ProspectAI: What it is, Who Can Use it, and Credits

ProspectAI is where donor research lives in Dataro. You give it a name and a location, it searches public sources, works out which of those sources are about your donor, and returns a profile with a capacity estimate, employer and board history, affinities, and a source link behind every claim.

Not every account can see it, and the research it runs is metered in credits. This article covers how ProspectAI works, where its limits are, why it may or may not appear in your sidebar, and what everything costs.

Dataro documents the technology behind ProspectAI so that you can audit the research it produces. Every claim in a report traces back to the source it came from.

Identity resolution at stage 3 does most of the work. Finding documents that mention a name is straightforward, but deciding which David Chen in a city of four million is the donor you are researching is the difficult part, and it determines whether the report is worth reading.

It is not perfect, and it is least reliable when the source itself is vague. A news article crediting "J. Miller, a longtime donor" with no employer, no city, and no other detail gives identity resolution very little to work with. Common surnames make this harder, as does a donor who shares a name with someone locally prominent.

Every datapoint therefore carries a confidence signal and a source link. When a fact looks wrong it is usually a shared-name mix-up, and opening the cited source will normally show you that straight away.

ProspectAI is licensed separately from the rest of Dataro and gated per account. Regional carve-outs are enforced rather than only hidden in the interface, because some jurisdictions restrict the kind of personal-information processing that prospect research involves.

The Three States

If you are eligible rather than enabled, nothing is broken. Your organization qualifies and has not added it yet.

Two things gate ProspectAI, and both are set for your whole organization. The first is whether your organization has personal-information access enabled. Individual research works from a donor's name and location, so an organization whose Dataro account holds no donor names cannot run a search. This is what decides eligibility. The second is whether ProspectAI has been added to your contract. An organization can have personal-information access enabled and still not have ProspectAI, which is the eligible state above.

On a donor profile, an account without ProspectAI sees only the fields that came from your CRM. There is no research enrichment, no confidence flags, and no prompt to run a report. Nothing is grayed out or advertised either, so if a colleague at another organization describes features you cannot find anywhere, this is usually why.

Accounts with ProspectAI enabled see the CRM fields plus the research layer, and a prompt to run a report on donors who have not been researched yet. The two layers stay visually distinct so you always know which facts came from your own records.

Credits are how ProspectAI research is metered. One credit covers researching one person, and everything else is free: reading reports, starring prospects, exporting lists, and browsing research you already have.

Your balance sits in a chip at the top of the ProspectAI page, visible the whole time you are working. Open ProspectAI from the sidebar at https://app.dataro.io/v3 and it is there in the header, in front of you at the point where you are about to spend credits.

Credit costs

Viewing a similar-profile summary is free. When you finish a report, ProspectAI shows you similar profiles. You can read the summary of each one without spending anything, and you only pay when you decide to commission the full search. Browsing from one good prospect to similar profiles is a normal part of building a pipeline, so the summaries are free to read.

Re-running a report does not affect your balance. If you add a source URL, remove one you do not trust, and re-run, the updated report costs nothing. You pay for the person researched rather than for each version of the report, so you can correct a report as often as you need to.

The Cost Preview

Every search tells you how many credits it will use and how many you will have left, before it runs. There is no way to spend credits by accident.

For bulk uploads there is a further safeguard. The total credit cost is worked out from your file before the file is processed at all:

bulk list cost = rows in your file × 1 credit 

If the total is more than you want to spend, edit the file down and upload again. Nothing has been charged, because nothing has been processed. This is most useful when your balance is low and you need to cut a 900-row file down to 400 rows before processing.

Running out of credits

New research pauses and nothing disappears. Every report you have already generated stays accessible, along with your bulk lists, your favorites, and Your Network. You keep full use of everything you have paid for, and you cannot commission new research until you top up. There is no overdraft and no unexpected invoice, which is why the balance is visible at all times.

Topping up and billing

Credit management sits in Settings, under the ProspectAI section. That link currently opens the Classic app, and soon a rebuilt settings page will bring credit balance and management into Dataro 3.0 directly.

Billing runs through Stripe. From there you can update the card on file, view and download past invoices, and cancel. Seats are a fixed number per subscription and are separate from credits, so adding credits does not add users and adding users does not add credits.

If you are not sure how many credits you need, or you would like to discuss a top-up, use Reach out to your CSM in the sidebar.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't I see ProspectAI in my sidebar?

Either your organization has not had it provisioned, or your region is subject to a carve-out that hides it entirely. Your Customer Success Manager can tell you which of the two applies, and whether ProspectAI is available to you at all.

My colleague can't see donor research but I can. Why?

ProspectAI access is set for your whole organization, so two people at the same organization see the same thing. If a colleague cannot see donor research, check that they are signed in to the same Dataro organization as you. If they are, contact your Customer Success Manager, because that is not expected.

Does ProspectAI use my CRM data?

It uses the details you type into the search form, or the donor's name and location when you send an existing donor to ProspectAI from a donor profile or an audience. The research itself comes from public sources. On the donor profile, your CRM fields and the research layer remain separate.

Is ProspectAI part of my Dataro subscription?

Not by default. It is a separate contractual line, and searches consume credits. If you are seeing the eligible state, your CSM can walk you through what enabling it involves.

Are credits the same thing as seats?

No. Seats are how many people can use Dataro, and they are a fixed number set by your subscription. Credits are how much research you can commission. They are billed and managed separately.

Where do I get an invoice or change our card?

Billing is handled through Stripe, reachable from your settings. You can update the payment method, download invoices, and cancel from there. For anything about volume or pricing, talk to your CSM.