If you can only have 1 prospect research tool... choose iWave
Updated January 20, 2020
If you can only have 1 prospect research tool... choose iWave
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with iWave
iWave is used to research potential donors for our organization. It is a great tool to get a snapshot of a prospects capacity, linkage, and interest. Plus the PRO Screen feature makes it easy to analyze contacts in your current database to see where there may be more potential and hidden gems.
- 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.
- Not all the data sources have smart searches, so you would still need to search for Steve Smith and Stephen Smith separately.
- iWave can only return the data that is out there from its data sources which sometimes can be inaccurate. This is no fault of iWave but is still a con with using the software.
- iWave is expensive and can be hard to justify the cost unless you have a full-time prospect researcher or another position who is consistently using the program.
- By running our current database contacts through PROscreen we were able to easily see annual fund donors who had the potential for a major gift and to begin stewarding them down that path.
- Unfortunately, iWave has not had as large of an impact on our organization as I would like simply due to the staff time available to use the program efficiently.
- Helps us get a good snapshot of a new donors capacity and other programs they may be interested in.
Before iWave, I would use GuideStar and advanced google searches for my research. iWave makes prospect research so much easier by compiling multiple data sources into one software program that can be easily searched simultaneously using the 360search. There are several other products out there that allow you to dive deeper into a particular data source, but iWave is a great program to cover a lot of ground when researching prospects.