LinkedIn, Social Media, & Prospect Development

Frequently Asked Questions: LinkedIn, Social Media, & Prospect Development –

Updated May 2020

Best Practices:

1) How to use LinkedIn for Prospect Development:

o Use LinkedIn as a guide for research as you would with any other

resource. Verify with other links (Business, news articles, etc.)

Remember, LinkedIn is only as current as the user updates it.

o Check with your organizational policy and government regulations.

2) Terms of Service

o When you create an account in LinkedIn, you agree to a number of

terms, including: you must be truthful and identify who you are, located

in Section 8.2 of LinkedIn’s user agreement.

o As a LinkedIn Member you agree to let LinkedIn use your data. LinkedIn

is a business – it’s never free.

o See - https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

o Recent changes – free searches are limited by a monthly cap. Be aware

of the risk involved in using any free apps or websites which purport to

get around this limit.

o For anyone who opts into importing your address book “feature” of the

LinkedIn mobile app available on smartphones, be mindful using that

feature means the smartphone user is agreeing that LinkedIn can

access the smartphone user’s contact address book. For your frontline

fundraisers and other relationship managers, this could mean one is

inadvertently providing confidential contact information for your

organization’s prospects, donors, and volunteers to LinkedIn. Keep in

mind, if a user syncs email and/or calendars with LinkedIn, LinkedIn will

also collect email headers and calendar meeting information, including

times, places, attendees, and contacts. This contact information also

includes the contact information a user’s smartphone has helpfully

added for the smartphone user regarding missing data fields in one’s

contact address book.

3) Citing Social Media (see - http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/10/how-

to-cite-social-media-in-apa-style.html for helpful hints):

o Include a URL link and date retrieved, as applicable.

o For limited LinkedIn or social media information (privacy settings) –

use Social Media Identification or Personal communication as your

source.

o Note: Some UK institutions do not cite LinkedIn as it is a breach of their

o Check international social media and organizational terms of use as

applicable.

4) To identify yourself through LinkedIn or use the anonymous privacy setting:

o Practice integrity – if you are asked, always identify yourself regarding

who you are and the institution for which you are working (e.g., "I

work for XYC organization and we are trying to reach out to potential

friends, alumni, and others who might be interested in supporting our

organization's mission, cause, etc.").

5) Can I use my personal LinkedIn account to connect with other members for

work purposes?

o A personal LinkedIn account is an acceptable practice to use for

prospect development activities and connecting with prospects. Use

the same integrity and sensitivity for the prospect and organization

that you would for any other communication.

o Use common sense – who in your organization holds the direct

relationship with prospective donors and volunteers? Typically, this

will be a frontline fundraiser or stewardship/donor relations

professional.

o Does your shop have a guideline regarding the interaction between

prospect development professionals and prospects? If it does,

adhere to that policy. If it does not, you have to determine which

setting will put the organization and the relationship with the prospect

first. Remember, there is no piece of information that is worth risking

the relationship between a prospect and the organization’s mission.

6) To use LinkedIn for cold calling (vs connecting through LinkedIn connect):

o Use integrity based on what works for you and your organization.

o Check with your legal department for guidelines or protocol for using

social media.

o Keep in mind the terms of use dictated by LinkedIn and other social

networks. Many of them have a strict policy on "spam" and this may

also put your organization at risk if you are not complying with laws

regarding such.

7) Anonymous searching vs. creating profiles under false names:

o Fake profiles are a violation of the Terms of Use for both LinkedIn and

Facebook.

o Anonymous searching is a privacy setting provided by LinkedIn. The

LinkedIn member whose profile you viewed knows someone viewed

their profile; however, that LinkedIn member will not know who

viewed them.

8) Prospect development activities and concerns with prospects knowing you

researched them and possibly contacting you:

o A prospect may not know that you are researching them. We live in

a world where privacy can be threatened through a number of

sources. People are wary.

o Anonymous searching isn't deception – It’s a privacy setting. A

LinkedIn user can limit how much of a profile is visible to non-

connections. If a prospect/LinkedIn user does not wish to share their

current information, he/she can hide it. More information regarding

these settings can be accessed here:

https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47992/ft/eng

o As available/viewable, use information from LinkedIn and other

social media judiciously as pertaining to the engagement and moves

of prospects.

o Reviewing public records should not present an ethical issue. There is

nothing illegal, immoral, or distasteful in viewing material that has

been set out for public consumption. However, just because

something fails to pose an ethical dilemma does not necessarily

mean that it is a good idea. An action can be ethical while still not

representing a best practice. Ultimately, we all have different

obligations to our respective organizations. Check with your

institution’s legal team if issues arise that may affect your institution

and the use of social media platforms.

9) Web Scraping (also termed screen scraping, web data extraction, web

harvesting, etc.) is a technique employed to extract large amounts of data

from websites whereby the data is extracted and saved to a local file in

your computer or to a database in table (spreadsheet) format.

o In August 2017, Northern District of California court ruling granted a

preliminary injunction which compelled Microsoft's LinkedIn to

disable any technical measures it had employed to block a data

analytics company, hiQ Labs (hiQ) from scraping the publicly-

available data on LinkedIn’s website. The ruling, published on August

14, follows a lawsuit filed by hiQ against LinkedIn, after LinkedIn issued

a cease and desist letter to prevent the startup from scraping data.

The ongoing court case resulted in the Ninth Court of Appeals ruling

on September 9, 2019 that automated scraping of publicly-

accessible data likely does not violate the Computer Fraud and

Abuse Act (CFAA), which LinkedIn had asserted as justification to

block hiQ from scraping publicly available LinkedIn data.

Takeaways from the court’s opinion include that LinkedIn has “no

protected property interest in the data contributed by its users, as the

users retain ownership over their profiles” and that with the users’

profile settings allowing their profiles to be publicly available means

the users intend for their profiles to be publicly accessible.

In March

2020, LinkedIn filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the US

Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. Bottom line: even

with the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, the law surrounding data scraping

remains unsettled.

In April 2020, the US Supreme Court asked hiQ

Labs to respond to LinkedIn’s request. This typically signals at least

one justice is interested in hearing the case. The Supreme Court has

given hiQ until May 26, 2020 to file a response.

o To scrape or not to scrape - you must weigh management of your

organization’s risk vs your need for the data. Ask your legal counsel.

Is it worth it?

o To mini scrape – cutting and pasting links, titles, bios etc., directly from

LinkedIn. Your terms of agreement have stated that you don’t. As a

seasoned researcher you would always look for verifying further any

data available through LinkedIn, which will enhance your profiles

and keep you from mini scraping.

10) Considerations:

Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Victory! Ruling in hiQ v. LinkedIn Protects Scraping of Public Data,” 9/10/2019.

The National Law Review, “Data Scraping Survives! (At Least for Now) Key Takeaways from 9

Circuit Ruling on

the HIQ vs. LinkedIn Case,” 9/30/2019.

The National Law Review, “LinkedIn Files Petition to the Supreme Court in HiQ Web Scraping Case,” 3/12/2020.

MediaPost, “Supreme Court Asks hiQ To Respond In Battle Over Data Scraping,” 4/27/2020.

o Does the depth and breadth of your research and analysis supersede

the sensitivity of a prospect and their relationship with your

organization?

o If a phone call or research opportunity (LinkedIn connect) could

jeopardize a potential gift, don’t do it.

o It’s about building and advancing relationships. Focus on your

mission and the prospect and their positive relationship to your

organization and your organization’s mission.

11) Prospect Research vs. Fundraiser Intelligence:

o Prospect Research provides a guide for wealth, interests, and

philanthropy as available publicly. Our role is to find links to help

connect a fundraiser to a prospect to then build that relationship

between prospect and institution.

o The opportunity for expanding and building that relationship is the

Fund/Friendraiser’s task. They ultimately determine the ask based on

their personal experience with the prospect and their propensity,

readiness, and capacity.

o The emphasis should be on Prospect Development and Fundraisers

working together. Prospect development activities can never take

the place of information gathered through a personal meeting

(which should be shared with the Prospect Development Professional

through a call report). Analysis of information gathered through

Prospect Development activities should be used as a guide for the

fundraiser to ask the right questions and build meaningful

partnerships with prospects and institutions.

12) Fundraisers and LinkedIn:

o Fundraisers should be using LinkedIn as a networking tool.

o According to an August 12, 2015, Non Profit Times article, 4 reasons

to use LinkedIn for fundraising

1. Your prospects are already using it. LinkedIn users generally skew

older, are highly educated, and have higher incomes than most

other social media platforms. Almost half of LinkedIn users have

salaries more than $100,000 per year, and the average salary is

$83,000, more than three times the average salary of Facebook users.

Your next major donor prospect could already be in your network.

2. It’s free. While there is a Premium option, a free account is fairly

robust. You can use your or your organization’s free account to view

in-depth profiles, get contact information, see if the prospect is on

any other nonprofit boards, and search by nonprofit or cause and

interest. A free account allows you to filter search results by location,

company, industry, past employment, school or nonprofit interest.

3. You might find your next board member on LinkedIn. At less than

$50 per posting, a LinkedIn board listing is a great option for a

nonprofit. Make sure to include “Volunteer Board Member” in the title

and “LinkedIn for Good Volunteering” in the description. LinkedIn’s

Board Member Connect program can get your board up and

running through training, peer programs and access to premium

tools.

4. Groups can help you expand your network and knowledge base.

With more than 2.1 million groups on LinkedIn and 200 conversations

taking place every second, there’s a group for every mission and

every type of fundraiser.

13) Creating a LinkedIn Company Page:

o Creating an organizational LinkedIn page can enhance the work

your organization does and help build relationships.

o Most often, a PR/Marketing department, Alumni Relations, and/or

Friends of the XYZ org would develop this; however, anyone can

create a page.

o The LinkedIn page should be used to help develop a positive

information-sharing network which allows you to gather important

information and highlight the work of the organization and/or

prospects, and celebrate accomplishments (contact a prospect

and tell them you would like to feature a little bit about them on your

page or publication, etc.). This creates an opportunity to connect in

a positive way. People who are interested will participate.

 
Types of LinkedIn pages: 
o  Personal  Profile  Page  (similar  to  Facebook  in  that  you  must  be 
connected and accepted to view the entire profile). You can set it 
with different privacy settings but ultimately there are certain things 
that will always be public – e.g., where you currently work, where you 
went  to  school  typically.  Example  of  a  personal  profile  page:  
http://linkedin.com/in/samdemuro  
o  Publicly available  LinkedIn Profile:  Some profile sections will not be 
displayed on a public profile, which is the version of a profile people 
see when not signed into Linked-In. These sections are only visible to 
LinkedIn members who view your profile while signed into LinkedIn. 
These sections include: 
  Recommendations  –  The  number  of  people  that  have 
recommended  you  will  appear  in  the  top  section  of  your 
profile. However, the full text of the recommendations will not. 
The full text of your recommendations is only visible to members 
who view your profile after signing into LinkedIn. 
  Additional Info – This section, which contains interests, birthday, 
marital status and advice for contacting you will not display on 
your public profile. 
  Rich Media Work Samples – These items will not display on your 
public profile. 
  Source:  https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/
52959 
  Information about how to customize what is publicly-available 
can  be  found  here:  https://help.linkedin.com/app/
answers/detail/a_id/83/~/linkedin-public-profile---overview-
and-settings 
o  Group Page – these can be private or public, but you must have a 
profile page in order to be in a group. Alumni currently have a private 
group where they interact with different alumni. 
o  University Page: example of a University page (for alumni & current 
students of a University): http://wpunj.edu/linkedinwp  
o  Company  Page: example  of  company  page  (for  employees  of 
William Paterson or  whatever company) https://www.linkedin.com/
company/18297 
 
A final note from Tim Olivieri, Cornell University Alumni Affairs and Development: 

With any ethics guideline there is a temptation to lay out a roadmap for every sort

of acceptable or unacceptable practice. But the guideline, as a practical

necessity, needs to allow for grey areas. Ethical guidelines should not be a

roadmap. They should be a fence along our perimeter that help prevent us from

straying off into the wilderness. Using a privacy setting for your personal social

media account is not really a foray into the wilderness.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to the Apra International and PRSPCT-L/Apra Exchange communities

for their thoughtful questions, answers, suggestions and commitment to best

practice in our fields, especially to Tim Oliveri, Cornell University, Alumni Affairs and

Development, and the members of Apra International and the Apra Ethics and

Compliance Committee.

This is a dynamic document, to be reviewed and updated by the

Apra Ethics and Compliance Committee based on issues that arise in the

prospect development community.

Revised May 12, 2020