Track the donor and get the cash!

October 14, 2009 12:33 PM

Donor Tracking? What are using?

I volunteer for a small non-profit doing techie things and they are in need of a Donor/Member/Volunteer tracking solution. I have seen this question, but it's over 2 years old.

The solution I seek needs to be easy to use, have good support (I won't always be here to fix problems) and not cost an arm and a leg (Raiser's Edge is to pricey).

If you work or have worked for a small non-profit what did you use? What did you like about it? What did you dislike about it?

Thanks hive brain!

posted by Fuzzy Dog to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

This question was asked again a couple months ago. I have not used, but used to work for a non-profit with affiliates who DID use: Blackbaud.

That said, depending on the complexity of your campaign, you can probably bang this out inside Access without too much difficulty. As I'm imagining it in my head, and I suck at Access, it probably wouldn't take more than a day to put together something full featured. Full ENOUGH featured.
posted by TomMelee at 12:41 PM on October 14, 2009

A non-profit I provide IT support for uses eTapestry and doesn't have any significant complaints about it. It's all web-based and so works well with any computer (no craptastic Windows software to have to support). They are happily churning away in Firefox / Safari on their Macs and I've had to provide very little "support" for eTapestry. When questions about it do arise, they've been able to call or email technical support and have received decent answers and solutions.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 12:42 PM on October 14, 2009

We are currently using this web application from a local company. We wanted to go local and so far - we've had it since May - it's okay. It is not super amazing wonderful but with a few workarounds, it's doing pretty well for us, certainly way better than the 14 year old Lotus Notes database o'doom we had before. I have heard good things about Sage but it was too pricey for us. Do you know about TechSoup? They're a good resource for this kind of question.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:48 PM on October 14, 2009

I believe CiviCRM is still the open source gold standard. It has a ton of useful modules and allows extremly handy relationship building, mining and reporting from a data perspective.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:04 PM on October 14, 2009

I'm in the same boat as the OP, so I'll be subscribing.

CiviCRM is complicated and has a steep learning curve to use. It's not intuitive at all, in my experience. So I'm still shopping around.
posted by cp7 at 1:16 PM on October 14, 2009

I just researched this for a tiny non-profit recently. The first thing you have to decide is whether to have it inhouse/server-based or online. Pros and cons to both. I looked at all the ones mentioned above. In the end I recommended Orange Leap (online) and the client reports they are happy with it. It's a very clean interface.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:45 PM on October 14, 2009

We've been talking to the people at eTapestry too. They are really willing to help you find a solution within your budget, they are modular, so you can add and upgrade as your resources/capabilities grow, and I love that they are web based. They're a Blackbaud (Raisers' Edge) company, so great cred. You should also check out the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund; they recently had a program to help small nonprofits goose up their technology. I know a couple of arts groups in Chicago (revenues under $500K) who got funding for eTap through this program, via the Chicago Community Trust (but they do programs all over the country).

How many donors are you trying to track?
posted by nax at 3:22 PM on October 14, 2009

I'm in the free trial period of Donor Tools. It seems to be VERY easy to use. It's not jam packed full of features, but I didn't really need it to be. It is web based, and runs on their hosting, so you won't need to manage a bunch that part. You get a subdomain like http://yourorg.domaintools.com.
posted by cp7 at 7:13 AM on October 15, 2009