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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?"
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
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
For anyone who has actually run both, I'd love to hear a comparison.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
How about Drupal + this module: http://drupal.org/project/civicrm
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.
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.