iWave is an excellent wealth screening program, especially for the cost
Overall Satisfaction with iWave
I am Director of Leadership Giving at the Roman Catholic Diocese, and utilize iWave to identify and solicit major donor prospects. While some nonprofit organizations have a full-time researcher (or more than one), we are a relatively small office (six FTE professionals) and I use iWave to determine which of our current constituents have the financial capacity and more important, the affinity for our mission and then solicit gifts for such purposes as Catholic Charities and our Seminarian Education Campaign. We also have two other users in the development department. This software addresses the need to develop profiles on donors and prospective donors.
Pros
- Generally accurate in bringing together financial information such as property owned, nonprofit or foundation board membership
- Generally accurate in predicting donor or prospect's affinity for our work (thus propensity to give)
- Very accurate with things like political giving -- an important predictor for giving
Cons
- iWave could improve in the area of connecting business affiliations and giving.
- Given some of the new features -- e.g. batch screening -- it has taken me some time to get used how to export to the different screens. However, I've found their customer service to be excellent and they've helped me through some of the new features.
- In the three or four years I have been using iWave, I've seen approximately $100,000 in new gifts from new major gift prospects - prospects that I would not have known about, or known about so quickly
- I believe the additions to iWave's databases have increased my efficiency as a part-time researcher and major gift solicitor
I've used all three of the above products -- and they are all good. It is hard to compare them, because it has been more than four years since I used them. At the time I switched to iWave, I found the user interfaces in the above programs less than optimal in terms of functionality. My sense is that all three have since improved their products.
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