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
Read full review Well suited for sending mass emails or emails to certain groups, sending automated emails, collecting donations, and peer-to-peer communication. They have a good support team. I'm still figuring out how to best manage supporters, it's not as intuitive as I would like. I used to just manage all donor information on Google Sheets, and I still prefer Google Sheets.
Read full review 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. Read full review User-Friendly. As a user, it is an intuitive product. When you are working, it is easy to navigate. Fundraising Pages: Salsa Engage allows you to easily and quickly make fundraising pages that can be pushed out to your community of donors. CRM: Easy to manage the constituents. When someone signs up for our fundraising pages, the software captures the demographics and either matches up to the existing donor or creates a new constituent. Salsa CRM listens to their customers and works well with the user base. Most ideas are listened to and can see that requests are pushed out in updates. Read full review 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. Read full review When we started with Salsa, not every option was available online, some were desktop specific. As it has been some time since I worked with Salsa these have probably been resolved. The ability to communicate between Salsa CRM and other Salsa software options. Sometimes the crossover was not as efficient as was needed. Tagging and setting up rules for particular donors was somewhat confusing - meaning, therefore, that the amount of training needed to implement the software was somewhat intensive. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It suits all of our needs.
Read full review Usability Easy to navigate; scores and ratings are clearly explained and some can be customized to the organization; easy to segment results and import into CRM
Read full review You do not have to be a tech-savvy person to be able to use the CRM. Reporting is easy to do.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Their tech support is very good and I am very pleased with it. They speak in non-techie lingo for my non-techie staff just as easily as they speak techie to me (a techie). I appreciate their quick turn around in time to answer our questions and the follow up to make sure their answer(s) helped.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review I have reviewed
Salsa Engage and perhaps after our transition has taken place it might be a viable option versus using Constant Contact for internal and external correspondence.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Has helped increase our donor retention as we are able to track all communications with donors ensuring that they remain connected. The improved emailing (with fewer bounce rate) has helped increase our website and donation page visibility. We've sold more tickets to our fundraising events with an improved event management system. Read full review ScreenShots