iWave Reviews & Product Details

The amount of data available for prospect research is one of iWave’s biggest strengths. iWave is one of the most widely used and reliable resources when I’m conducting prospect research, and it’s always a tool I turn to during my research process. The database is fairly easy to use and navigate, which makes it practical for day-to-day work. I also sometimes find information on iWave that I can’t find elsewhere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I’ve noticed data discrepancies between what iWave lists and what the source shows, especially around gift information. For example, iWave may list a gift as an annual gift, while the source indicates it was a cumulative gift. I’ve also seen similar mismatches with gift amounts. I also noticed that iWave doesn't not include all gifts. There are gifts I come across in the news that is not included in iWave results. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We are a new organization, so we are building out our funder pipeline - including foundations, corporate, and individuals. I use this platform a lot at different periods of time when I'm working on prospecting.

We have used iWave to build our prospect list, which has lead to a few good leads as we build out our individual giving program. It's also been useful in finding contact information for corporate and foundations folks. From some of these lists, we did an email campaign series last year and figured out who was opening our emails, we were then able to utilize the screening feature to get more wealth screening information. This did help us strategize our approaches for 2026.

Customer support is always very quick to respond which I really appreciate.

Further, we pay four our members subscriptions. Many of them find the tool helpful for screening current donors; however, they have had also had issues with building out prospect lists. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Contact information is sparse and often incorrect, even with the new Appends feature. As a new organization building out our major donor pipeline, we really need good, solid contact information. The prospect listing has also not been helpful in narrowing down our search for folks that support abortion. One of the reasons we chose this platform over others was that we could narrow down the filers, but when we narrow down no donors appear.

The tool hasn't been lucrative in building out an extensive new pipeline of foundations or corporations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I value the comprehensive data iWave provides, which synthesizes different pieces of information on donors and prospects. I actively use it as a chief development officer, and it's great for identifying new prospects and assessing the capacity of existing donors. I appreciate the ability to customize the contract for good value for money. It's comprehensive for various industries, and our team uses it across the enterprise with success. I find iWave to be intuitive with a comprehensive set of resources for training, and the client success manager is really accessible for onboarding and individual training. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a Canadian user researching Canadian donors and entities, we have less access to information compared to some other clients. This is a common issue across all tools in the sector. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use iWave for screening my donor database and building out my major gift pipeline. iWave helps me quickly segment new prospects and prioritize them as I surface them for our major gift officers. It has been instrumental for our organization, especially since our donor database is primarily our alumni. I'm able to use internal giving data with iWave's screening processes, which enhances iWave's analytics. It also offers cultivation techniques and engagement ideas that are beneficial not only for our major gift officers but for other departments as well, to engage and educate our graduate community. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't like how I had to learn on my own about changes to the screening template because there wasn't a notification through email. This lack of communication and timing wasted some of my time, even though the screenings were refunded. I also found the knowledge base library not very intuitive to navigate, needing to open multiple tabs. It just wasn't very easy, leading to hits and misses while figuring out how to fully leverage iWave. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

iWave's VeriGift function is fantastic, and the exportability of foundation gifts as well is very helpful. I also absolutely love the screening options before each screening - it's thoughtful and very helpful to be able to change those ratings based on the purpose of each particular screening/project. That's huge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Their Foundations data is about a year behind oftentimes. It's still more current than the competition, but having to go elsewhere for 2024 Forms 990 and add those gifts manually for my team has been cumbersome. Also the orange-y format and thin lettering is a lot harder to read than their previous version. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use iWave for donor prospecting and research. It helps me find more information about donors and easily discover new prospects. I really like the Smart Sheet feature, which we use the most, along with Smart Search. Smart Search allows us to quickly and easily find new donor prospects along with their contact info. Additionally, the initial setup of iWave was pretty easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's not so easy to find emails for certain people and to also search funders of specific organizations. It would also be helpful to have a plugin for other CRMs like Raiser's Edge so that we can directly import people. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like that once you're inside an iWave screening, it does a great job of getting in-depth information about donors. I appreciate that it provides kind of a global perspective on donor behavior, both politically and in terms of charitable donations. Once you upload data, iWave helps find a lot of useful information about those donors and can find comparable donors who exist in the same market space. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In order to do an upload for iWave, you have to put the information in a very specific format, and it's not the format that your CRM or donor management platform will spit it out in. So that's really the only point of friction with the software. It's a little bit of a pain. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I think the Kindsight/iWave team is the absolute best. Their product is amazing but every interaction I've had with the team has always been very professional, helpful and kind. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are a few features I wish were in certain areas of the program. Like the new custom fields in the screening section, I wish I could see those in the profile section. I wish I could better edit the PDF version of iWave profiles to include certain aspects and not others - there are often so many blank or almost blank pages of the PDF that I know my team will stop scrolling there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

iWave is fairly intuitive and easy to navigate. I appreciate the integration with our database for quick access to scores. I need to explore the Connections section of iWave, but like the idea behind it in finding potential pathways to prospects/donors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

For Alerts on specific prospects, it would be nice to be able designate an email address that we could have those automatically sent to - So MGO Mary is the relationship manager for John and Susan Smith then I could indicate MGO Mary's email address for where the alerts on the Smiths would be sent. When using the Donations Recipient search, it would be nice to be able to be able to see the donor's city/state location in the results list - this would be useful when finding prospects that have donated to another environment/conservation focused organization but live in a specific geography that we may be interested in connecting with prospects/donors.

I do not like that the login situation was changed mid contract. Being able to have two concurrent people logged in is far more useful for our organization and having it changed to only two logins period is NOT ideal. We are a smaller nonprofit and having to pay for additional logins is not ideal. This is a BIG detractor for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

iWave is intuitive to use, widely recognized as have the best overall information in the industry, and the customer support is unmatched. It's also very easy to connect to our database. We've been using it more and more. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Occasionally, finding phone numbers for individuals is buried in different data sources. You must look carefully at each potential record for contact information. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.