Bloomerang

Excellent for Most Non-Profits

Comments: At a prior non-profit, I switched them from Raiser's Edge (desktop) to Bloomerang. I gained a ton of features and saved quite a bit. The conversion was painless. I've only had to contact support a few times and they have always been extremely helpful.
In my current role, I set them up with Bloomerang as their first database.
I have also recommended it on multiple occasions.

Pros:

Bloomerang is intuitive and easy to use. Creating and reporting with custom field has never been easier and really allows you to customize it to your needs rather than using a standard field for something else. The ability to create embedded forms is a lifesaver. The integrated email capabilities save me from having to purchase another solution like Constant Contact. Plus, these interactions are automatically recorded in the donor/prospects data file. The integrated DonorSearch option is convenient, useful and cost-effective.

Cons:

If my organization ran a ton of events, I'm not sure this would be my optimal solution. Currently, there is only one level of access - so I can't let a Board Member in to look around because any accidental changes they make would be permanent. I know that Bloomerang is working on this though.

Alternatives Considered: Neon CRM, DonorPerfect, Salsa CRM and Little Green Light

Reasons for Choosing Bloomerang: Price, convenience, flexibility, cloud-based, ease-of-use.

Reasons for Switching to Bloomerang: Ease of use, integrated forms/email/DonorSearch, custom fields

Bloomerang is great!

Comments: We are able to keep better track of our donors using this software. We have had a positive experience with Bloomerang and have already recommended it to others! I have been in my position 24 years and have gone through many different types of software and by far, this one is the BEST!

Pros:

The software is easy to learn and use. Training on the product was thorough. Customer support has been helpful when it is needed. You can tell Bloomerang wants the user to be happy!

Cons:

There isn't really anything I don't like. Just a little inconvenience on the input side...when adding a new donor with a spouse, you have to set up two accounts, join them together as a family. Too many steps! It isn't a deal breaker though!

Bloomerang (proceed with caution)

Comments: I think there were a few things in the demo process they could have shared with us, especially about the form.

Pros:

This review comes from someone very new to Bloomerang, but not new to the implementation process of databases. This product is very intuitive and easy to use on the back end. It has some great features and I'm excited to fully implement it for our organization. There team has been great to respond to requests and they offer some excellent webinars and education for fundraisers.

Cons:

This was not said at all in our demo process, and I failed to ask, so I wanted to share the information with those going through the selection process. They only have one donation form and it is not very pleasing to the eye. If you want to make any changes to it (font, setup, changing it to monthly only form) you must have experience with HTML code. Something I do not have experience doing. The best practice for monthly giving is to have it's only form, and unfortunately this is something we won't be able to implement because of the HTML coding requirement. Also, their email service is great but not automated in any way. So if you're planning to have a new donor welcome series of emails you must do it manually they do not have any email automation. We're now looking into MailChimp to possibly use for email automation.

Alternatives Considered: ExceedFurther and Little Green Light

Switched From: ExceedFurther and Little Green Light

An excellent software for the money.

Comments: From start to finish Bloomerang is an excellent software. Customer support is highly responsive, training is extensive and free, handles event tracking, grant tracking, major gift fundraising, contact management, donor segmentation, reporting and filtering, mobile app, and integrates with multiple third-party apps. The user interface is sleek and graphic-heavy. Constituent and gift visibility is superb.

Pros:

Donor retention, donor cultivation, moves management, strategic plan goals and the ability to track progress against goals. Ease of use, graphical user interface is colorful and elegant. Displays highly useful information right where you need it.

Cons:

They Bloomerang customer support team and the tech team are very responsive and always making improvements based upon customer feedback. One niggly problem is that you cannot email to multiple email addresses for a given constituent. You can store them, but it will only email to the primary email. Also, you can't report on and download multiple emails for a given constituent. With many married couples who are together in a single record (not a household) there are often several different emails.

Alternatives Considered: Neon CRM, Little Green Light and CharityEngine

Reasons for Choosing Bloomerang: It was cumbersome, not easy to use, too complex, and didn't handle custom fields as well.

Switched From: Blackbaud eTapestry

Reasons for Switching to Bloomerang: Bloomerang offered the most comprehensive donor cultivation package plus visibility of consistent engagement, contact management and gift management. The reporting is also superior.

Finally a donor management built for small nonprofits!

Comments: I used another donor management system that was NOT built for nonprofits - and certainly not for small nonprofits - for years. It was a pain and rarely were we able to extract useful, reliable information from it because of all the various service packages and layers added over the years by different administrators! Bloomerang is so simple to use, and the information we extract from Bloomerang is accurate and useful.

Pros:

I absolutely love how easy it is to customize Bloomerang to fit our needs. There aren't a million different products and service packages that you have to juggle to use your donor data. Reports are super easy to build. Donor acknowledgement is really as easy as a push of the a button!

Cons:

We do have some issues with formatting emails and letters that we're working through. I also don't like that you cannot apparently schedule reminder emails for tasks or assign multiple responsible parties for tasks.