Lets you pre-match a person on LinkedIn rather than relying on name and location alone. Useful for common names.

We recommend including the CRM contact ID column. It keeps results mapped back to your own records, so you do not have to match reports up by name afterwards, and the identifier travels through to the export as well. It costs one column at upload time and saves considerable work at the other end.

For the fields ProspectAI needs in order to identify a person at all, see Running a ProspectAI search.

Route 2: the Donors tab

Select the rows you want in the donors table, then click Send to ProspectAI. Because the donors are already in Dataro, the CRM mapping is handled for you and there is no file to prepare.

Route 3: a Saved Audience

Open Audiences from the sidebar, find the audience on the Saved tab, then choose Send to ProspectAI from its row menu.

We recommend this route. You already have filters and prediction scores available when you build an audience, so you can define exactly the group worth researching, e.g. your top-ranked donors above a giving threshold who are not already assigned to an officer, and then research the whole group in a single batch.

Route 4: Connections

While reading a report you will find the donor's own connections.

This is how one researched donor leads to several more. You research a donor, notice five people around them who look comparable, and send all five to be researched.

Cost and Timing

Bulk research is charged per person researched, at the same rate as an individual search. The credit cost is worked out up front and shown before the file is processed, so if the number is higher than you expected, remove rows from the file and try again. Nothing is spent until you confirm.

A list of a few hundred donors takes roughly ten minutes. Bulk processing runs prospects through the pipeline together rather than one after another, so the fixed overhead is shared, which is why a bulk list is much faster than running the same names individually and why it is the right tool for any list longer than a few names. You do not need to stay on the page while it runs. The status on the list tells you where it is up to, and you can keep working elsewhere in Dataro.

Bulk export

Bulk export gets a whole bulk list out of Dataro as a single file. Use it when the research needs to live somewhere else: a spreadsheet for a portfolio review, a file for your database team, a working document for a campaign committee.

Exporting a full list produces one file. The page you are looking at does not affect what you get, so there is nothing to combine in a spreadsheet afterwards, and no risk of duplicating a row or missing one.

To export a list:

1. Open ProspectAI from the sidebar, then select the Bulk lists tab.
2. Wait until the list shows Enriched. A list still showing Processing has rows with no research attached yet.
3. Click the list to expand it.
4. Choose Export all.

Exporting Several Lists Together

If your research was spread across a few uploads, you do not need to export each one and merge the files by hand. Select the lists you want from the Bulk lists tab and export them as a combined file.

Teams often upload in segments, one file per event or per region, then need the whole picture for a single portfolio review. Combining at export time keeps the segments intact while still giving you one document to work from.

Exporting or Working in Dataro

Exporting is a good way to share research with people who do not use Dataro, and a poor way to work through the research yourself. Reports in Dataro stay current, because you can add sources, re-run a report, and see updated findings, whereas a spreadsheet is only a snapshot from the moment you downloaded it.

For your own working list, we recommend that you star the prospects worth pursuing and use the Favorites tab. Export when the file needs to leave Dataro.

Favorites

Favorites is a shared shortlist. Star a prospect anywhere you see the star icon and they collect in the Favorites tab in ProspectAI, ready for your team to work through.

There are three places to star a prospect, and they all write to the same list.

1. From the research prospect table. Click the star on the prospect's row. It fills in immediately, with no separate save step.
2. From a donor profile. Open the prospect and click the star in the top right of the profile. Use this one when you have just finished reading a report and want to act on what you read.

Clicking a filled star again removes the prospect from Favorites. Nothing else changes: the research report stays where it is, and no credits are refunded or re-spent.

To find your starred prospects, open ProspectAI from the sidebar, then select the Favorites tab.

Favorites are shared across your team

Favorites sit at the organization level. If you star a prospect, your colleague sees that star. If they remove it, it disappears for you too.

Prospect research costs money and takes time, so the whole team can see which prospects have already been picked out as worth pursuing. This stops two officers researching and shortlisting the same person a few weeks apart.

We recommend that you agree as a team on what a star means. "Worth a qualification call" is a useful bar, whereas "interesting, maybe one day" fills the list with prospects nobody intends to work on.

Favorites and bulk lists together

Use bulk lists for the input, a defined group of people you want researched together, and Favorites for the output, the subset that turned out to be worth pursuing. For example, you can upload 200 names as a bulk list, let the research run, read down the results, and star the ones that clear your bar. You then have a shortlist of perhaps twenty prospects, built from the research rather than from memory.

Favorites is a shortlist rather than a portfolio tool. It has no pipeline stages of qualification, cultivation, ask, and stewardship, and no review step before a prospect appears. A full portfolio is a future consideration.

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Frequently asked questions

How many rows can I upload at once?

Around 2,500 in a single upload. If your list is larger, split it into several files. We recommend splitting by segment, so each resulting list is meaningful on its own.

Do I have to include our CRM contact IDs?

No, but we recommend it. Without them, results come back identified by name and location only, and you have to do the matching afterwards. Download a fresh template with the CRM ID column included, and the mapping is handled for you.

Can I research an entire saved audience?

Yes, and we recommend it. Build the audience with the filters and scores you already trust, then use Send to ProspectAI from the audience row menu. The whole audience goes off as one batch.

What does the LinkedIn column do?

It pre-matches a person to a LinkedIn profile you have already identified, instead of leaving ProspectAI to work it out from name and location. If you research people with common names, filling this in improves the match rate.

Does exporting use credits?

No. Exporting research you have already paid for is free, and you can export the same list as many times as you need.

Does Export all really mean everything, or just the rows I can see?

Everything in the list.

Should I wait for a list to finish before exporting?

Yes. Export once the list shows Enriched. Rows still being researched have nothing to write into the file yet, so exporting early gives you a file with gaps in it.

Why are our CRM IDs missing from the export?

Because they were not in the upload. The CRM contact ID column is optional, and if you left it out, there is no identifier to carry through. Rebuild the list from a fresh template with the CRM ID column included, or push the list from the Donors tab, where the mapping is handled for you.

Does it matter how the list was built?

No. Bulk export works the same on every list in the Bulk lists tab, whether it came from a CSV upload, a selection in the Donors tab, a saved audience, or a set of similar profiles you gathered while researching someone else.

If a colleague unstars someone, do they disappear from my list?

Yes. There is one shared list, so removing a star removes it for everybody. Nothing else is affected: the research report and any bulk list the prospect belongs to stay exactly as they were.

Does starring a prospect cost credits?

No. Starring, unstarring, and browsing the Favorites tab are all free.

Is Favorites the same as a portfolio?

No. Favorites is a starred shortlist without stages. A full portfolio, with pipeline stages and a review step before a prospect is added, is a future consideration.