TrustRadius Insights for Kindsight iWave are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
iWave is a versatile tool that addresses the needs of various nonprofit organizations. Users in performing arts nonprofits rely on iWave to assess the capacity of their current donors, ticket buyers, and personal contacts in different networking or special events settings. By easily collecting publicly available information across multiple databases, iWave proves invaluable for research purposes. The development team benefits from the 'Foundations' section of iWave, which provides critical insights into a foundation's giving history, board composition, and staff structure. This information is essential when approaching new prospective funders.
The development team also maximizes iWave to identify the best major donor contacts, prioritize their focus, and determine appropriate ask amounts during visits or calls. With monthly updates and seamless integration with their database system, they can conveniently monitor each donor's stage of development. Universities leverage iWave's capabilities by proactively wealth screening alumni, parent, and friend prospects. The prospect research team benefits significantly from the 360 Search feature in iWave as it helps them find and confirm real estate ownership, donations to other organizations, business information, and additional contact details.
The Director of Leadership Giving at the Roman Catholic Diocese relies on iWave to identify and solicit major donor prospects who possess both financial capacity and affinity for the mission. For small nonprofit organizations, iWave proves indispensable in developing profiles on donors and prospective donors. By screening their donor database, creating profiles, and prioritizing outreach and engagement efforts, these organizations can optimize their resource allocation.
Norwich University's prospect management and research team heavily depends on iWave to find useful and actionable information about prospects and donors. With access to data such as real estate holdings, philanthropic donations, and business affiliations, they can better understand potential supporters.
Moreover, iWave supports small nonprofits in building prospect pools by researching potential donors. These organizations are able to gather vital information about capacity, linkage, and interest levels before approaching potential supporters. For the Data Services and Development departments, iWave allows for comprehensive research on donor giving capacity, target audience determination for mailings, and deepening understanding of donors and their causes of interest.
Fundraising teams find iWave invaluable for gaining an in-depth look into donors, identifying new prospects, narrowing priorities, and enabling individual research by all team members. By providing better prospect research tools, iWave empowers nonprofit fundraising departments to enhance their knowledge of donors and improve constituent relationship management.
Finally, iWave serves as a comprehensive solution for prospect development across the organization. From researching prospective donors and board members to gathering background information and donation history, iWave caters to the prospect development needs of various departments within an organization. With its user-friendly interface and robust search functionality, iWave streamlines the research process and provides valuable insights that inform strategic decision-making.
By utilizing iWave, nonprofit organizations are able to make well-informed decisions about donor engagement, identify potential major donors, and prioritize outreach efforts. The ability to easily access and analyze publicly available information allows for a deeper understanding of donors' interests, capacity, and philanthropic history. This enables nonprofit professionals to tailor their approaches and make meaningful connections with individuals who are most likely to support their cause.
Additionally, iWave's regular data updates ensure that organizations have the most up-to-date information on their donors, allowing them to track each donor's stage of development and adjust their strategies accordingly. This level of insight not only enhances donor stewardship but also helps organizations identify opportunities for increased giving or potential new prospects.
Overall, iWave serves as an essential tool for nonprofit organizations across different sectors. From performing arts nonprofits to universities, small nonprofits, and even religious institutions, iWave offers valuable features that support prospect research, donor engagement, and fundraising efforts. By providing comprehensive and actionable insights about donors and prospects, iWave empowers organizations to maximize their fundraising potential and cultivate long-lasting relationships with their supporters.
We use iWave (Kindsight) to help identify, rate, screen, and segment prospects - primarily for major gifts fundraising but also for a range of other projects such as leadership volunteer identification, annual fund segmentation, and other engagement opportunities.
Pros
customer service
maximum value on investment
detailed and easily exportable screening results
Cons
screening results less weighted toward real estate
improved functionality related to identifying connections between prospects that have already been screened
expanded functionality to alert users of wealth generating events (sale of real estate, etc)
functionality that would allow users to screen for updated employment information
Likelihood to Recommend
iWave is well suited for shops with a dedicated prospect researcher who can spend time vetting and confirming results and diving into the more detailed research functions. It is potentially less suitable for a shop that would need to take action on the results provided without vetting and confirming them first.
VU
Verified User
Director in Research & Development (1-10 employees)
I use iWave to research prospective donors, board members and other key people to gather background information and their donation history mostly. When doing a donor rating and screening, we like to find out what other organizations the person has donated to as well as to fill in the blanks we have such as an address, work place, phone number, or email.
Pros
donation history
web references
Cons
sometimes they don't list the current workplace and will have a previous occupation, needs to be updated
Likelihood to Recommend
I can find a plethora of information on the person I'm searching for. Sometimes it's hard to determine if I've found the right person if they have a common name.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Professional Services (11-50 employees)
We use Iwave to screen our donor database and then to create profiles for a selection of those donors. We use it for both overall screening and deep-dive individual research. It helps us to prioritize our outreach and engagement in the Development Department.
Pros
Database wealth screening
Donor profiles
Confirming capacity
Cons
Confidence scoring for matching has room for improvement
I'd like it to automatically create profiles
Integration with RENXT
Likelihood to Recommend
Iwave is well suited to give you a starting point for screening a large data set, and to generate capacity indicators for your population. It is less useful for finding philanthropic inclination in general, in my experience because the recency of the donation data driving that does not seem to be up to date.
iWave was used by or development team to help us figure out our best major donor contacts. The amount of information was useful for our major gift developer to establish a relationship with a donor we thought may be interested in long term major gifts. It also helped them prioritize and narrow down who they should be focusing on, along with giving them an idea of how much of an ask they should approach with when on visits or calls. The data was updated monthly and imported to our database for easy use by all of development to help monitor what stages of development each donor was in.
Pros
iWave is very good at finding the details of a donor and their financial picture
iWave is very good at breaking down this information in a digestible form
iWave is one of the most accurate systems we have use for donor matching when it comes to searching donors form our database
Cons
iWave gives you A LOT of information. And I mean a lot. Some of it seems mundane while other info points are important. I wish it could be narrowed down by how much data you want to see on somebody
Because of the amount of information, it's so easy to get lost in the weeds of your large donors. It has a very WIDE focus for gathering info
The website could definitely have a better layout. Sometimes finding the data or tab you need can be tricky
Likelihood to Recommend
iWave is well suite for gathering a better idea of who you should focus on for major giving efforts. While it gives you a lot of good information, some of that information feels not very important and therefore, clogs up the data you actually need. iWave should not be used for something like direct mail list making. iWave seems to really be focused on the major donor aspect and it is not a tool to be used to help with regular annual giving
iWave is used by the fundraising department in a non-profit organization. It helps to research donors and look up constituent information. It provides better prospect research tools for the team.
Pros
Sleek Interface
Easy to Use
Cons
Confirmed Records
Improved Integration to Fundraising Software
Likelihood to Recommend
iWave may be the best prospect research tool our department has used since I have been here. It is easy to use, provides excellent information, and enables the prospect researcher to provide complete research profiles.
We are a small nonprofit. 15 months ago when I started, we had no database of prospects or donors. I used iWave to build my prospect pool of over 2500 qualified leads.
Pros
It allows me to identify prospects based on where else they give and at what level.
It provides me with contact information.
It often tells me net worth and real estate values.
Cons
Truthfully, it was a user that needed improvement! Once I finally took the time to do the tutorials and really understand what a tool it is, I used it to much greater advantage.
Likelihood to Recommend
I have recommended iWave to many colleagues and will continue to do so. I’ve taken it with me to every nonprofit I’ve worked at for the last 10 years. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that cuts hours out of traditional prospect research. It’s efficient and continues to be improved all the time. I could not do my job without it.
iWave is used to research potential donors for our organization. It is a great tool to get a snapshot of a prospects capacity, linkage, and interest. Plus the PRO Screen feature makes it easy to analyze contacts in your current database to see where there may be more potential and hidden gems.
Pros
The 360search allows you to do a comprehensive search across the multiple data sources at the same time.
You can stay organized during your research with the user-friendly and customizable Profiles and Labels.
The PROscreen ranking system allows you to get a quick snapshot of the alignment of a particular donor with your mission in an easy to read format that can be exported for another colleague with little extra explanation needed.
Cons
Not all the data sources have smart searches, so you would still need to search for Steve Smith and Stephen Smith separately.
iWave can only return the data that is out there from its data sources which sometimes can be inaccurate. This is no fault of iWave but is still a con with using the software.
iWave is expensive and can be hard to justify the cost unless you have a full-time prospect researcher or another position who is consistently using the program.
Likelihood to Recommend
iWave is a great resource for getting a big picture understanding of a donor and their potential alignment to your organization. There may be times if you are wanting to dive deeper into a particular facet of the donor profile that you would need to continue researching through other sources. Overall iWave has a user-friendly interface and is a must-have program for any prospect researcher.
I use iWave in the Development department of our performing arts nonprofit organization. For the past two years we have subscribed to the 2-user license (5,000 credits) package. The tool has been invaluable for us as we assess the capacity of our current donors, ticket buyers, and personal contacts we meet in various networking or special events settings. iWave allows us to easily collect publicly available information across multiple databases. We also use the platform for Institutional Development, as the "Foundations" section of the tool allows us to research a foundation's giving history, board composition, and staff structure. This can be invaluable information when approaching a new prospective funder.
Pros
Easily compare results across multiple databases, utilizing the "360 search" capability. This is the most common type of search for us, as it provides a snapshot of everything from real estate values, stock sales, political giving, charitable giving, and board roles of each individual.
Foundation search allows us to research all information about a charitable foundation, including 990s, board lists, staff lists (including contact information), and giving history, all sorted by region and field. Having access to this information on the same platform as our individual giving research makes for a much more efficient workflow, and also enables us to see the connections between individual prospects and the foundations or boars they may serve on.
Bulk data processing turnaround is very quick, often a short list will be processed within an hour and even long lists of 4k or more are processed within 36 hours. The results are sortable and filterable, allowing us to efficiently handle larger amounts of data that come with big lists
Customer support is prompt, friendly, and always helpful when needed. We never feel like we have to wait very long for a response, and customer support is always available by phone.
Cons
It's honestly tough to say what needs to be improved on a platform that I am a big fan of. The only time I am ever frustrated has more to do with the fact that some individuals are very adept at masking their charitable activities from public databases, and given that iWave can only show you what is publicly documented information I wouldn't consider that a liability of the product... rather it's a challenge of the field.
Some areas of improvement could include more online filtering and searching of Foundation grant histories. My current workaround is to download the entire grant history as a CSV (another good feature of iWave), and use Excel to sort and filter my results.
Likelihood to Recommend
For my organization iWave is well suited to understand more about the giving capacity and history of our ticket buyers. As a performing arts nonprofit with a theater space and a large volume of ticket sales, iWave helps us identify donor prospects from the many people who purchase tickets and attend our shows. The Foundation search tool is especially useful for researching new sources of grant revenue.
Our Data Services and Development departments use iWave to research donor giving capacity. iWave is instrumental in determining who should be included as our target audience for mailings as well as what amount would be appropriate to ask for donations. It also helps us get to know our donors; who they are and what causes they are passionate about.
Pros
iWave is very user friendly. It did not take long at all to figure out the most efficient way to use their website. There are many Training Webinars and a support center. Customer Support is very helpful.
The credits you purchase are only used if you use a batch screening. Individual screening is unlimited.
We have found that the information discovered in iWave about our donors is up-to-date and accurate.
The Foundations/Charities search function is particularly helpful. You are able to see the financials, 990s, grants awarded, and the people connected to the organizations all in one place without having to search the internet.
Cons
I wish the PDF Profile Report was able to be customized. Sometimes when you PDF the report, the page breaks are not clean.
When performing a 360Search, sometimes if the property is owned by a Trust, it won't show up in the properties section of 360search. I work around this by searching for the property on the Real Estate tab first to add it to my Profile. The donor will usually have all properties owned sent to one main property.
I wish it had a automatic tie in to Raiser's Edge but I understand that Blackbaud has their own product ResearchPoint so I don't forsee that happening any time in the near future.
Likelihood to Recommend
I believe iWave is well suited for batch screenings of potential donors as well as single screenings of individuals, foundations and charities. It is also well suited for determining the appropriate ask amount for a donation. I cannot really think of a scenario that would not be appropriate to use iWave.
