Windfall is an AI platform that helps nonprofits engage donors, by providing actionable consumer financial data that is refreshed on a weekly basis. Windfall delivers contextual analysis, putting donor databases in a framework that can then be used for data science.
CEO Arup Banerjee says that Windfall’s mission is to “determine the net worth of every person on the planet.” Ambitious, but how are they getting there and what might they be able to do for your nonprofit in the meantime?
Windfall is a data science company who have created a wealth screening tool, currently focused on US residents with net worths greater than one million dollars. Nonprofits use Windfall to conduct prospect research on potential new donors and gain a better understanding of their existing donor base.
Windfall, like other prospect research tools, combs through public databases to gather information that may be useful in determining how much a potential donor may be able to give. This includes property values, mortgages, career information, past donations, and more.
Where Windfall sets itself apart from competitors is its use of data science to extrapolate beyond this publicly available information and determine a precise net worth. Using net worth rather than simply information like property values and previous donations is intended to solve for things traditional wealth screening methods miss. Examples include large amounts of debt, hidden square footage, and areas of the country where the cost of living means high property values don’t accurately reflect wealth (looking at you,
San Francisco!).
There are a few ways that wealth screening tools can show a donor’s monetary potential as a single number. Most tools, like iWave, give a dollar amount for a prospect’s giving capacity, or the amount they may be able to donate. Windfall argues that using net worth instead gives a more complete picture of a prospect’s financial situation, especially as donation data is becoming harder to find in public databases.
In addition to net worth and career information, Windfall includes “Propensity to Give” scores. Windfall will custom-tailor a Propensity-to-Give algorithm to your organization and goals to provide these scores. Windfall promises 24-hour customer support access and a dedicated customer success manager, so ideally any necessary tweaks to the algorithm should happen quickly.
In addition to displaying donor information on an individual level, Windfall allows you to analyze and draw insights from your donor database as a whole. You can segment your donor data to look at trends and changes in specific subgroups. This can help you make data-driven decisions about your large-scale fundraising and outreach efforts as well as your one-on-one donor conversations.
Who Are Windfall's Competitors?
Data Matching
All of the data that Windfall produces can be linked to your existing donor database or CRM. Windfall also integrates with a number of popular programs where you might store this data, like Salesforce and DonorPerfect.
Windfall users speak highly of the platform’s match confidence, stating that it outperforms competitors at accurately matching donors to information. That’s a time- and frustration-saving win.
Information Accuracy
Perhaps the most important question when choosing a wealth screening software is, “Is this data accurate?” It’s a little hard to give a definitive yes or no here for Windfall, as it’s a newer product and doesn’t yet have a lot of customer reviews.
One thing Windfall does well as compared to the competition is frequent updates. Windfall’s algorithms are updated weekly, taking changes to prospect data into account, and you can sync this updated data with your database at any time. By contrast, reviews for products like DonorSearch sometimes mention information surfacing that is a year or more out of date.
What might not be as accurate as some of the competition: an algorithm is determining net worth rather than simply curating a list of publicly available stats. This algorithm might make mistakes and incorrect assumptions sometimes, and there aren’t a lot of customer reviews speaking to its accuracy yet.
DonorSearch, one of Windfall’s main competitors, takes a different approach. Each top prospect is manually verified, and users can request further research by a team of analysts on any potential prospects. This extra time taken in verification means DonorSearch is not providing users with the latest information every week like Windfall. However, some nonprofits may prefer DonorSearch's human touch to Windfall's purely algorithmic analysis.
Windfall Integrations
Windfall integrates with many popular nonprofit CRMs. There are a few widely used options that are notably missing from this list (including
Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT). If you use a CRM that is not included in this integrations list, you might have a more seamless experience using a different wealth screening tool.
Windfall Pricing
Unfortunately, there is no publicly available information about Windfall’s pricing. On average, donor prospect research software like Windfall tends to range in price from $1,500 to $5,000 a year, with custom pricing options available for nonprofits with larger databases or more frequent searching needs. You can figure out what Windfall might cost your organization by scheduling a demo.
Windfall Use Case
Windfall is a newer player in the world of donor prospect research, but for some nonprofits, “new” could be just what your organization needs. Windfall is a great choice for nonprofits whose top priorities are accurate data matching and finding the wealthiest potential donors. Windfall’s focus on net worth over giving capacity might also make it a great option if your organization has found giving capacity a less-than-useful metric in the past.
Windfall might not be right for nonprofits who have significant donor bases with net worths under one million dollars. Currently, Windfall is prioritizing calculating net worths greater than one million dollars.
You might also be better off choosing another solution if you would prefer the traditional giving capacity metric over net worth, or if your organization uses a CRM that Windfall does not integrate with.
Some users have mentioned using Windfall in addition to another donor prospect tool. If your organization has the budget for this, Windfall can provide some unique information, like net worth that other tools can’t. Users suggest that other software can be better about linking to things like property records for further research.