- Toll Free 1-800-655-7729
1. Who is iWave Information Systems Inc?
- iWave Information Systems Inc. is a private company based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada ,that provides detailed and timely information to the nonprofit sector. iWave has provided research to fundraising professionals for over 15 years. The company experienced tremendous growth upon its introduction of its web based product, Prospect Research Online, in 1996.
2. Where is iWave located?
- iWave Information Systems Inc. head office is located in a 5000 square foot building in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada . It also has sales offices in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada.
3. What is Prospect Research Online (PRO)?
- Prospect Research Online (PRO), is a subscription based, cost effective, easy-to-use Web research tool that helps nonprofits identify and qualify potential donors or funders in 3 key areas: individual giving, foundation giving and corporate giving. Prospect Research Online provides essential information for nonprofits sourcing financial and donor support in the competitive fundraising industry.
4. Who subscribes to Prospect Research Online?
- Prospect Research Online is used by research and development professionals all over North America, the United Kingdom and even Australia. We are proud to have subscribing organizations in all 50 states in the United States and all 10 provinces in Canada. Our subscribers include everything from a one person development office to the largest of nonprofit organizations in North America.
5. What types of organizations subscribe to Prospect Research Online?
- Prospect Research Online subscribers include university, college and school foundations, museums, healthcare and hospital foundations, united ways, humane societies, disease related foundations, social services organizations, orchestras, YMCA/YWCA’s, food banks, faith based organizations, zoos, organizations for international causes, arts & culture, environmental organizations and so many more.
6. Who can subscribe to Prospect Research Online?
- Due to our contractual arrangements with our data partners, subscriptions to Prospect Research Online are only available to registered nonprofits. We currently have subscribers from Canada, USA, United Kingdom and Australia. Nonprofit consultants or for-profit organizations cannot subscribe to Prospect Research Online at this time. iWave will request your tax number (i.e. EIN) and verify your nonprofit status before processing your application for a subscription.
7. What nonprofit sectors use Prospect Research Online?
- Virtually every sector of the nonprofit world are represented in our subscriber base. They include healthcare, higher education, human services, arts & culture, faith-based, foundations and environmental.
8. How much is an annual subscription to Prospect Research Online?
- A base license to Prospect Research Online starts at $2595 for US subscribers while our Canadian subscribers have access to a smaller number of data providers and starts at $1895 Cdn. For more details, please contact us at 1-800-655-7729. Clients may subscribe to either a US or Canadian based version of our service.
9. Is product training available ?
- In order to make the most out of your PRO subscription, it is essential to attend a training webinar. Whether you are a seasoned prospect researcher or just getting started, our Thursday training sessions will help you put your data to work. Sessions are held every second Thursday, and are open to all PRO licensed subscribers. Each session is conducted live via webinar and is one hour in duration. These live webinars provide an excellent opportunity to have your product questions answered live by the trainer.
- If you cannot attend a live webinar, register anyway and you will also automatically receive a recorded copy of the webinar via email the following day. Links to seven recorded training sessions are also located on the client center page. Training ensures you can utilize PRO to its fullest potential.
10. Are there any other associated costs?
- Subscribers are able to conduct unlimited searches. All data is exportable into Microsoft Excel or CSV files. ZoomInfo exports are limited to 2000 exports per account. Additional ZoomInfo exports can be purchased at any time throughout your subscription.
11. Are monthly subscriptions available?
- No. A minimum subscription to Prospect Research Online (PRO) is one year. Two and three year subscriptions are also available.
12. Can I cancel my subscription to Prospect Research Online before the end of the term on the order form?
- No, You cannot cancel your subscription to Prospect Research Online for any reason due to our contractual obligations with our data providers.
13. Can I share my access?
- No. Our systems tracks user name, IP address, city, and state log in information in the top right hand corner (i.e. Logged in as “smith from Chicago, IL”) when you log in to Prospect Research Online.
14. How do I participate in a sales demonstration and free trial?
- Simply call us at 1-800-655-7729 or fill out the free access form and an account representative will contact you to schedule a demonstration of Prospect Research Online at your convenience.
15. What data providers are included in Prospect Research Online?
- Our data providers include ZoomInfo and their PowerSearch product, NOZA’s world’s largest database of charitable donations, High Net Worth Alert by Infinata, Guidestar’s Grant Explorer, HEP Development’s Matching Gift database - Gift Plus Online, Larkspur Data’s Prospects of Wealth database, iWave’s Foundation Finder and PRO Data archive section
16. How often is the data updated?
- The best answer to this question is that our data is perpetually being updated. For example the NOZA database grows by about 1 million records per month. ZoomInfo’s database of people has grown from 24 million to 37 people over the past 3 years. High Net Worth Alert database of 2 million people grows about 20% annually. Your subscription to Prospect Research Online will provide you with a perpetual stream of new data throughout your 12 month subscription making monthly, weekly or even daily access a requirement to ensure continued fundraising success. Our renewal rate is excess of 70% speaks for itself.
17. How is data verified?
- Much of our data from our partners is aggregated from the internet. In the majority of our data providers, the source of the information is identified and you can visit the source yourself. With other products you are often limited to the information returned to you from the behind the scenes search and do not have the option of looking through source data. Being able to verify information is extremely important to prospect researchers. Some examples include: ZoomInfo caches its web references for viewing and NOZA provides the link to the pdf file or website that the donor records were collected from.
18. Do you have one search box for all data providers?
- The quick answer to your question is that you must search each database individually. We believe that easy isn't always better. There are two important reasons in allowing Prospect Research Online users to search within each data provider and not combining them into a “Google-like” search page. Firstly, by allowing our users to use all the criteria available in each data provider, we actually find that you may get your results faster but most importantly, more accurately. By taking advantage of as many as 15 search criteria available in a single data provider you can narrow your focus by simply adding more and more criteria to your search.
- Secondly, some of our data providers and their corresponding data sets do not have the search synergies necessary to facilitate such a search engine. Each data provider has engineered the best search methodologies for their data set and Prospect Research Online users have access to this power in their searches.
- Our decision to allow our users the full use of each database and its corresponding search criteria enables us to focus on each product’s best strengths. Firstly, Prospect Research Online’s primary strength is in helping you identify and research new people, new companies and new foundations that you weren’t aware of and that can support your organization. Our strength is helping you raise money from sources in which you don't have a name to plug into a database to generate a report. Secondly, our users always tell us that the ability to verify data is quite easy and a great time saver in Prospect Research Online as nearly every search result links you to source documents giving you the ability to verify the information we provide. We often hear that many other data providers do not provide these source documents and often the researcher must verify much of the data gathered in that tool.
19. What technical specifications are required to access Prospect Research Online?
- Subscribers can log into Prospect Research Online from virtually any computer system that has internet connection. (56K modem minimum, high speed connection recommended.) A screen resolution of 800x600 is the minimum, while we recommend 1024x768 or higher for best viewing. Prospect Research Online is designed and tested to work on Internet Explorer® 6.0 or higher. We do not support Firefox®, Opera®, Netscape® and other browsers although most of Prospect Research Online features will work in these browsers. Please note that Prospects of Wealth cannot be accessed without Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. In order to access the database, your browser must be set to accept cookies, and your Javascript must be enabled. If you have a firewall, either at PC level or at network level, you may need to give our sites permission to pass through as trusted sites. It is the responsibility of the purchaser to ensure that permissions are enabled.
20. Why don't we utilize SSL encryption in PRO?
- We do not use SSL (https) encryption because we do not pass any personal information in PRO except for the username and password used to login and it gets encrypted behind the scenes in the code before being passed anywhere. As an additional method of security, we also track where each username is logging in from and if the state on the subscription doesn't match the state the username is actually logging in from, we get notified and take measures to ensure the login has not been compromised. We also employ a very complex system of firewalls and data security software to ensure our in house data is secure and to prevent intrusions. We allow only our own authorized traffic in and out, if an unauthorized user tries to send data in or out of the network, the information is simply dropped by our software and firewall. Basically, the lack of personal information we store about our users in our external systems, simply does not warrant the use and overhead of SSL. Our internal systems we use to store address and payment information do use SSL and are locked down from the outside world.
Prospect Research Online FAQS - PDF (9KB)  |
