What is iWave for NationBuilder?
iWave is a fundraising intelligence platform that analyzes publicly available wealth, philanthropic, and biographical data to help fundraising teams understand donor prospects — who they are, how much they might give, and how likely they are to give. Nonprofit development teams typically use iWave to prioritize major gift outreach and planned giving cultivation.
The iWave for NationBuilder integration connects your iWave account to your nation so you can run prospect screening without leaving NationBuilder. You add signups to a queue list, and overnight, iWave screens them and writes scores and tags back to each signup's profile. No imports, no exports, no switching between systems.
Get started or learn more here: https://nationbuilder.com/iwave_nationbuilder
This integration is initially set up and configured by NationBuilder's Professional Services team. Once it's connected to your nation, your team can use it entirely from inside NationBuilder.
How It Works
The integration uses a designated list in your nation as a Screening Queue. Here's the full workflow:
Add signups to the queue. As your team identifies signups they want to learn more about — prospects you're cultivating, lapsed donors, new high-potential signups — add those people to your Screening Queue list.
Overnight screening. Every night at 8 PM ET (5 PM PT), the integration submits every signup currently on the queue list to iWave for screening. Each processed signup is automatically removed from the list.
Results on the profile. By the next morning, iWave's scores are appended to custom fields on each signup's profile, and analytical insights are applied as tags. You can filter, segment, and act on the data immediately.
Each signup processed through the integration uses one screen from your connected iWave account. You control which signups go into the queue, which means you control how screens are consumed.
📌 Note on Screens: Each signup the integration processes uses one screen from your iWave account. Your iWave subscription determines how many screens you have available per period.
It's worth checking your available screen balance in iWave periodically, especially if you plan to queue a large cohort at once.
Adding Signups to the Screening Queue
The Screening Queue is a regular NationBuilder list of your choosing. The list you selected during setup will serve as the “queue”, but you can change the list at any time by adjusting the setting in ConnectionsHub.
You can add signups to the queue the same way you'd add a signup to any other list:
From a signup's profile, use the option “Add to list” to add them to the queue.
From a filter or list view, use Batch update → Add to list to add multiple signups at once.
From any list, you can move or copy signups into the queue.
Anyone on the list at 8:00 PM ET will be screened that night. Signups added after 8:00 PM ET will be picked up the following night.
Finding Your Screened Signups
To see all signups that have been screened by iWave, filter your nation by: Tag name contains "iWave"
This surfaces every signup that has been processed, regardless of which specific tags they received. From there you can layer on additional filters — by score, by tag, by date tagged — to find the cohort you're looking for.
You can also use the criteria for date tagged to find signups screened during a specific time period (for example, the last 30 days).
What Gets Added to Each Signup
Every screened signup receives a set of numeric scores as custom fields and one or more descriptive tags.
Score Fields
Custom Field | What It Tells You |
iwave_score | Overall composite donor quality rating |
iwave_propensity_score | Likelihood to give based on philanthropic history |
iwave_capacity_score | Estimated financial ability to donate |
iwave_affinity_score | Alignment with your organization's cause and mission |
iwave_planned_giving_score | Likelihood to make a planned or legacy gift |
iwave_rfm_score | Recency, Frequency, Monetary giving behavior score |
iwave_capacity_range | Estimated gift capacity expressed as a dollar range |
iwave_last_scored_at | Date and time the signup was last screened |
These fields appear in the custom fields section of each signup's profile. You can also use them in filters — for example, iwave_score is greater than 3 — to segment your screened signups.
Profile Tags
In addition to numeric scores, iWave's analytical models produce categorical insights that are applied to signups as tags. These tags describe donor archetypes and engagement profiles, giving your team context without having to interpret raw numbers.
Tags follow a consistent naming convention so they're easy to filter on:
iWave Analytics: Archetype - [Type]
(e.g., "iWave Analytics: Archetype - Hidden Gem")
iWave Engagement Profile: [Type]
(e.g., "iWave Analytics: Engagement - Ambassador")
Because every screened signup gets at least one iWave tag, filtering by Tag contains "iWave" is the simplest way to surface your full screened population.
Checking Run History and Schedule
Your day-to-day work happens inside NationBuilder, but you can check the status of the integration itself — recent runs, next scheduled run, connection status at: https://connections-hub.nationbuilder.com
This is the same place your account was originally connected. You'll need to sign in with your NationBuilder credentials.
Troubleshooting
Scores and tags didn't appear after an overnight run
A few things to check:
Confirm the signup was on the queue list before 8 PM ET. Signups added after that time are picked up the following night.
Check the run history in ConnectionsHub. The most recent run will show whether it completed successfully or hit an error.
Check your iWave screen balance. If your iWave account has run out of available screens, the integration cannot process new signups. You'll need to add screens to your iWave account before the next run.
A specific signup isn't getting screened
iWave's matching relies on the data available on each signup's profile — typically name, address, and donation history at minimum. Signups with very sparse profile information may not return useful matches. If a specific signup isn't producing results, check that their profile includes a full name and, where possible, address or geographic information. Also be sure that the signup has donations attached to their profile in NationBuilder.
The integration shows as disconnected
If either the NationBuilder or iWave connection has become disconnected (for example, because a password was changed or an account was deactivated), you'll need to reconnect it at https://connections-hub.nationbuilder.com.
The reconnection needs to be completed by an admin in your nation with permissions that allow for use of the NationBuilder API.
Something else
For anything not covered here (including connection issues, missing custom fields, or questions about screen usage) contact NationBuilder support. Mention that you're using the iWave for NationBuilder integration so the correct team can assist you.