Our Wealth Engine contract is expiring at the end of the month and we're trying to decide whether to renew it. We demo-ed Wealth Point and loved not having to retype names and addresses, the automatic copy of the report on the Media tab, and the ability to download info into the Prospect tab. However, Wealth Engine had an extra data vendor who provided local giving information (schools, colleges, cultural organizations) in addition to the normal political contributions. Has anyone else done side-by-side comparisons of WealthPoint and Wealth Engine? Any thoughts on which provides more accurate data and giving capacity? Anne Ames Boudreau The Fenn School Concord, MA [Email Removed]

Anne,

I found your message re Wealth Point vs. Wealth Engine.  Our company is trying to decide whether or not to renew its subscription to Wealth Engine.  We downloaded the trial version of Wealth Point this morning, and I have noticed in the trial of Wealth Point that more information was available in the areas of business ownership, nonprofit affiiliations and nonprofit affiliations.  Which product did your organization choose and have you been happy with the choice?  

Judy Steffen

I did a comparison of prospect research tools at work. The following spreadhsheet is what I compiled and used to justify purchasing ResearchPoint or WealthPoint. I have worked with all of the resources on this list and I like ResearchPoint the best!

 

created by Jennie Marie Petrini at The RAND Corporation	WealthEngine	DonorSearch	Lexis-Nexis	Resrch Point
A red X means that only this vendor offers this service. Yellow highlighting indicates databases of donation, giving and contribution info.				Best Value
Annual price as of 2011	$2,500	$1,999	$7,500	$3,500
Bios & Business Info
D&B (Dun & Bradstreet) Business & Executive Information includes full Duns Marketing Identifier (DMI) file of business records with contact names and titles, D&B Executive at Home Address Records and D&B Biographical Records.	X	X	X	X
GuideStar Foundation Trustees is a list of the foundation trustees and board members for approximately 50,000 personal, family, and corporate foundations, one of the single best markers of philanthropy.	X	X	X	X
GuideStar Non-profit Boards of Directors is the national database of U.S. charitable organizations, gathers data on more than 850,000 IRS-recognized non-profit organizations known as 501(c) (3) organizations. GuideStar accesses the IRS Form 990 filed by organizations which report on the operations and finances of charities.	X	X		X
Marquis Who’s Who Biographies has more than 15 directories, including Who’s Who in America®, provides concise biographies of over 900,000 leaders and achievers from around the world, and from every significant field of endeavor.	X	X	X	X
Reuters Market Guide Insider Profiles Market Guide collects in-depth information on over 10,000 public US companies. It also provides additional information from proxy statements for SEC Insiders and collects and summarizes information on individual sectors or industries of the US economy from regulatory filings and corporate annual reports.	X	X		X
Social Security Master Death Index -- Free site at http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/	X	X	X
Donation Databases
Donor Bank is available exclusively via Target Analytics. This data service contains historical and current year information on charitable donations to thousands of nonprofit organizations across the United States. Donor name, type of gift, contribution date and gift size are included in the detailed reports. This data provides insight into the share of donor’s wallet, their ask amount comfort level, and their ability to give at annual, mid and major gift levels. Donor Bank is a rapidly growing charitable giving data source that includes over 15 million public donations.				X
DonorSeries Charitable Donations Database is approximately 5 million records collected from printed annual reports, event programs, and other published sources. Many records of donor histories are tracked over the last 10 years. Some records include the individual's college graduation year. New data is available quarterly. (Also known as Waltman’s.)	X	X
FEC Political Giving Database includes virtually every contribution of $200 or more over the past 25+ years, approximately 14 million records. When you are evaluating your prospect, the presence of Federal Election Commission regulatory records can be one of the most powerful predictors of individual's inclination to give. Most records also include the individual's occupation or employer. New data is available monthly.	X	X		X
HBG Donor Database is the product of years of effort by one of the most respected prospect research firms in the country. The Helen Brown Group (HBG) has compiled data on thousands of major gifts both in the US and internationally.		X
NOZA US Charitable Donations Database contains approximately 45+ million records harvested from literally thousands of nonprofit websites. NOZA has created and continues to add hundred of thousands of records per month to the largest independent collection of charitable gift information publicly available. One data source to measure capacity and inclination. VERY IMPORTANT!!!				X
Demographic Info
Census Offers data fields include hundreds of bio-demographic, financial, and neighborhood characteristics aggregated to the ZIP+4 level.				X
Equifax Total Source Data Offers financial, demographic, and psychographic information on more than 160 million households in the U.S. — data fields include metrics for individual and household income, home mortgage (existence, capacity for, monthly spending, etc.), and extensive trade line information (existence of and use of any types of credit, balances carried forward, liquidity ratios, etc.).				X
Financial & Stock Info
BATS global markets Target Analytics receives nightly feeds from BATS Exchange, a leading trading desk, for securities closing prices, making lasttraded prices for all stocks that BATS traded that day available. BATS is a global financial markets technology company whose data provides transaction histories, last-traded stock prices, and other stock related information.				X
Larkspur SEP/Keogh Pensions provides information on deferred income of self-employed individuals and over two and a half million qualified pension plans.	X	X		X
Thomson SEC Insiders displays SEC insider trader transactions (1986 to present) and current holdings, for stocks as well as for options and other derivatives.	X	X		X
Real Estate
Fidelity Data Services is the #1 provider of integrated real estate and property data and analytics solutions to mortgage lenders. It is also the leading provider of data and technology to the banking industry. FIS utilizes the largest property database in the United States, which includes over 94 percent of all U.S. property owners to provide unparalleled insight into trends and behaviors that drive real estate investment strategies.				X
LexisNexis Real Property Records is distributed by IDM data services. Lexis-Nexis is one of the leading national compilers of real property and land data. It contains information on over 70,000,000 properties across the United States.	X	X	X
Integrates with Raiser's Edge and provides automatic downloads				X
Total Resources	11	12	5	15