Best Prospect Research and Wealth Screening Tools

Prospect research tools tell you what a donor could give. That is a genuinely useful thing to know and it is not the same as knowing whether they will, which is the distinction this page keeps returning to because it decides whether these products are worth their price to you.

What wealth screening actually does

It matches your donor file against public and licensed data: property records, SEC filings, political contributions, published gifts to other organizations, business affiliations. From that it produces a capacity estimate and usually a propensity score.

Capacity estimates are reasonable at the top and weak in the middle. Someone with a large publicly recorded property portfolio and disclosed philanthropy is straightforward to assess. A comfortable retiree with a paid-off house and no public footprint is invisible, and a meaningful number of significant gifts come from exactly that profile.

The second limitation matters more. Capacity is not intent. The output tells you somebody could write the cheque, not that they would, and the sector’s most common expensive mistake is treating a screening list as a prospect list and working names with money and no relationship.

The tools

DonorSearch

Best for: organizations that want screening plus a substantial free knowledge base.

The most established name in this space and the one most nonprofits encounter first. Screening, prospect generation, and integrations with the major CRMs. It is also, unusually, a genuine publisher: a large library of fundraising guides that many organizations use without ever buying the product.

Wrong for: small organizations with a few hundred donors, where the same money spent on a part-time fundraiser will do more. Pricing is not published, so budgeting requires a conversation.

Kindsight, formerly iWave

Best for: teams that want scoring they can interrogate rather than accept.

iWave rebranded to Kindsight and the product now sits alongside an AI-flavoured fundraising suite. Its long-standing strength is a transparent scoring model where you can see which inputs drove a rating, which matters when a gift officer needs to justify why somebody is in a portfolio.

Wrong for: anyone expecting the rebrand to have simplified the product. It is a research tool for people who will spend time in it. Unusually for this category, Kindsight publishes a price: iWave starts at $4,500 a year for Starter and $5,800 for Professional, and integration with your CRM is listed only in the Premium tier, which is priced on request, so budget on the assumption that scores flowing into the CRM cost more than the entry figure.

WealthEngine

Best for: large-scale screening of big files.

Built for volume, with a large consumer data set behind it and API access for pushing scores into other systems. If you need to screen tens of thousands of records rather than research individuals, this is the shape of tool that does it.

Wrong for: small files, where per-record economics make no sense, and anyone wanting deep individual research rather than bulk scoring.

Windfall

Best for: organizations that want net worth estimates rather than tiers.

Takes a different approach, modelling household net worth on a continuous basis and refreshing it, rather than assigning capacity bands. Sold across commercial sectors as well as nonprofits, which shows in the integrations.

Wrong for: organizations wanting philanthropic context. A net worth model tells you about wealth, not about giving behaviour, and those are different questions.

Dataro

Best for: organizations with a large donor file and a CRM already in good order, wanting predictions rather than wealth data.

Dataro works the other way round from the screening tools above. It trains models on your own CRM history to predict who will upgrade, lapse or respond, and adds a US only prospect product built on public sources. It integrates with Raiser’s Edge NXT, Salesforce, HubSpot, Virtuous and others, and it publishes its prices: Essentials from $15,000 a year plus $0.10 per active donor, Growth from $25,000 plus $0.12, with no self serve trial. Dataro pricing.

Wrong for: anyone under a few thousand active donors, where a model has too little history to learn from and the base fee alone is several percent of what the organization raises. How it compares with the CRM based tool at the other end of the price range is in Gratefully vs Dataro.

Instrumentl and Candid, for foundation prospects

Best for: organizations whose prospects are foundations, not individuals.

Prospect research is two jobs and the tools above do one of them. Finding which foundations fund work like yours, how much and to whom, is done from 990-PF returns and grant records, and two products dominate it. Instrumentl matches you to funders and open opportunities and tracks applications, from $299 a month billed annually, $326 monthly, with a 14 day free trial. Candid, which now includes the Foundation Directory, has a free plan for verified nonprofits with limited searches and full profiles from $1,199 a year, or $219 a month.

Wrong for: individual donor research. Neither tells you anything about a person’s capacity, and Candid’s free tier is enough to test whether foundation funding fits your work before you pay for either.

Doing it yourself

Best for: most organizations under a few hundred active donors.

This belongs on the list because for a large share of readers it is the correct answer. Public sources cover a great deal: county property records, SEC filings for public company insiders, FEC political contributions, other organizations’ published annual reports and donor listings, obituaries, and LinkedIn.

Screening 300 donors by hand is a few days of work and produces better results than a subscription, because a person reading the same sources notices context an algorithm does not.

Wrong for: files in the thousands, where the arithmetic flips decisively and manual research stops being feasible.

The other half is what you already know, and most organizations know more than their database shows because it is spread across people rather than records. A short written profile is how that gets consolidated before you pay anyone to screen anything. The donor profile template is one page and sets out what is worth recording and what is not.

What these tools cost, where anyone says

Most of this market still sells by quote, but more vendors now publish a figure than did a year ago, and the ones that do make the others easier to place. Every price below was read on the vendor’s own pricing page in October 2026.

A price means little without the budget it comes out of, so here are the published entry prices set against what charities of each size actually raise and spend on technology, from IRS Form 990 returns. Contributions are the median among the 89.6% of filers reporting any; technology is Part IX line 14, among the organizations reporting a figure there.

Two things follow. For an organization spending $250,000 to $1m, the cheapest published wealth screening subscription is about the size of its entire median technology line, $4,877 a year, before a CRM, an accounting package or a single laptop. And under $250,000 the same subscription is 4.5% of everything the median organization raises, which is why the do it yourself entry above is the right answer at that size rather than a consolation. The arithmetic turns somewhere in the $1m to $5m band, where 0.4% of contributions buys a tool that a gift officer will use every week.

The source for the IRS figures, and the method, is the same extract behind what nonprofits actually spend money on.

Capacity is half the question

Every product above answers the same half: how much could this person give. The other half, whether they are inclined to and what would move them, sits in your own records rather than in any external database. It is in contact reports, event attendance, email replies, volunteer hours and the notes nobody indexes.

That is why a screening exercise so often produces a list nobody works. The names have money and no relationship, and a gift officer sensibly prioritises the donor who replied to something last week.

The useful sequence is to rank your existing engaged donors by capacity, rather than to rank a capacity list by engagement. Start from people who have already shown up. Tools that work on the engagement side of this, reading your CRM and correspondence rather than external wealth data, are a different category and we cover them in AI tools for nonprofit fundraising.

If the engagement half is what you actually lack, that is a different purchase. Tools in that category read your CRM, your documents and your correspondence rather than external wealth data, and rank the donors who have already shown interest. Gratefully is the most reachable, free for one person and $4,788 a year for five seats, against no published price at all for DonorSearch, WealthEngine or Windfall. It tells you nothing about capacity, which is what the tools above are for, so the two answer opposite halves of the same question. See AI tools for nonprofit fundraising.

Before screening anyone for wealth, rank the donors you already have on their giving history; it usually produces a better first list for nothing. The method, and a major gift threshold for your size from IRS data, are in how to find major gift prospects.

Before you buy

The second question is the one that most often should stop a purchase. Screening produces work rather than money, and it produces a great deal of it. An organization without the staff time to run the resulting portfolio has bought a list. Our page on how many prospects a gift officer can manage sets out the arithmetic, and it usually implies a far smaller working list than a screening returns.

Free public sources, and the one you may not use to ask

Most of what the paid tools match against is public. These are the sources a researcher works through by hand, and what each actually tells you.

The last row is the one every vendor comparison leaves out. Federal law prohibits using information about contributors taken from FEC reports to solicit contributions, and the Federal Election Commission’s own guidance says its regulations bar using it to solicit donations, including charitable donations. Building a list of new people to approach from FEC data is exactly what that forbids. Looking up a donor you already know is a narrower use that researchers commonly treat as background, but the rule makes no exception for it, so take advice before relying on it, and never let an FEC search be where a name first enters your file.

How accurate the ratings are, as far as anyone knows

There is no independent study of wealth screening accuracy that we could find. The figures in circulation are vendors describing their own products: DonorSearch, for example, states an accuracy rate of 90 to 100% without saying how it was measured or against what. A widely repeated figure of around 60% for the industry has no source we could trace, and we do not repeat it.

You can measure it yourself before buying, and it costs one afternoon. Pick fifty donors whose giving and circumstances you know well, including several quiet major donors with no public profile. Ask each vendor to screen that file as part of the sales process, and compare their ratings with what you know. The quiet donors are the test: a tool that rates them as low capacity is telling you how much of your best prospects it cannot see.

The privacy question, which nobody asks

Screening is lawful and standard practice. It is also compiling a financial profile of a supporter who did not ask you to, and donors are frequently surprised to learn it happens.

Two positions worth taking deliberately. Say so in your privacy policy, in plain terms, that you may use publicly available information to understand supporters’ capacity to give. And apply the test that governs everything in a donor record: would you be comfortable if this person read the file? If a research note would embarrass you in front of the person it describes, it should not be in there.

The prospect research profession has written this down. Apra’s Principles of Ethics and Compliance, updated in June 2020, ask researchers to track data provenance so that everything is legally obtained and publicly available from reliable sources, to follow the terms of use of every data source, and not to unreasonably intrude on an individual’s privacy. A policy that cites them is easier to defend to a board than one invented in-house.

One-off screening versus a subscription

Worth asking about explicitly, because vendors lead with subscriptions and for many organizations the one-off is the right purchase.

A single screening of your file tells you what capacity sits in your existing donor base. That is a finite piece of information and it does not change quickly. Property and business holdings move slowly, and the file you screened last year is largely the file you have this year.

A subscription earns its cost when you are adding records continuously, when new prospects arrive faster than you can research them, or when you need scores flowing into the CRM automatically for segmentation.

If you are screening once to find out who is in your file, ask for that. It is usually available and rarely offered.

If you are specifically weighing a move away from the incumbent, we set out the three reasons people look and which ones another vendor actually solves in DonorSearch alternatives.

How this list was made

Products were selected on whether a US nonprofit under roughly $5m would plausibly consider them, and every entry names who it is wrong for as well as who it suits.

Prices are quoted only where the vendor publishes them, read on its own pricing page in October 2026: Kindsight, Dataro, Instrumentl, Candid and Gratefully. DonorSearch, WealthEngine and Windfall do not publish prices, and that is a genuine cost to a small organization: you cannot rule them in or out without a sales conversation. The IRS figures come from the processing year 2024 Form 990 extract, 256,539 charities spending $25,000 or more.

Questions people ask

What is prospect research?

Gathering information about donors and potential donors to understand their capacity to give, their philanthropic interests and their connections to your organization. Also called prospect development or wealth screening, though screening is really one technique within it.

Sources are public and licensed records: property, SEC filings, political contributions, published gifts to other charities, business affiliations, foundation directories.

The output is normally a capacity estimate and sometimes a propensity score. Capacity is what they could give. Whether they will is a separate question that external data cannot answer.

How much does wealth screening cost?

Most vendors still quote rather than publish, but the published figures now give a floor. Kindsight's iWave starts at $4,500 a year for Starter and $5,800 for Professional, with CRM integration in a Premium tier priced on request. Dataro starts at $15,000 a year plus $0.10 per active donor. DonorSearch, WealthEngine and Windfall do not publish prices.

Against IRS data, $4,500 is about the whole median technology budget of a charity spending $250,000 to $1m, and 4.5% of what the median charity under $250,000 raises. That is why manual research is the right answer at small sizes.

Ask specifically whether a one-time screening is available. For many organizations that is the appropriate purchase and vendors do not lead with it.

Is wealth screening worth it for a small nonprofit?

Often not, and the deciding factor is not the price but whether anyone has time to act on the output.

Screening produces a long list of names to research, cultivate and solicit. Without a person whose job includes that work, you have bought a report. Portfolio arithmetic usually implies a working list far smaller than a screening returns.

Below a few hundred active donors, manual research using public records will do the job in a few days and produce better results, because a person notices context an algorithm does not. Above a few thousand records the economics flip decisively.

What is the difference between capacity and propensity?

Capacity is how much someone could give based on assets and income. Propensity is how likely they are to give to you, based on their behaviour and relationship with your organization.

External wealth data answers the first well and the second poorly. Propensity lives in your own records: giving history, event attendance, email engagement, volunteering, replies to things.

The common expensive mistake is working a capacity list without regard to propensity, producing a portfolio of wealthy strangers. Rank your engaged donors by capacity rather than ranking a capacity list by engagement.

Can you do prospect research without software?

Yes, and for a few hundred donors it is the sensible approach.

County property records are public and mostly online. SEC filings show insider holdings at public companies. FEC records show political contributions. Other nonprofits publish donor listings in annual reports, which tells you both capacity and philanthropic inclination. Foundation directories, obituaries and LinkedIn fill in the rest.

Screening 300 records manually takes a few days. The result is often better than a subscription because the researcher sees connections and context a matching algorithm misses.

One caution: federal rules bar using contributor information from FEC reports to solicit contributions, including charitable ones, so political giving records can inform research on someone you know but must never be the source of a name you then ask.

Do you have to tell donors you research them?

It is lawful and standard practice, and you are not generally required to notify individuals. Whether you should is a different question and worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.

Two things are worth doing. State in your privacy policy, plainly, that you may use publicly available information to understand supporters' capacity to give. And apply the test that should govern any donor record: would you be comfortable if this person read their own file?

Research notes that would embarrass you in front of the person they describe do not belong in the system, whatever the law permits.

How accurate are capacity ratings?

Reasonable at the top, weak in the middle, and worth treating as a starting point rather than a fact.

Someone with substantial publicly recorded property and disclosed philanthropy is straightforward to assess. A retiree with a paid-off house, no public profile and considerable savings is largely invisible to these systems, and a meaningful share of major gifts come from that profile.

Ratings also age. Property changes hands, businesses are sold, circumstances change. Ask any vendor how often data refreshes, and never present a screening estimate to a board as though it were a verified figure.

There is no independent accuracy study. Vendor figures, such as DonorSearch's stated 90 to 100%, are the vendors' own claims. Test any tool on fifty donors you know well, including quiet major donors with no public footprint, before you buy.

What should you do after a wealth screening?

Far less than the file suggests, and this is where most screenings fail.

Take the results, cross-reference against engagement, and build a working list sized to the hours you actually have, which is usually a small fraction of what the screening returned. Assign every name an owner and a next action.

Then start with people who already have a relationship with you. A screening's most valuable output is usually not the wealthy strangers but the confirmation that three of your existing loyal donors have far more capacity than their giving suggests. Those three are the return on the exercise.

What are the most popular tools for researching donors?

For individual donors, the established screening products are DonorSearch, Kindsight's iWave, WealthEngine and Windfall. For foundation prospects, Instrumentl and Candid. For predictions built from your own CRM, Dataro at the large end and Gratefully at the small end.

The most used tool of all is free: ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, which makes every Form 990 searchable, including the grant lists of private foundations, which are the best evidence of philanthropic interest there is.

Can you use FEC political donation records for fundraising?

Not to find people to ask. Federal law prohibits using contributor information from FEC reports for soliciting contributions, and the FEC states that this includes charitable donations.

Researchers commonly read FEC records as background on donors they already know, but the rule makes no exception for that, so take advice before relying on it, and never let an FEC search be the way a name enters your donor file.