GUEST POST // Nonprofit CRM Comparison: Comparing the Top Providers
By Carl Diesing of DNL OmniMedia
Your CRM provides your nonprofit with essential donation tools, donor management features, and campaign planning and hosting tools. While it may seem like each CRM functions similarly, it’s important to note that each provider places different emphasis on various features and may offer an entirely different suite of tools and support your organization may find useful.
There are several CRM providers to choose from who are offer products for both big and small nonprofits. You can start your search by first assessing your nonprofit to determine what services and features you’ll need, as well as what the process of changing CRMs will entail. For instance, small nonprofits investing in their first CRM may need initial assistance but will be able to operate independently relatively quickly. On the other hand, an enterprise-sized organization will likely need to partner with a nonprofit CRM consultant and begin a development and data migration process, which may last several months.
To help start your nonprofit CRM research, this article will explore a few top providers in the space.
Salesforce NPSP
If you’ve done any prior research into CRMs, you’ve likely heard of Salesforce. Salesforce has two branches: Salesforce.com and Salesforce.org. Salesforce.org is the philanthropic side of Salesforce and provides nonprofits and higher education institutions with donor, fundraising, and grant management tools in addition to a variety of other features.
Nonprofits interested in Salesforce should look to the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). NPSP is a comprehensive overlay that transforms the Salesforce CRM into a nonprofit fundraising and donor management platform.
Nonprofits that use Salesforce will enter a rich community with extensive benefits, including:
User-friendly features. Salesforce NPSP provides nonprofits with donor, grant, program, and campaign management tools. Nonprofits can also download Volunteers for Salesforce for free to manage their volunteer program through their Salesforce CRM.
Highly scalable. Salesforce NPSP grows with your nonprofit. Along with the pre-equipped tools it provides your nonprofit, you can also download new features from the Salesforce AppExchange to customize your platform further.
Wide community of support. As one of the top CRM providers, Salesforce has an extensive community of consultants and developers. If you’re looking to customize or implement your Salesforce NPSP solution, you can find an array of knowledgeable partners with years of experience.
Salesforce NPSP offers its first ten licenses for free, providing nonprofits room to be more strategic with their budget and potentially invest in additional apps or customization options.
Blackbaud
Blackbaud offers multiple solutions nonprofits can invest in, each based on the size and customization needs of their clients. These CRMs include:
Raiser’s Edge NXT
Raiser’s Edge NXT is Blackbaud’s most popular solution and is their middle-of-the-road option compared to their other platforms. The CRM is created for large organizations looking to customize some aspects of their software, but it still has several out-of-the-box tools and subsequently has a shorter implementation timeline than a solution like Salesforce NPSP or Blackbaud CRM.
Organizations that use Raiser’s Edge NXT will have access to the following features:
Donor management. Track your donors with robust constituent profiles. Raiser’s Edge NXT’s smart recommendations will analyze the data in these profiles to suggest when to make donation requests, how much to ask for, and which donors are at risk of lapsing.
Fundraising. Reach out to supporters across multiple channels and manage a variety of giving methods to securely process donations and find opportunities to increase sustainer’s value.
Reporting and analytics. Raiser’s Edge NXT has both pre-existing and custom report template options, as well as visual analytic options, allowing nonprofits to track specific metrics and identify opportunities for improvement and growth.
Nonprofits planning to use Raiser’s Edge NXT won’t need to consider as many additional costs as nonprofits investing in Blackbaud CRM. However, they should still be aware of potential consulting expenses for migrating data, implementing the solution, and training their staff to use it.
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM is a comprehensive, highly customizable CRM solution for enterprise-size nonprofits and higher education institutions. The CRM has powerful analytics capabilities, marketing tools for managing entire campaigns, and streamlined relationship management tools.
Where Blackbaud CRM really shines, however, is its customizability. To fully leverage this platform, nonprofits will need to partner with a development consultant. From there, they can customize nearly every aspect of the CRM to facilitate their exact needs.
eTapestry
Small and growing organizations interested in using a Blackbaud product can explore eTapestry. eTapestry lacks customization options but requires minimal training. The solution provides nonprofits with data and fundraising management tools, such as online donation forms and a fundraising dashboard.
If your nonprofit is ready to upgrade from spreadsheets to its first CRM, eTapestry is a strong, budget-friendly first solution.
Bloomerang
Nonprofits interested in a less customizable solution that comes with out-of-the-box tools may find what they’re looking for in Bloomerang. Bloomerang is a CRM geared toward helping nonprofits improve donor retention. As such, the platform has a comprehensive donor database that includes the following features:
Marketing tools. Bloomerang’s team deeply understands the importance of personalizing donor communications. Bloomerang provides nonprofits with outreach tools geared toward creating unique messages for each recipient.
Automatic data appends. Staying up to date with your donors can be challenging, but Bloomerang’s automatic update features ensure your team won’t need to spend time tracking down every piece of information about your donors. Instead, as soon as information becomes publicly available, Bloomerang’s nightly updates will append your donor profiles.
Prospecting tools. Bloomerang helps nonprofits identify major giving candidates with their generosity score meter. The calculator looks at each supporter’s engagement level and donation history and gives a cold, warm, or hot rating to communicate how strong of a major giving prospect they are.
Bloomerang’s pricing depends on the number of contact records your nonprofit intends to store. Nonprofits that make under $100,000 a year in revenue and are not planning on using Bloomerang for records can use Bloomerang Lite, a limited version of the platform, for free.
CharityEngine
If you have experience with data silos, manually importing and exporting data, and having inconsistent data across multiple platforms, you already understand the importance of having a unified CRM solution. As such, you may be interested in an all-in-one solution like CharityEngine.
Nonprofits considering CharityEngine should be aware of these top features:
All-in-one solution. CharityEngine is an all-in-one platform with features for email marketing, payment processing, major gift management, reporting and analytics, membership management, donation management, online forms, eCommerce, event management, advocacy campaigns, and more.
Best for small and medium-sized organizations. CharityEngine is built on the idea that nonprofits shouldn’t have to spread their budgets thin by investing in unique solutions for every feature they need. As such, CharityEngine prioritizes providing out-of-the-box tools for small and medium-sized organizations.
Numerous integrations. CharityEngine has an extensive array of native tools. If the platform is missing something your nonprofit needs, you can likely find a third-party integration, ensuring you can still access everything you need in one place.
CharityEngine’s pricing is based on the number of contacts your nonprofit’s database will have, the number of emails you’ll send per month, and how much you raise annually. Large organizations interested in using CharityEngine can contact their team to get a custom price estimate.
Nonprofit CRM providers vary widely in the features, support, and options they offer nonprofits. Assess your needs internally. Then, seek referrals from your trusted partners in the nonprofit sector and look online for top providers. From there, reach out to the providers whose CRMs best align with your needs to request demos and ask questions specific to your nonprofit.
This guest post was written by Carl Diesing.
Carl Diesing, Managing Director –
Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.
