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250,000+ LP Accounts. The Allocator Universe, Finally in One Place.

Fundraising is harder than ever. Allocators are busier, competition for meetings is fierce, and time spent on outdated lists is time stolen from building relationships. Dakota Marketplace gives your team the most complete, verified, daily-updated view of the institutional allocator universe, so you spend less time searching and more time raising capital.

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250,000+
LP Accounts
386,000+
Verified Contacts
350+
Investment Searches/Yr
Daily
Research Updates
Built by Fundraisers, for Fundraisers®
in use since 2006 · updated daily by the Dakota research team · verified to practitioner standard
Why Dakota Is Different

The Only Allocator Database Built by People Who Actually Used It.

Most data companies are built by engineers who have never made a sales call. The databases they build are technically complete and practically useless for the person who has to pick up the phone and call a CIO.

Dakota Marketplace started differently. Gui Costin spent years on the road as a fundraiser, calling on the same pensions, endowments, family offices, and RIAs that are in the database today. That origin shapes every data decision. When a contact is listed, it has been verified to the standard of someone who would walk into that allocator's office and hand it to a CIO. When a contact changes roles, it is updated the same day.

We built Dakota Marketplace because we lived the problem. Eighteen months of calling on allocators with stale data, incomplete contact lists, and no way to know which CIOs had moved. Every data decision we make is made by asking: would this hold up in front of a real allocator on a real call?
Gui Costin, CEO & Founder, Dakota · Author, The Dakota Way
01
250,000+ Accounts: The Entire Allocator Universe
Not a curated list of the top 500 pension funds. Every institutional channel, every intermediary, every geography, in one database. Most fundraisers are working from a list that covers 10-20% of their addressable market. Dakota gets them to 100% on day one.
02
386,000+ Verified Contacts: Not Web Scrapes
Every contact has been verified by the research team, not scraped from LinkedIn, not imported from a public filing, not crowd-sourced. CIO names, direct lines, email addresses, and investment preferences, verified to practitioner standard, not programmer standard.
03
350+ Investment Search Alerts: Before Your Competitors Know
When an allocator launches a new investment search, a public pension issuing an RFP, an endowment seeking a new alternatives manager, Dakota identifies it and alerts your team. Over 350 investment searches identified annually. Your team knows before competitors are even aware the search exists.
04
Updated Daily: Not Quarterly, Not Monthly
Investment professionals change roles at a rate that makes any monthly update cycle worthless within weeks. Dakota's research team updates the database daily. When a CIO changes institutions, your contact record reflects it today, not in the next batch export.
What's in the Database

Every Allocator Channel. One Platform. 250,000+ Accounts.

Dakota Marketplace covers the full institutional and intermediary landscape, every channel your fundraising team needs to reach, with verified contacts, investment preferences, and real-time updates in each one.

17,000+
Registered Investment Advisors
The fastest-growing channel in alternatives. Every RIA from the wirehouse channel through independent advisors, with 13F holdings data showing exactly which ETFs, BDCs, and funds each RIA currently holds.
46,000+ contacts · 13F holdings data · CIO bios
1,400+
Public Pension Funds
Every state, county, city, and special district pension fund, with daily public meeting minutes tracking new allocations, manager selections, RFPs issued, and consultant coverage changes.
5,500+ contacts · Daily meeting minutes · Manager presentations
3,800+
Family Offices
Over 4,000 legitimate family offices actively investing, not the inflated universe competitors publish. Verified through direct research into family wealth origins, investment committee structures, and confirmed allocation histories.
7,400+ contacts · Investment preferences · Allocation history
78,000+
Corporate Pensions
Corporate defined benefit and defined contribution investment offices, including the corporate treasury functions that allocate to private markets. The largest account universe in Dakota by count, spanning every industry and company size.
53,000+ contacts · DB and DC coverage
1,400+
Endowments & Foundations
University endowments, hospital systems, community foundations, and private foundations, the allocators historically most receptive to alternatives strategies and long-horizon capital. 665 endowments and 803 foundations.
3,600+ contacts · Investment committee coverage
5,400+
International LPs
Institutional and private wealth investors across Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Nordics, including sovereign wealth funds, wealth managers, and pension funds outside the US and Canada.
20,000+ contacts · SWFs · European pensions
A Day in the Life

What a Fundraiser's Day Looks Like With Dakota Marketplace.

This is not a hypothetical. This is how the Dakota team's own fundraisers use the platform, the same product they built, refined, and now use to raise capital for Dakota Funds client managers.

7:00 AM
Morning Review
Check investment search alerts and public plan minutes from overnight
Scan the daily digest: did any public pensions publish meeting minutes? Were any new investment searches identified? Did any key contacts change roles? This ten-minute review used to take an hour of manual research.
Dakota delivers: Daily investment search alerts, public plan minutes, and personnel change notifications every morning.
8:30 AM
Pre-Call Research
Pull the full profile on the endowment CIO you're calling at 9:00
Professional history, current role, investment preferences, what they have allocated to in your strategy, what consultants they use. Walk into the call with context most fundraisers spend hours assembling, or never get.
Dakota delivers: Complete CIO profile, bio, investment focus, allocations, consultant relationships, public plan minutes if applicable.
10:30 AM
List Building
Build a target list for next month's Chicago trip in twelve minutes
Filter by metro area, channel type, AUM range, and investment preference. Export the list of qualified contacts at firms within a 10-mile radius of your hotel. Build a full week of meetings without leaving your desk.
Dakota delivers: Custom list builder with metro area mapping, channel filters, AUM ranges, and CRM integration for activity tracking.
2:00 PM
Pitch Prep
Research the consultant covering tomorrow's pension fund prospect
The CIO you are meeting tomorrow relies on a consultant for manager selection advice. Pull the consultant's profile, who they are, which managers they cover, what they have recommended recently in your asset class, and which other allocators they advise.
Dakota delivers: 580+ consultant profiles with 5,700+ contacts, consulting relationships mapped to allocator accounts, and coverage histories.
4:30 PM
Intelligence Review
Review public plan meeting minutes from this week's board meetings
Three public pension funds had investment committee meetings this week. Dakota has already summarized the relevant minutes, which managers were reviewed, which allocations were approved, which search processes were opened. This used to require reading 300-page board packets.
Dakota delivers: Daily public plan meeting minutes from 1,400+ public pensions, summarized and linked to the relevant account records.
What's in Every Allocator Profile

Six Data Layers in Every Profile. Verified. Daily. Actionable.

Every account in Dakota Marketplace is more than a name and a phone number. Each profile contains six layers of verified intelligence, the information your fundraiser needs to walk into a meeting prepared, not guessing.

Firm Intelligence
Firm-Level Details, Strategies & Allocations
AUM, investment mandate, strategy allocations by asset class, geographic preferences, emerging manager appetite, current consultant relationships, and investment committee structure.
AUM · Strategy allocations · Consultant coverage
Contact Intelligence
Verified Decision-Maker Contact Information
Direct phone numbers, verified email addresses, and professional history for every CIO, investment director, and alternatives allocator at each firm, maintained daily, not scraped from public sources and left to go stale.
386,000+ contacts · Direct lines · Verified emails
Qualitative Context
Bios, Histories & Investor Preferences
Professional biographies, career histories, conference appearances, published commentary, and known investment preferences by asset class and manager type. The context that turns a cold call into a warm conversation.
CIO bios · Allocation history · Conference appearances
Personnel Intelligence
Role Change Tracking, Updated Daily
When a CIO moves from one institution to another, Dakota's research team identifies and updates the record the same day, and sends an alert to members who have that contact flagged. Never send an important pitch email to someone who left six months ago.
Daily updates · Same-day alerts · Role change tracking
Travel Intelligence
Meeting & Travel Tools to Maximize Every Trip
Metro area mapping shows every qualified allocator within driving distance of your next city visit, so you arrive with a full calendar, not a half-empty one. Filter by channel, AUM, and strategy preference to build city-specific call lists in minutes.
Metro area mapping · City list builder · Calendar planning
Market Intelligence
Public Plan Minutes & Manager Presentations
Daily investment committee notes from public pension funds, including new allocations, RFPs, manager reviews, and consultant recommendations. Plus 4,000+ manager presentations given to public pensions, competitive intelligence on what your peers are saying to the same allocators you are calling.
Daily plan minutes · 4,000+ manager decks · RFP tracking
Measurable Impact

Four Claims. All Backed by What Members Actually Experience.

The four impact claims Dakota makes are real, but without context, they read like marketing. Here is the specific mechanism behind each one.

20-30
Hours of Manual Research Eliminated Every Week
The average fundraiser without a reliable allocator database spends 20-30 hours per week on research that Dakota delivers in seconds, building contact lists, verifying email addresses, reading public plan board documents, tracking personnel changes.
1,000-1,500 hours per year per fundraiser returned to actual fundraising activity.
5-10×
Expansion in Allocator Coverage Universe
Most fundraising teams are working from a contact list that covers 10-20% of the allocators relevant to their strategy. Dakota delivers 250,000+ accounts and 386,000+ contacts on day one. For most teams, that represents a 5 to 10 times expansion in their addressable market from their first login.
The RIA channel alone, 17,000+ firms with 46,000+ contacts, is larger than most teams' entire existing database.
350+
Investment Searches Identified Per Year, Before the Market Knows
Every investment search alert represents a live mandate your team can respond to before it becomes competitive. Public pension RFPs, endowment manager reviews, family office allocation decisions, Dakota's research team identifies these and delivers them to members immediately.
Being first into an investment search process is the most reliable predictor of getting a meeting, and ultimately a commitment.
Shorter
Fundraising Cycles With Better-Prepared Outreach
Fundraisers who walk into meetings knowing the allocator's full investment history, current consultant relationship, and recent board decisions close more quickly, because they ask better questions, make more relevant presentations, and demonstrate the kind of preparation that earns follow-up meetings.
Dakota puts the intelligence that shortens cycles in every fundraiser's hands before every call, every meeting, every city trip.
What Your Team Can Do With Dakota

Four Capabilities That Change How Your Team Fundraises Every Day.

Build Target Lists in Minutes, Not Days
Create custom allocator reports filtered by channel, asset class, AUM range, investment preference, geography, and consultant relationship. Build the precise list of allocators for your strategy, RIAs allocating to alternatives, family offices with PE exposure over 20%, endowments seeking new hedge strategies, in the time it used to take to organize a spreadsheet.
Custom filters · Export to CRM · Metro area grouping
Stay Ahead of Turnover, Every Role Change, Every Day
Investment professionals move. CIOs change institutions. Consultants switch firms. Dakota tracks every role change and alerts your team the day it happens, so your outreach always reaches the current decision-maker, never the person who left. Never bounce an important email again.
Same-day alerts · Role change history · Succession tracking
Maximize Every City Trip, Fill Your Calendar Before You Land
The metro area mapping tool shows every qualified allocator in any city, filterable by channel, strategy preference, and AUM, so you build a full week of meetings before your flight lands. Identify the qualified prospects within walking distance of your hotel. Fill gaps with second-tier prospects who become first-tier relationships.
Metro area view · Travel calendar integration · Distance filters
Access Industry Intelligence, Sharpen Every Pitch
Dakota Live! content, public plan meeting minutes, and the manager presentation deck library give your team the intelligence to walk into meetings already knowing what the allocator has heard, what they have recently approved, and how your competitors are positioning themselves. The fundraiser who asks the most informed questions gets the most follow-up meetings.
Daily plan minutes · 4,000+ manager decks · Weekly research content
What Fundraisers Say

From the People Who Use Dakota Every Day to Raise Capital.

"Before Dakota, our team spent the first two hours of every Monday building call lists for the week. Now we spend those two hours actually on calls. The database coverage is unlike anything we had before, channels we had essentially given up on because we didn't have the right contacts are now generating meetings."
 
$49.4B AUM · Private Equity Real Estate
"The investment search alerts alone have more than paid for the subscription. We found out about three pension searches before they were announced publicly, and converted two of them into first meetings before our competitors had even submitted their initial interest forms."
 
$5.3B AUM · Private Equity Real Estate
"The public plan minutes are something I have never seen from any other data provider. Knowing what the investment committee at a major state pension discussed in their last board meeting before we walk into a call with their CIO is a completely different kind of preparation."
 
Global Asset Manager · Distribution Team
"We expanded into the RIA channel using Dakota, 17,000+ firms and 46,000+ contacts we would have taken years to build manually. We were making qualified calls in that channel within two weeks of our first login. The speed of coverage expansion is genuinely unprecedented for us."
 
Real Assets · Distribution Team
Get Started

Stop Leaving Meetings on the Table. Start With Dakota.

Your competitors are already using Dakota. The question is how much of your addressable market you want to reach before they do. 250,000+ LP accounts, 386,000+ verified contacts, and 350+ investment search alerts per year, all updated daily by the same team that has been building this database since 2006.

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Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Tel: (610) 642-1481 

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