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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?"
Specifically the Raiser's Edge. Seems to do most of what you need.
I'm sure they've done this exact same thing on more than one occasion. You can probably get the foundation arm to give you the software for free.
http://www.salesforce.com/foundation
salesforce provides free service to registered nonprofits. as you probably know, salesforce is an incredibly robust and extensible CRM system. it can be tweaked pretty easily. if anything, it might be too heavyweight. but it will certainly get the job done.
It will even track your waste management.
I am not sure how big your budget is, but I've heard nothing but good things about Tessitura:
http://www.tessituranetwork.com/Products.aspx
There is also Raiser's Edge - but their product (in my opinion) feels like it was put together by a programmer (i.e. - written to bad specs by someone whose job isn't fundraising), not by a user - and thus has lots of quirks that make it not as useful as it should be...
http://www.blackbaud.com/products/fundraising/raisersedge.aspx
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
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.
It might be out of your price range, but the industry standard in your situation would be Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge solution.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
ARG! NO! FileMaker is the Bain of my existence... I am constantly trying to get people off of FileMaker and it keeps popping back up like a bad weed. Run away!
(Sorry - it might be better in its latest version, but all my experience has been corrupt data that is hard to make useful to other systems.)
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
Whatever you do, don't follow the hype behind Salesforce. It's interface is lacking key features, in non-intuitive, and extremely extensive. I'm in the process of migrating my company off of it and onto either SugarCRM (open source) or a custom solution using Microsoft Sharepoint.
It's not cheap by any stretch.
If you want cheap then Orange Leap has an open source "Community Edition" of their CRM that comes with no support.
For anyone who has actually run both, I'd love to hear a comparison.
Our nonprofit uses "Decapitated Poultry v0.01 beta".
Seriously, in my experience, any nonprofit would be further ahead to use web-based systems hosted not on someone's personal pc. You will always have people coming and going, so you will need to be able to smoothly transition data into the hands of whomever is at the helm. Beware people who don't want things to go onto the web - they're usually information hoarders and don't share (but you will probably have other problems with them before you get to this point). This isn't true for all of them, but you need an extremely robust system for handling people who leave the organization without turning over their responsibilities and/or information. Web services like Yahoo Groups, simply because of how they're set up, provide some insulation to people leaving as long as you don't have all of the moderators leave at once. I've not used other systems, but I'm sure there are others out there.
To specifically address the contact management that you're talking about can be done with any word processing/spreadsheet/flat file product as long as you have a neutral place to store it and a mechanism to keep folks from stepping on each other. Again, any type of group management service with a place to upload files provides that.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
I work for a managed services firm here in southern california that focuses almost exclusively on serving Non Profit groups and after talking with our team a bit I would have to say at the top of the list would be: -Raisers Edge by BlackBaud if im not mistaken. It tends to be a bit more expensive but does a great job for the end user and is not a nightmare to manage. We have several clients using this platform and if the cost can be justified this is your best bet. -Giftworks -Donor Perfect -Sugar CRM would be at the bottom of my short list but it is free and can be customized as needed. If I can be useful I would be happy to provide more feedback. Just hit me up. -JP
Well if non-profits were automated enough they could deal with less administrative staff. Kind of a catch-22 you proposed there bud.
I agree with this... Techsoup is a great IT resource for non-profits.
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
You might want to try hosted Microsoft CRM which is available pretty cheap per seat.
you want Excel.
If you are working for a non profit how do you have customers? Why not get a real job and [produce some worthless product that nobody needs] instead of [offering to help out those in need and asking little in return]? Just askin.
Fixed that for you.
If you are up for doing some customizations, I would suggest using ADempiere. It is very robust and can be made to do just about anything. The nice thing about it is that when you are done, it becomes an asset for you, not an expense. (Speaking about the balance sheet.) It also can do quite a bit in scaling up to help with other business processes.
An even better format: txt
Safe and secure.
(joke stolen from a test... anyone have a link? I only have a local copy)
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Just sugarcrm.
Its direct, integrates well with excel and outlook. I mean, im baffled that very few mentioned it here.
Sugar is the way to go.
I have to suffer salesforce and, FOR OUR NEEDS, it sucks infront of sugar. And thats that.
NO SIG
I have a good friend that went to work for Convio (www.convio.com). From what I understand, they specialize in CRM for non-profits.
Salesforce.com is a pretty amazing platform for doing CRM that goes well beyond just donor management. As others have mentioned, the Salesforce Foundation makes it available from free-to-darn-cheap. It has good Outlook/Office integration, and unlike most other solutions Salesforce has an really solid Web Services API that makes it possible to integrate with all kinds of other systems, notably including Plone, the open-source CMS system that many nonprofits use. ONE/Northwest, the nonprofit I work for, has done a ton of work in this area, and has had great success at delivering powerful, easy-to-use solutions to mid-sized environmental nonprofits.
www.sugarcrm.com or sugarforge.org - They offer commercial and free open source versions and there are a number of free & pay plugins. Works well on your server or theirs.
Oh my, I shouldn't feed the troll, but this pisses me off.
This particular troll apparently has no idea of what non-profits do or what they do for people at large. Go ahead, pick something that you might care about...I bet there's a non-profit (probably several) that either helps or advocates on your behalf. Let's try this game, shall we?
Emergency relief? How about the Red Cross for one?
Health issues? Too many to mention.
How about the military? Adopt a Platoon. Paralyzed Veterans of American...many many more.
Firefighters and Police? You bet they're covered.
That's just a small sampling and some of the bigger names in the industry. There are thousands more. And they all have donors and supporters who care about that particular thing. You are way off the mark about it not being a "real job". Most of the people that work at non-profits work long hours and far harder than you sitting on your ass cruising Slashdot. And they do it for a pittance of pay because it's something they care about.
No, sorry. Awful idea. Usually, a 60 person operation has a donor list in the thousands. Exchange is going to choke sending that out. It's just simply not designed for something like that. Believe me, I've had orgs who have tried it. A good CRM is nothing to sneeze at.
Not sure if you qualify but check out http://techsoup.org/ They are a clearing house for donated hardware & software to non-profits. The non-profit I have done some work for has used them for Microsoft and Cisco products.
I have no experience with any of the Blackbaud products but it looks like they has something from them.
OpenERP (http://openerp.com/) has an integrated CRM. I've had great success with this project and the database is completely accessible via XML-RPC if you need custom functions. I've also used SugarCRM, but am not nearly so enamored with that project.
Try http://ngoinabox.org/, They offer four versions, but the most apropos is their Base Edition, with more detailed info here http://base.ngoinabox.org./ For donation tracking, the component they use is CiviCRM - http://civicrm.org/.
Check out Organizers Database http://organizersdb.org/ . Windows only. Free.
You should check CiviCRM, http://civicrm.org/
http://www.nten.org/ has done reports comparing CMS for nonprofits, including a great comparison of drupal, joomla & plone. Beth's blog, techsoup and netsquared are great resources additionally, you could look into using another serive like donor's resource, firstgiving, givezooks, Mysamaris, and Razoo- most of which have a free option Raiser's Edge, like anything Blackbaud is really great if you can afford it. But I would start at the source of research and read the reviews- they are seriously helpful!
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?
You laugh, but for a small business, backups are tough. Some "enterprise" software that is vital to their business for example, will depend on registry keys, services, processes set up to run as a particular user with particular rights, etc. I've dealt with these situations, and setting up a "reasonable" backup solution on a budget is extraordinarily more complex when you're talking about software that is vital to their business.
And in this case, excel is great because it's one file. If they copy it, burn it, put it somewhere, they KNOW it's backed up. It's there. Same goes for TXT. They can test it by taking their one file and opening it up on another machine. Does it work? Yes. It's there.
But for more complicated software, holy crap. One solution I came up for an anonymous small business whose computers were stolen was to replace all their desktops with Virtualbox VMs, set every client and the server to save state, copy all the Virtualbox files to a second folder, and then resume state at 3:00AM. For a backup, I have a batch file on the autorun list for a couple eSATA/USB2 hard drives that they can plug in, click "copy back up" and then it's done in a few minutes to half an hour. They can take the hard drive home. They can do it any time during the day on at least one client and the server.
But frankly, everything else I've seen is that "enterprise" and "business" software is so mind-bogglingly poorly written that unless backing up is an option of the program, and sometimes (in my case) even if it's an option, you'll be regretting not coming up with a sane, easy, fast, painless backup solution right off the bat.
And that's why excel files, txt files, anything that minimizes the filesystem footprint, is awesome. In my case, I had to wrap their business software in a VM.
I am not recommending it but you may want to take a look at it.
It's huge, heavy, slow (vb.net) but it seems to get the job done.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want to do. That's great because most CRM implementations seems to die because they don't nail down the requirements of what they're trying to do very well.
Anyway, I would recommend the Raisers Edge product only because anything else you buy might require extensive customization. Ultimately, in the end it's that kind of implementation that will kill you. For example, MS CRM is actually pretty good, but it's too generic out of the box for what you need.
----- obSig
And they do it for a pittance of pay because it's something they care about.
I spend on charity, and almost never do I donate to charities that pay people to call me. I find charities that spend their money on programs, not on fundraising and administration. Some charities attract volunteer callers/canvassers - but a lot of times it's just people doing a job like any other and there's no reason to glorify what they're doing. The net effect of what they do, beyond making a living, is often going to be moving charitable funding from funding programs over to funding administration and fundraising (calling/advertising) costs.
Honestly, many charities are basically a business that produces calls for donation. For example, "Angel Flight West" sounds like a great charity: "Arranging free air transportation in response to health care and other compelling human needs".
Then you see that only 31.1% of donations go towards the actual program and the rest is lost to administration and fundraising costs (link). Now I'm not saying they aren't trying to good work, or that charities in general aren't doing good work - but I do think there's justification at being frustrated with how many charities are run.
To balance out my last example, look at Food For The Poor. 96.8% of their incoming funds goes to the program.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
How about Drupal + this module: http://drupal.org/project/civicrm
Yeah, and how about Shriner's Hospitals? If I ever caught someone saying to one of their doctors or administrators to "get a real job", I would do my best to beat them bloody.
I think it may work - and it's from an awesome company. Hopefully it works for a non-profit, just as well with donors as with "customers". http://www.highrisehq.com/
Check out http://www.waycoolsw.com/ they provide web based donor management. It is a great system for a fraction of the cost of Blackbaud.
Good information you have there. I have to say though that most of the non-profits I deal with mostly have a donor database to let them know about upcoming events, keep them abreast of special events and the occasional email asking for a donation. Although there are some that use it to call their donors to ask for more, most of the time it's for emails...not to mention the tax information they need to keep and hold onto.
Full Disclosure: I work for the makers of DonorPro (www.donorpro.com)
We offer a donor management system that includes many of the same features as DonorPerfect, Raiser's Edge and some of the other solutions mentioned here.
There is a good comparison, including DonorPro and many of other products mentioned above, here http://tinyurl.com/lb5ve2
Good luck!
-greg -> gakinsATInsomniaDASHConsultingDOTorg
I worked some years back for a non-profit organization that provided aspects of community support serices. I implemented a crm/database. I was with them for 3 years
I left with some perspectives. Some broad ones were:
- When managers apply for funding for projects, success is often based on the political points attached to the project.
- Funding for cars for managers were approached with diligance while other applications stalled.
- Managers use staff and volunteer time to promote the visibility of the org. An example is a fundraiser beating the streets. These can bring in a tiny amount per man-hour, while one funding application can trounce all that volunteer time.
- Financial accountability: for governemt agencies, the mere fact of accepting a project funding proposal, and doling out the money meets their KPI.
- I also made an audit system tracking support worker time against client facing time for people with disabilites(the org recieved per hour funding). The project collapsed and failed. Once implement the system revealed that while contracted support time was 1100 hours per month, the actual was 19.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
You can always use Filemaker as a client to an external data source via ODBC.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I was in the non-profit space about a year ago, and we were thinking of trying out "Metrix" http://metrix.fcny.org/index.html . Developed by/for the Fund for the City of New York, it's a contact management / funding/donor tracking system built on top of MS Access, with integration into excel and word (mail merges). Since it builds on top of MS Office suite (ie word, outlook, excel, access, along with the free ms sql product), which most non-profits need to get licenses for anyways, it's a good fit if you're already on the Microsoft path.
I'd like to see something like Metrix built on top of Openoffice if there is such a thing.
I don't know how well they kept up but the salesoutlook.com solution was completely based off of outlook and exchange. They've been around for at least ten years and were always really good with support.
Check out Donor Perfect, which for a very small organization can be licensed for like $50. It's amazingly powerful for such a small price.
For larger organizations, the price goes up. It does everything you're asking for, except (perhaps) the Outlook sync. I don't know if it does that.
And although I hate Intuit, check out Quickbooks for Non-Profits. The only reason I'm suggesting this is because love-them-or-hate-them, Quickbooks is the defacto account software for small organizations and their non-profit module ain't bad. Plus, if you're outsourcing your accounting, they'll appreciate that you're on QB.
-David
As a IT manager for a non-profit for 13 years and having the experience of implementing an AMS (Association Management System) (twice), and the second time managing an exhaustive RFP process, ultimately selecting the netFORUM CRM platform from Avectra. Our association had grand designs on leveraging the platform for on-line interaction with our members, and the netFORUM enterprise platform provided the foundation that could manage our business today and grow with the organizations needs in the future. They also have a SMB sized product that is delivered as SAAS (Software as a service) and is likely a perfect fit for your size organization. Disclaimer: After Implementing netFORUM at the association, I switched over to the vendor size and now work for Avectra as a software engineer. I believed in the platform so completely, that I made it my full time gig. Check it at http://www.avectra.com/
Holy over-engineering Batman! How about simplifying that solution with image-based backup software. Macrium Free or if you have some bucks to spend Acronis is easier and a bit more polished.
Didn't the users notice the significant performance hit when wrapping their whole desktop in a VM?
Generally you'll find a few options in the non-profit sector:
Targeted, high priced systems
Things like Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge have been around for years, are very full featured, and are often expensive. They run locally on Oracle or SQLServer (maybe others?) They make most of their money off of extensions, upgrades, and service contracts, so be aware that it's going to be well into the 6 figures before your done with them. Same downsides as other locally installed database systems (upgrades, etc).
Targeted, Locally installable
A number of products in the past 15 years have come out for non-profits to download, install locally, and use. Of note, eBase (based on FilemakerPro), and a few others. Recent ones are CiviCRM, and the downloadable SugarCRM. The biggest challenge with these is that you need a geek to install them (yes, you really do), AND a geek to upgrade it three years down the road after your last geek left. Upgrades generally make that harder. These are often free to obtain, but you need to pay someone to install them successfully, or pray that you can find volunteers who know what a command prompt is.
Targeted SaaS systems
More recently SaaS systems dedicated to the nonprofit and organizing community have started to become the norm. Generally cheaper in the end (as are most SaaS systems), most large and midsize groups are moving this way. Of note: DemocracyInAction, running on the Salsa platform -- ~$100/month +, depending on which pieces you want (I'm associated with DIA) Convio: Higher priced, but similar -- starts around $2,000/month Blackbaud new offering: Word is that Blackbaud has something else coming out, but the price will likely be along the same lines as their Raiser's Edge product
Non targeted SaaS systems
Some larger companies (Salesforce, Microsoft, etc) have a version of their software targeted at nonprofits. While capable of some basics, for real organizing and donor management they fall short, unless you pay for a significantly customized version of them. You get the advantage of a big name, but sacrifice lots of useful features. Prices vary -- usually depends on how much customization you want, and if you can find an implementor.
Try Intalio|CRM. (http://www.intalio.com/products/crm/) It is a full featured CRM. It is free for up to two users. It has Outlook sync capabilities.
.
If anyone criticizes you, get up on the cross and say how they're depriving the orphans, or the dolphins, or whatever. You'll have a lot of sympathetic reporters in the mainstream media to back you up, especially if you back political causes that the media's groupthink agrees with. You can even sue the government, and as a condition of the settlement, they'll be required to fund your organization! Sorry to be captain bringdown here, but I've been living in an openly corrupt country for several years now, and my bullshit detector is highly attuned (if it wasn't, I would have been screwed over in business like so many of my colleagues; I'm a Darwinian survivor by adaptation). There are even people who insist that non-profits are non-political, and something like the Red Cross cannot possibly pursue two objectives at once.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
My solution requires, literally, them to merely plug in a hard drive with a batch file already on it, and then make a single click.
And no, it was for a very small business that doesn't need or want an IT department to manage its computers. Performance hit? The new computers were six years newer than the ones stolen. If they noticed a performance hit, they only told me about how much faster their computers were.
Small, purpose driven CRM's could be developed in Lotus Notes which includes automatic replication and offline use. It's not the cheapest thing around, but if you know a lotusscript developer or can hire one, you could have a single integrated application for managing everything you require.
It certainly has it's downsides, but for user simplicity, it has a lot going for it. Personally, I would develop my own tools for something like this with narrowly defined special requirements. You could do something like SugarCRM but I recommend against it due to complexity and initial learning curve.
I've got to agree with you about backup software-it's mostly shit. Never backs up the most important things you really need like registry keys.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Try CiviCRM, http://civicrm.org./ It's AGPL, good community, great devs. We've implemented it for a few medium-large organisations and it works nicely.
Not sure it integrates with Outlook, but mailing contacts can be done directly from the software (so that it appears in the history of that contact). Allows to receive donations, event registration, grant management, case management, mail blasts, etc. If you have a large member community and website, it can integrate with Drupal and Joomla. For example, we often integrate it with Organic Groups, or grant special Drupal roles depending on the membership.
A couple of non-profits I do some IT support for uses iMIS (try www.advsol.com). One has about 20 users and 1500 members, the other has 50 users, several thousand members, but there are a bunch of other organisations which scale much higher. It's not cheap, but we've found it to be very effective, and relatively easy to maintain. It's got a pretty decent user base, so there are a bunch of 3rd party addons. It works well as a backend to a public website, so you can have your members updating their data, booking events, etc over the web. It's all pretty standard .NET/SQL stuff, so it's pretty easy to implement and come up with a DR strategy too. The product has been relatively bug free, and even the user interface is pretty good.
The biggest issue is documentation. Although the generic end-user documentation for each module is quite good, you'll need to incorporate some budget for implementation-specific end user documentation. We also found that our implementers provided completely inadequate technical doco - you couldn't possibly rebuild the system going by the documentation, which makes disaster Recovery an issue. Expect to have to hassle your provider for usable doco.
This job would be great if it weren't for the f***ing customers.
Ain't that the truth some days...
Have you checked out techsoup.org - it's a tech site for non-profits. I came across it a few years ago when I was searching for software, when I worked for a nonprofit. There are forums, products, how-to's, etc.
Do you mean Customer Relationship Management - CRM?
You can check out ours, Maximum CRM, http://www.maximumcrm.com/
We can do special pricing for non-profit organizations.
It is a hosted platform that would replace the contacts in Outlook.
No outlook integration, but all the enterprise tools (web, product, reporting) without the huge price tag, Win/Mac/Linux, and driven by a hosted 4 tier architecture and API's to do whatever you want. Donor.com is also owned by a 501(c)3.
I work exclusively with NPOs and databases, and donor tracking is one of thing that nearly every organization needs. As such, it's one of the few niches where for-profits can make some money off of non-profits. So there are a ton of vultures, I mean, solutions that charge way too much for what they offer.
A lot of people mention Raiser's Edge, and I would only recommend that for large non-profits, as in $100,000,000+ annual budget. RE works best when there's a person whose whole job it is to tend to it. The software is pricey and the official Blackbaud training is outrageously exorbitant, but if you're big enough it's mostly worth it.
CiviCRM is a good possibility, but think of it as free as in kittens, not free as in beer. Expect to spend money to get it set up well, unless you're really into being a do-it-yourselfer. DIYers can be a problem for the organization in the long term, though, unless they document their work well. I usually get hired when the DIYer moves on leaving little or no information on how their homespun system works.
One non-free yet affordable solution that I've seen NPOs have experience with is GiftWorks. They're very reasonably priced, and when I met a few of the principals at a conference a few years ago, they really seemed to have their heart in the right place.
Good luck!
...next time I send you a $50 or $100 gift (in memoriam, or in response to some workplace challenge, or just because I'm feeling tender about the thing you accept donations for in week moment):
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't spend five times that over the next five years asking for MORE.
Many charitable/non-profits are guilty of this, but it seems to me the USO in particular would have a lot more money to help troops and families with if they didn't spend so much trying to get the once altruistic to repeat their acts.
All their stuff (and the stuff from Special Olympics and the American Cancer Society...just for starters) now goes direct from the mailbox to the trash.
The FSF is also looking for such a system (as long as it's Free Software). I don't know if Affero GPL is required, although it is probably preferred.
This excludes anything Outlook-touching, so that's an area of non-overlap. Solution is to wean the org off Outlook, if necessary. Not easy for some.
We a web shop that helps NPOs and advocacy orgs with online action, fundraising and community building. We work with 4 person orgs and massive international groups. We have to set up and manipulate the various non profit SAAS solutions during set-up and campaigns for our clients and have used most of the majors frequently (Salsa, BSD, GetActive, Convio, Kintera, Network for Good, etc.) We've also had a hand in designing the interfaces of a few.
Salsa is the best combo of price, ease of setup and support. There's a decent community to help you do stuff, and because they're a Non-profit themselves, it's affordable. One of the key benefits of Salsa over something open source like CiviCRM is the live person support is included and they're good about helping you fix and just figure out stuff. Also Salsa integrates things like Salesforce, Catalist Data, and Activate-based calling. If you want to just jump in and build relationships and community rather than master a new tech platform, go with an SAAS.
Frankly if you don't have Drupal folks in-house or on are willing to put some on retainer, I'd avoid CiviCRM. Drupal is flexible and robust, but it's interface can be byzantine and I'm saying that as a drupal-based shop. If you don't have the resources to support the more complex aspects of CRM avoid anything custom.
But the best advice I can give you is to first hire a strategy firm or consultant to determine how you plan to use these tools and to set up a lifecycle for your constituents. Too many folks set up these tools blind and without proper context, a long term plan or specific goals. It's like building a house, without blueprints from a decent architect, buying all the tools in the world won't guarantee a decent result.
Full Disclosure: I designed interfaces for parts of Salsa, parts of Act Blue and some of Blue State Digital's tools while there.
We are a small organization using Zoho. 3 users free and $12 per user per month. Seemed like the cheapest full fledged commercial CRM out there. Unless you want to implement SugarCRM yourself.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
I've been running http://www.freecrm.com/ since 2003 and It might answer your needs. Its got features to rival any leading CRM on the market and offers as the name suggest, a free CRM (ad supported). You're very welcome to try it out.
I work for a small non-profit regional ISP in NC. We are a staff of seven supporting over 100K internet customers from government (NOAA is our biggest bandwidth user at ~800Mbps) to education. We have been using InfoAtHand's CRM, which is built from SugarCRM for over a year now and it works great.
Pax Vobiscum
The percentages are good information -- but they don't tell the whole story.
Many non-profits that I have worked for have fairly high operating costs (expenses), but do so because it increases their ability to fundraise (revenue) or help out the cause of their choice (profit).
What you're really talking about is the profit margin of an organization, and it's the basic business story we hear all the time in the for-profit sector.
We increase our expenses, because it will help drive revenues which ultimately give a greater return.
It's possible -- actually expected at certain points -- that this will reduce our profit margins, but it doesn't make the org any less successful. The net profit in these cases will often times be higher even though the percentage spent on operating is higher.
(Why did we spent 2 million on infrastructure? Because it will drive 2.5 million in sales revenue.... Would it have been better to spend 10,000 and get 40,000 back? In percentage terms, yes, but not in terms of actual value.)
Hopefully your NP is using TechSoup for IT needs. Check it out and see if there is a CRM app on there. You will get it for less than pennies on the dollar. techsoup.org
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
2 years ago, someone at my church's office asked me if i could write an app that would help them manage donors for their capital campaign. they had researched commercially available options and found they did about 90% (or less) of what they wanted. they were willing to spend a little $ to get that last 10%.
the solution i wrote runs in a browser, uses postgres as the backend, and has features like email reminders, generates pdfs for mailings, and even allows the administrator to link donors based on their family tree. also allows the ability to link donors to a particular group (teachers, volunteers, parishoners, etc.) and can generate several types of reports, including those for tax purposes.
total cost was $1000 (it's my church, i gave them a discount), if you're interested in seeing if it will meet your needs, reply to this message w/ your contact info.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
As someone who has run a non-profit benefiting children's charities since 2004, maybe I can offer some insight here: People that do this full time still have to pay mortgages, car payments, feed their own kids, etc. Now my own org doesn't pull in enough money to make appreciable donations and pay a staff, so ALL of us are fully volunteer -- which is why it's nothing more than a part-time side project (that sometimes requires a full-time effort; fortunately I have an understanding employer). However I can't exactly vilify charitable programs that do pay staff full time, because the amount of effort needed to do this work is staggering, and truly not understood until you've been there. It's not like any other job, and I still think the people that dedicate their time/lives to it are a special breed. Granted there are some out there making a lot of money from a foundation or what have you, but I think the majority that take a salary due to it being their *only* job are paid considerably less than what they would be doing a similar level of work at any for-profit company.
Regarding Angel Flight, since you went there... Consider that AF does not pay the costs of the flights!! The pilots do, often at great expense to themselves. It's certainly easy to understand why their fund raising efforts might be a little heavy on the administrative side, and I wouldn't really consider those funds "lost" as you put it. The majority of their work involves coordinating efforts between people that need help and those that can give it, with nobody receiving financial benefit for it. That doesn't make their work any less important, or the people that are helped any less needful of it.
Some charities spend almost everything on their mission. Others spend what they can on it after paying operating costs (which even all-volunteer orgs like mine incur). Others cover salaries of full time staff in addition to whatever else. There are a wide range of ways to run a non-profit, each with benefits, pitfalls, etc, and unless the staff is not adhering to the mission of the org then none of those are necessarily bad. Also consider that a full time staff might very well allow them to raise more money (kinda the point of doing that), such that while the percentage moved to administrative things is now higher, the actual amount available to support their cause is higher. Percentage distribution does not tell the whole story, and if the staff is doing their jobs then their positions should be quite justified. Sometimes to raise the kind of money you need to, it requires having people devote all of their time to it. Just the way it works.
Now I am not trying to attack you, just clear up some common misconceptions that just because a charity has a certain fund distribution or chooses to pay a staff, they have somehow strayed from the definition of what being a charity is all about. You have to look much deeper at what is actually taking place, and at what difference they are making in the world, before you can make that call. AFW is a great example of one that initially might appear to be less charitable than it seems, but when you dig into it you realize that they do some amazing things for a lot of people, and are supported by a lot of organizations for a reason. There are probably thousands of similar examples, and thousands more that go the other way.
I am in the same position, IT manager for a non-profit of about 70 people. We currently use Raiser's Edge and I find it to be at least twice as expensive as any other product on the market. Maintenance and support are very expensive and if I could use that money for a part time developer, we would be better off. And I've found that the sales people know next to nothing about their product. Every time you turn around, there's another module that they should have suggested for the last upgrade. Plus, you pay by the seat so it's not a good solution if you want several people to have access to the database. I've done a bit of research and testing with CiviCRM and I would like to replace Raiser's Edge with it. Raiser's Edge is a lot of overkill for what we do and CiviCRM looks like it would handle things nicely. But Raiser's Edge is entrenched so there's no replacing it anytime soon. But if I were starting from scratch, CiviCRM would be the way to go.
Hola, I've implemented VtigerCRM, a real open source CRM, it's like Sugar CRM with vitamins. Check it out at : http://www.vtiger.com/ untaldouglas http://www.arondeir.com/ Becouse traveling without telling about, it's no traveling !
Also consider that a full time staff might very well allow them to raise more money (kinda the point of doing that), such that while the percentage moved to administrative things is now higher, the actual amount available to support their cause is higher.
I think that's where we differ - I don't think this is a good excuse. While I understand charities want to raise more money (and good for them!) I think charitable spending is - to some extent - a zero sum game. For me it definitely is, there's a certain amount I'm going to spend on charities - it's just a matter of finding the ones who'll do the most with it.
So if a charity is getting less efficient in order to get more of my money, they're effectively taking it from a charity that may be more efficient (in terms of translating my money into good) but less visible.
So to me that percentage is extremely important. I don't think charities should run "like a business". That doesn't mean I don't think they should ever pay staff or something - but I do think it means they need to focus on doing the most good for the money they receive, recognizing that there's not an unlimited amount of charitable money out there.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I've worked with this software before, and it has the ability to sync contact information from Outlook. I'm not sure about pricing, but I know the company is very supportive of non-profits in general.
We used this when it was Paradigm: http://www.jmtconsulting.com/prod_fundraising_50.shtml It did the job.
I agree with everyone in that Raiser's Edge is an excellent solution. It's very powerful and has a lot of functionality. However, it is pretty pricy. Depending on what you could spend, you should consider checking out this article - http://www.idealware.org/low_cost_donor/download.php - it compares functionality and price for 33 different low cost donor management solutions!
The Taproot Foundation (with which I am not affiliated) assigns volunteers with technical knowledge to help non-profits with technical issues. http://www.taprootfoundation.org/
Get a cheap Fedora or Centos box, download SugarCRM v 5.x, and go to town. Salesforce has per-user fees, while SugarCRM does not; it also has a robust community for support and customizing.
It runs using all free software - LAMP stack.
Notes really isn't all that expensive. The server software can be had for less than a couple of grand and the clients cost about $150. If you opt for an ongoing service agreement, you pay per year and get updates. If you opt to buy and hold, your initial cost is the total cost. It handles email, apps, security, your web presence, etc. There are any number of third party apps built on Notes so if you don't have a developer, just buy a package. If you're a fan of 'Getting Things Done', it's been done (nicely) in a Notes app.
There's a solution called Sumac that is dedicated to non-profits. It's easy to use and implement, with free data conversion, support and training as well as unlimited users. These services alone usually cost hundreds, even thousands. Sumac is designed to get non-profit organizations running more efficiently as soon as possible, often in a week or two or less. It's free for non-profits with less than 500 contacts with price breaks at 1000 and 2500 contacts. Sumac is appropriate for non-profits up to a few hundred thousand contacts. Sumac performs donation and relationship management, including relations and interaction tracking. Flexible, powerful reporting of all financial and interpersonal interactions is easy to do using Sumac as well. Full disclosure: I work for Sumac and have studied the non-profit software industry - many options are needlessly expensive and difficult to use. Contact us before spending thousands - you'll be surprised that Sumac is so inexpensive, powerful and easy to use.
Orange Leap has 2 great products for Non-Profits for Constituent Management - a hosted and a server-client solution. Orange Leap - is a unique, on-demand, web-based constituent and donation management solution for today's nonprofits. No longer do you need to rely on individuals to remember your processes, let your solution do the work! With an intuitive, simplistic approach to even the most complicated tasks, it's easy to get up and running quickly. MPX - is a powerful and sophisticated .NET-based, multi-relationship and multi-channel marketing and fundraising on-premise solution. MPX is built exclusively for nonprofit organizations and honed over decades working alongside organizations large and small.
Visit http://www.orangeleap.com/ for more information
I did a contracting stint with Z2 Systems (z2systems.com), who have a web-based product called NEON.
It's a small startup with a growing customer base. The company targets small-to-mid-sized nonprofits.
Even though I no longer work there and do not get any kickbacks, tell 'em Grant sent you.
My stupid web site