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Customer Resource Management For Non-Profits?
NoTerminal writes "My 60-person non-profit organization is looking for a tool or set of tools to keep track of our donors and contacts. A perfect solution will either replace or gracefully synchronize with Outlook's contacts module, as well as provide a powerful back-end that can handle donation tracking, grant reporting, and interaction tracking. What contact management system or customer relations management package is your non-profit using? How do you like it?"
It's pretty much the industry standard. I work for a 501(c)3 non-profit with a $15 million a year budget. It's Windows only, but I'm not aware of any open source solution that includes all of the industry specific knowledge that Raisers Edge does.
Yep. I work for a chain of not for profit hospitals and I know the folks who handle donor contributions use salesforce.com. Have been for years. Do not know what they like / dislike about it. But the years of use doe's say something. The only thing is it can be bandwidth intensive on your internet pipe.
I work as a DB consultant for a non-profit that does CRM-Database and Web consulting for other non-profits. We've developed in a variety of platforms and have done everything from custom built solutions through Salesforce, so I'm pretty familiar with the turf. My tips:
1. Raiser's Edge is a nice product with relatively easy entry, but its REALLY tough to master, and, as is true with most systems I've worked with, reporting is still more an art than a science. It's expensive, support is expensive, maintenance is expensive.
2. Salesforce is our preferred platform at the moment. Low barrier to entry (10 seat license for free for 501c(3)), alot of training available free of charge, and with some tweaking, a good non-profit overlay for it's sales-centric backend. Their current NP Template is severely lacking (we have our own package we use) although they've got some momentum behind it lately, and I expect it to improve dramatically over the next few releases. We do alot of customization work on this platform, and its pretty flexible, nice API, great plug-in for Eclipse and the OO language (Apex) they use for the API layer is derived from Java. I wasn't sold at first, but its really grown on me as a platform. Reporting can still be rough though.
3. Filemaker/eBase Not worth your time, money, or frustration.
4. SugarCRM has been getting some mention in the community lately, and in my experience, may be a viable alternative, but I haven't had enough time to play with it.
5. Custom solutions are always pricey, but you should (theoretically) get what you want. MS Access (please no), SQL Server, whatever the opensource flavor of the week is- if you have a really odd-duck funding or business model, it might be worth a look.
The only reason I wouldn't recommend SF outright to you is that it's a bit finicky to setup the Outlook connector, I can't speak for the others around Outlook connectivity. OTOH, what is your CRM DB doing trying to replace your email system in the first place?
I've worked with a number of non-profit's as an IT-Consultant who are small enough that I *am* the IT-department. Some have used in house spreadsheets and file-maker databases, but both Tessitura and Raisers Edge are the two big products that I've seen and worked with. Both do what a non-profit needs to do. But, it's all about your budget.
Currently, I have one non-profit who is splitting Tessitura between 2 other non-profits. Cost sharing it makes it something reasonable for all three. It's hosted at a central site for them and there's someone in charge of all three data sets. It's something I'd suggest considering if you are really interested in one of the better products.
Good luck!
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