FAQs

Do I need to be an experienced researcher to use iWave?

No! iWave is meant for nonprofit professionals of all skills and abilities. Regardless if you’re a first-time donor researcher who has depended on Google for donor intel, or a lifelong prospect research advocate, iWave is perfect for you. It is one of the easiest tools to use, and with streamlined features, it will save you time and enable you to fundraise more efficiently. However, if you ever have any questions about iWave, unlimited support is included with every subscription. Click here to get in touch.

How does prospect research help with fundraising?

Prospect research will help your organization raise more major gifts, faster. By helping nonprofit organization’s know who to ask, when to ask, and how much to ask for, they are able to present more accurate gift asks to prospective and current donors. With a prospect research platform like iWave, you’ll be able to make evidence-backed gift asks to ensure you’re always fundraising with confidence.

How does iWave Screening differ from other wealth screening offerings in the nonprofit industry?

iWave Screening is different from other wealth screening platforms because of the following reasons:

  • Transparent results which allow users to see every record that was used to generate a prospect score
  • It factors in a prospects propensity to give, and their affinity to your cause, along with wealth capacity, which helps paint a more accurate and more comprehensive prospect picture
  • Screening parameters that are customizable specific to any nonprofit organization regardless of their size or fundraising goals.. This customization is the first of its kind in the nonprofit industry and no longer depends on a one-size-fits-all model.
  • The ability to return screening results in minutes or hours, rather than days or weeks. Reasons.

Why is iWave the top-rated prospect research platform?

A leading market research firm identified iWave as the top-rated prospect research  platform based on the five reasons listed below.

The five reasons why iWave is the top-rated prospect research platform.

  • Highest User Experience Score
  • Industry leader for searching multiple databases simultaneously
  • Custom scores, screening, and profiles on-demand
  • The most user-friendly platform available to nonprofit organization
  • Access to the only database of verified gift records

iWave is also the top-rated prospect research platform according to G2 Crowd, a leading peer review platform.

How does iWave help with moves management?

Moves management is the process in which a nonprofit organization takes an unknown prospect and moves them through the donor cultivation cycle, turning them into a life-long major gift donor. The moves management cycle consists of the following steps; identification, qualification, cultivation, soliticiton, and stewardship. Nonprofit organization’s are able to power-up each step of the moves management process by using iWave to identify prospective donors, qualify their major gift potential, build comprehensive prospect profiles detailing capacity, propensity, to give, craft more targeted, data-informed major gift asks and then stay up-to-date on the donor into the future..

How does iWave work within the donor cultivation cycle?

The donor cultivation cycle is broken into five segments – Identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. Within each of these steps, iWave will enable your organization to better understand and better leverage internal and external prospect and donor information to fundraise with confidence

What type of role typically uses iWave?

iWave can be used by any individual within a nonprofit organization. However, iWave is most often used by two different functions – prospect development prospect researchers and fundraising teams. iWave enables prospect development professionals, specifically prospect researchers, to leverage billions of data points to uncover and discover a prospect’s propensity, affinity, and capacity with confidence. For fundraisers, iWave streamlines the process of identifying new donors, building prospect profiles, and staying up-to-date on current donors so they can spend more time building relationships while leaving fewer donations on the table.

I’m new to a development role – what do I need to know about fundraising intelligence?

When stepping into a development role for the first time, it’s easy to become intimidated. The nonprofit landscape is changing, new research methods are ever-evolving, and donor numbers are decreasing. And those are just external factors! To ensure success within your role, development department, and nonprofit, it’s important to employ fundraising intelligence. It involves leveraging data, such as employment history and real estate holdings, strategies, such as prospect research, and processes, such as wealth screening, to better understand your current and prospective donors to help raise more major gifts, faster.

What is prospect research?

Prospect research, also known as development research or donor research, is the process of gathering relevant and topical information about portenional and current donors. Prospect research includes processes and methods through which fundraisers, development teams, and nonprofits gather intel on a prospect’s capacity, affinity, and propensity to give. This information can include, but is not limited to, real estate holdings, charitable donations, contact information, insider filings, compensation, company information, and board affiliations. The processes and methods used to research include wealth screening, building profiles, and analyzing giving history.

Where does iWave source their charitable giving information from?

VeriGift is iWave’s own database of charitable gift donations, recipients, and donors. It is the fastest growing and most up-to-date charitable giving database because of the innovative record extraction technology it uses to gather donation records. VeriGift is the industry’s only charitable giving source that links every record to the source document for easy verification.

Does iWave offer Canadian real estate data?

iWave offers Canadian real estate data through Manifold Data Mining. Within this dataset, nonprofits are able to access median Canadian property value, median household income and average donations for Canadian prospects. Manifold Data Mining includes geo-demographic information based on a 6-digit Canadian Household postal code. This is based on the 2016 Canadian Census Data.

Does iWave offer United States real estate data?

iWave offers United States real estate data through CoreLogic. Within this dataset, nonprofits are able to access property records, tax assessments, property characteristics and parcel maps from tax assessors and country recorder offices across the United States. Currently, over 150 million commercial and residential property records are in this dataset.

Can I integrate my donor management system (DMS) with iWave?

Yes! iWave integrates with many donor management systems, but if it does not integrate with yours, we also provide access to a direct API for individuals looking to integrate their application. The iWave API enriches your existing data with billion’s of wealth and philanthropic records to help you identify new prospects while learning more about your current donors capacity and inclination to give. The integrations pull information such as capacity ratings, capacity ranges, real estate holdings, charitable giving history, planned giving, internal RFM information and prospect profiles directly to the contact record. With the iWave API, you can focus your time and effort on your top major gift prospects.

What integrations does iWave offer?

iWave offers seven integrations; Salesforce, Tessitura, Gravyty, Neon, Raiser’s Edge NXT, Causeview, and Patron Manager. Each of these integrations allows you to enrich your internal database with billions of wealth and philanthropic records to learn more about your prospective donor’s capacity and inclination to give. If the application you use is not in the list above, iWave also offers an API that enables custom integrations into the application of your choice.

What kind of data does iWave use?

iWave’s data provides a 360° view of your prospect’s capacity, propensity, and affinity to give to your cause.  With over 38 wealth, biographic, and philanthropic databases from 14 data providers, iWave offers access to billions of data points at your fingertips. Updated on daily, weekly, and monthly schedules, iWave offers the industry’s most comprehensive and reliable data source. Some of this data includes real estate holdings, charitable giving records, contact information, insider filings, compensation, company information, and board affiliations.

How do you use wealth screening for fundraising?

Wealth screening helps uncover potential donors within your database. It enables development departments to segment hundreds or thousands of individuals they know very little about into a prioritized list of prospects with the greatest capacity and inclination to donate a major gift to your organization. When a prospective donor is uncovered using wealth screening, they are then moved through the donor cultivation cycle for further research and to begin the process of stewardship.

What is wealth screening?

Wealth screening is a tool nonprofits use to segment and prioritize groups of prospective donors to identify those with the greatest major gift potential. Wealth screening helps nonprofits determine a prospect’s financial capacity, propensity to donate, and affinity towards the organization. Wealth screening delivers critical pieces of intel, including capacity ratings, estimated capacity, real estate holdings, and charitable giving history, to help determine their overall fit as a donor for your organization.

Who is fundraising intelligence for?

Fundraising intelligence is perfect for any nonprofit who actively solicits donations to help drive their organizational activities and achieve their mission. At small nonprofit organizations with no development department the Executive Director is often in charge of gathering fundraising intelligence, whereas at mid-sized nonprofits it is often the responsibility of development team of gift officers and development staff. At larger organizations with a dedicated prospect research or prospect development team, this team is often executing sophisticated fundraising intelligence systems.

What is fundraising intelligence?

Think of fundraising intelligence as business intelligence for nonprofits. It is the process of nonprofits accumulating, understanding, and presenting information about prospective donors in order to better understand and cultivate more major gifts, faster. Fundraising intelligence includes prospect or donor research, wealth screening, prospect development, donor analytics, and prospect management as well as any other analysis or information on prospective donors that informs which prospects have capacity and inclination to make charitable donations. This information and analysis is used to better understand donors, craft data-informed gift asks, build deeper relationships with donors. In the current competitive nonprofit landscape where number of major gift donors is going down, it is absolutely essential for nonprofits to use fundraising intelligence to increase fundraising revenue.

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