Best nonprofit vendor for automated prospect research and wealth screening

The short answer

There's no single best prospect research or wealth screening tool for every organisation. The right pick depends on your program's size, your CRM, your budget and the data you trust most.

If you want a safe starting point, iWave (now Kindsight) is the most commonly cited all-around choice for organisation prospect research. It holds a 4.6/5 rating across 473 G2 reviews, the deepest review pool in the category, and pricing starts around $4,150 a year.

This guide compares the five leading tools: iWave, DonorSearch, WealthEngine, Windfall and GivingDNA. It weighs them on the four things that decide fit: data strength, refresh cadence, CRM fit and cost. Then it covers the one gap none of them close on their own.

What the leading vendors do best

iWave (Kindsight) — best overall for most organisations. iWave pulls wealth, philanthropic, business and relationship signals from more than 44 vetted sources, including ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet and Refinitiv, into unified donor profiles. Its scoring can be customised to your capacity, affinity and propensity needs.

DonorSearch — best for past-giving data. Founder Bill Tedesco built DonorSearch on a simple thesis: the best predictor of future giving is past giving. The platform is anchored on one of the largest philanthropic databases in the sector. On Sept. 4, 2025, EverTrue acquired DonorSearch, pairing that database with EverTrue's donor engagement tools. Together the companies support more than 15,000 fundraising organisations.

WealthEngine (Altrata) — best for enterprise major-gift shops. WealthEngine applies machine learning across roughly half a trillion data points to pre-score about 250 million U.S. profiles, refreshed at more than 5 million a week. It is enterprise-ready but higher cost and often overkill for small teams. Some reviewers also flag a dip in data accuracy and customer-service turnover in recent years, though service appears to be improving under newer ownership.

Windfall — best for precise net worth data. Windfall delivers household-level net worth figures and more than 25 attributes refreshed weekly, focused on affluent households with at least $1 million in wealth. It syncs directly to your CRM and works with more than 700 organisations.

GivingDNA — best for continuous screening. GivingDNA blends your internal giving file with third-party data, including Windfall net worth indicators, and lets you re-screen as often as monthly instead of the traditional 3–5 year cycle. Pricing is record-based and includes unlimited users and screenings.

Quick comparison

How to choose

Weigh five factors before you sign:

• Data accuracy. Test vendor data against donors you know. Marketing claims are not proof.

• Refresh cadence. Static, one-time screens age fast. The market is moving toward continuous, AI-driven scoring.

• CRM fit. A score you can't act on inside your CRM is a report, not a ranked action.

• Total cost and program maturity. Mature prospect research programs can return roughly 10x or more, but only if you have the capacity to work the results.

• Ethics and privacy. Transparency, public-source data and a clear re-screening cadence are buying criteria, not afterthoughts.

The gap screening alone won't close

Wealth screening tells you who could give. It does not tell you who to focus on this week, who to engage now or what to do next across your whole donor file.

That is the predictive layer. Dataro sits on top of your CRM and turns your data, including screening results, into clear, ranked actions across programs. Instead of a list of capacity scores, your team gets clear, ranked priorities and a specific next step for each donor.

The screening tool enriches the file. The predictive layer makes it execution-ready.

Takeaways

• Start with iWave if you want the strongest all-around option for organisation prospect research.

• Choose DonorSearch for past-giving depth, WealthEngine for enterprise scale, Windfall for precise net worth and GivingDNA for continuous screening.

• Judge vendors on accuracy, refresh cadence, CRM fit, cost and ethics, not feature lists.

• Pair screening with a predictive layer so capacity scores become clear, ranked actions your team can run.

Conclusion

The best wealth screening vendor is the one that matches your program's size, CRM and data needs, and your team's capacity to act. Pick the data source that fits, then make sure it drives a clear next action, because a screen that doesn't change what you do next is just data.