Blackbaud Altru vs. iWave

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blackbaud Altru
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Designed for General Admissions OrganizationsN/A
iWave
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
iWave offers their nonprofit fundraising intelligence platform, for performing prospect research online with VeriGift, the company's donor and donation database.N/A
Pricing
Blackbaud AltruiWave
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud AltruiWave
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAltru’s pricing information is catalogued below, as supplied by the software provider or retrieved from publicly accessible pricing materials. Altru is priced as an annual subscription. This includes hosting, unlimited users, access to unparalleled product support – everything you expect from a complete cloud solution.
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
Blackbaud AltruiWave
Small Businesses
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
OneCause
OneCause
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
OneCause
OneCause
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Blackbaud AltruiWave
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(11 ratings)
7.5
(13 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.2
(3 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Blackbaud AltruiWave
Likelihood to Recommend
Blackbaud
Well suited for smaller organizations that want to centralize many systems. Smaller organizations will have less constituents to manage and fewer events (our organization has 100,000+ constituents, daily programs/events, and a large donor base). Many areas within Altru are not updated to be functional for 2020. Because of this, we do not use the merchandising feature, the volunteer portal, or marketing communications. It does a little bit of everything "okay enough" to be better than having separate systems. It's restrictive in many areas, but being able to do SO much in one database outweighs the negatives! It is 100% necessary to have a data manager who spends all of their time in Altru doing data cleanup, researching and writing policies and procedures, training new users, keeping staff up-to-date on new processes, creating queries and running reports, creating workarounds for "unfixable" issues within the database.
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iWave
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
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Pros
Blackbaud
  • Ticketing and tracking many different types of admission sales including group, facility rental, individual tickets, and class registration.
  • Membership management, including membership card mailing, recurring memberships, and renewal reminders.
  • Being an all-encompassing database rather than forcing you to use multiple databases.
  • Great customer service and client support, including ongoing updates to better the system.
  • Has a merchandise inventory management system.
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iWave
  • 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.
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Cons
Blackbaud
  • Query system not user-friendly for management with limited database background.
  • Limited company-to-user support outside of an online community of users. No long term account managers for program.
  • No email analysis tools for eblasts.
  • Limited merchandise capabiity for shop use, though the program does allow third party programs to work with it.
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iWave
  • 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.
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Support Rating
Blackbaud
They are always available and very knowledgable. Many times I am able to come up with a solution before they've finished troubleshooting just by having talked through it with them. I really appreciate the Chat feature to answer simple questions in a timely fashion. The training I received was top notch and very detailed.
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iWave
iWave customer support is more responsive than most software platforms I currently use. My requests are always handled promptly, and support is incredibly responsive, friendly, and patient. Plus, I can always get someone on the phone immediately if I need a problem resolved right then and there. In addition to the live and personal support, the iWave knowledge base is frequently update with new content, including video webinars that help you become a more powerful user of the software.
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Alternatives Considered
Blackbaud
We switched from Raisers Edge in 2012 due to the need to have all processes in one database. Group Sales/Rentals had to use a separate database for their sales than the Members and Donors department. We also could not sell tickets for events and programs in one space. Being able to have all of these in one database is why we chose Altru.
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iWave
iWave is affordable, offers current data, and is continually adding new data sources. They are the only product that offers international prospect information, which is helpful as our institution borders Canada. I was impressed when our sale representative went out of his way to teach me about how I could screen Canadian prospects in a way that helped us calculate an estimated real estate value for our prospects. We had no other way of getting this information as Canada does not provide the information publicly like tax assessor offices do in the United States.
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Return on Investment
Blackbaud
  • It has become very tedious to account for registrants in each session of a class or camp, because you have to "sell" them into each session in order to have an accurate class roster.
  • It is very easy to process payment and entry fees to our Museum and programs.
  • It is easy to retrieve accurate information and records of patrons.
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iWave
  • We have consistently been able to increase our annual donations year over year since using iWave. There was an 11% increase just between our last fiscal year and the previous fiscal year.
  • Time spent on researching donors has decreased since all of the information needed is on one website rather than searching all over the internet for the information needed.
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ScreenShots

Blackbaud Altru Screenshots

Screenshot of Constituent Record: Get a true 360-degree view of each constituent's activity.Screenshot of Daily Sales:  Improve sales speed and visitor experience with a smart POSScreenshot of Group Sales:  Keep group sales orders organized and manageableScreenshot of KPIs:  Measure and monitor organizational performanceScreenshot of Membership Dashboard:  Improve membership acquisition and retentionScreenshot of Organizational Calendar:  Effectively manage events, programs, spaces, supplies and equipment