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.
Setting up the integration
You set this up yourself, and it takes a few minutes. You don't need a developer, and you don't need iWave API credentials — you connect your iWave account through a standard login flow.
Before you start
You'll need:
An active iWave subscription with screens available
Access to the iWave account credentials you want to connect
A NationBuilder admin account with permissions to use the NationBuilder API and to authenticate a new app
A list in your nation to act as your Screening Queue (you can create one during setup or use an existing list)
Steps
Go to https://connections-hub.nationbuilder.com and sign in with your NationBuilder credentials.
Select Wealth Screening.
Authenticate your iWave account.
Use the list selector to choose the list in your nation that will act as your Screening Queue.
That's it. Anyone you add to that list will be screened on the next daily run. You can change which list acts as the queue at any time from the same screen.
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.
Daily screening. The integration submits every signup currently on the queue list to iWave for screening. Each processed signup is automatically removed from the list. These typically happen every 24 hours.
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.
Screening without waiting for the overnight run
If you don't want to wait for the next scheduled run, sign in to https://connections-hub.nationbuilder.com and select Manual Run. This screens everyone currently on the queue list immediately. Manual runs consume screens the same way scheduled runs do.
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.
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 Name | Custom Field Slug | Field type | What It Tells You |
iWave: Score | iwave_score | Number | Overall composite donor quality rating |
iWave: Propensity Score | iwave_propensity_score | Number | Likelihood to give based on philanthropic history |
iWave: Capacity Score | iwave_capacity_score | Number | Estimated financial ability to donate |
iWave: Affinity Score | iwave_affinity_score | Number | Alignment with your organization's cause and mission |
iWave: Planned Giving Score | iwave_planned_giving_score | Number | Likelihood to make a planned or legacy gift |
iWave: RFM Score | iwave_rfm_score | Number | Recency, Frequency, Monetary giving behavior score |
iWave: Capacity Range | iwave_capacity_range | Text | Estimated gift capacity expressed as a dollar range |
iWave: Last Scored At | iwave_last_scored_at | Text | Date and time the signup was last screened |
iWave: Screening Error | iwave_screening_error | Text | Detailed error information if this signup fails to screen |
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
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. iWave authentication often only last 5 days.
Scores and tags didn't appear after an overnight run
A few things to check:
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.
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.