Kindsight iWave vs. STPL Global FundRaiser (discontinued)

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

Incentivized

I think FundRaiser is better suited for smaller organizations that do not have a lot of entries to make and a lot of tracking to do. Larger organizations that make more entries and need to do a lot more tracking might want an application that is a little more modern and user-friendly.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• FundRaiser keeps a database for us of our individual, business, and organizational donors for future reference.
• FundRaiser keeps a database for us of our donors' contributions each year on an ongoing basis.
• FundRaiser has multiple reports that can be run to fit your specific needs; be it yearly contributions, donor addresses, etc.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• If you enter a duplicate donor in error, the program will allow you to make one inactive, but will not allow you to delete one. This often causes confusion when going to post-donation payments.
• The system is also very basic and could be more user-friendly.

Incentivized

It is easy to understand and user friendly. Even the upload format for screenings is simple. You are able to alter scoring levels and layers to tailor to your organization's hierarchy. The new color scheme for Kindsight is a bit harder to see but there is workarounds by using an extension within your web browser for that

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

When I upgraded my computer I had to upgrade my FundRaiser software. I reached out to customer support, and they assisted me in easily switching the computer my software was on, and then making the upgrade. The customer service department was friendly and helpful. There was a minor glitch, but it ended up going fine.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• FundRaiser saves us time that we would be spending trying to keep track of donations and donor information on spreadsheets, which saves us money.

Incentivized