Hello there. For the first time, I actually have some concrete questions about activism/doing my part in a union.

I’m in a teaching assistant union that’s currently on strike. Since I’m sick for a few days, I’ve requested to be part of the “remote work” group, and the task I’ve been assigned is to find contact information for people who’ve donated to the university.

It occurred to me that “tracking down a person’s contact information” is probably a fairly useful skill to have in the context of organizing, so I thought I should ask whether there is any advice I should follow here?

The university lists the names of donors alongside the scholarships, grants, etc. So far, I’ve mostly just been Googling “(person’s name) (name of university)” until I narrow down the right person, and usually find either a LinkedIn page or a page related to that person’s business. (Or, a few times, an obituary). The only slightly more sophisticated thing I’ve done is “whois” lookups for websites. Is there anything else I should consider?

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I think you’ve mostly got the right idea. online sleuthing will get you pretty far. I guess there are data brokers but I assume you don’t want to spend money. There’s definitely other resources you might be able to leverage but the best ones will probably be circumstance-dependent (ie accessing university records or smth)

    • WhatAnOddUsername [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Fair enough. I guess if there’s one specific situation that’s come up more than once, it’s that a lot of donations are done through “Trusts” or “Foundations”. If anyone knows whether there exist directories for finding information about specific trusts or foundations other than just Googling the names, that would be very useful. (For context, I’m in Canada.)