Likelihood to Recommend Well suited to tracking aid needed and provided to people; to developing a plan for helping - a roadmap. We use it to also identify which volunteers can help on various projects, to try to leverage volunteer experiences and linking to specific client needs.
Read full review Kindful is well suited when:
Important to integrate with a wide range of systems such as online fundraising tools or event registration without being tied to a single vendor Small to medium sized organizations looking for an affordable but powerful donor database/CRM Need a powerful but user friendly tool with customizable reports Kindful is not well suited when:
You need very advanced customization such as the ability to built entire custom screens You need to track donations in multiple currencies Read full review Pros Apricot by Social Solutions does a great job of making database administration simple and effective. It is easy for someone in the non-profit sector without much prior experience in similar programs to work on the back end of Apricot by Social Solutions building forms and doing reporting. Apricot by Social Solutions is a generally user-friendly program that our staff of many different ages and abilities are able to utilize effectively. The buildability of the program is a major plus for our organization, allowing us to cater Apricot by Social Solutions with exactly what we need for our programming and services. Read full review We particularly love the flexibility of Kindful's donation pages and donation plug-ins. They make it possible for us to accept donations on our website, without having donors have to leave the website. Kindful effectively streamlines back-office functions including acknowledgements for gifts - which saves our small 2-person team vital hours each week. Kindful integrates to a variety of valuable platforms, allowing us to manage all of our data in one place. Currently, we integrate with MailChimp [so all email recipients are segmented in Kindful, emails are sent from MailChimp], Fundraising Report Card, and several custom integrations through Kindful's open API [including one that tracks volunteer events and another that connects to CauseVox]. Kindful's basic metrics and "dashboard" give us instant access to live fundraising results that are shown against historical information - giving us the ability to see how we're doing at all times. Read full review Cons Almost every year I get a new customer care support person, and it can be hard to reorient each new person to my unique business case and use of Apricot by Social Solutions In the past, I have had issues with communication from different departments in Apricot by Social Solutions about what I was getting as part of my contract. In my experience, when I had my initial meeting to kick off upgrading our Apricot by Social Solutions instance, the majority of the information the project consultant had was incorrect. I had to send an email to someone else to rectify the situation. If Apricot by Social Solutions was compatible with phones that would be really helpful. I wish the font size and formatting were more customizable when building out forms in Apricot by Social Solutions (e.g., more similar to how customizable Surveymonkey is with different surveys). Read full review Detailed custom email campaigns and reports can be confusing to navigate. However, Kindful provides excellent customer support and training to make it as easy as possible. The price can be a turn off for many people, but if you have an aggressive plan to increase funding, Kindful pricing is scalable based on the size of your database. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I went to the Summit a few weeks ago to learn about the future expansion and vision of Social Solutions. I already been with Apricot for 5 years and researched other products I still come back to Apricot and where it can grow with us.
Read full review Usability Without any formal IT education, I was able to utilize their articles and videos to teach myself how to configure and customize the software to our organization (although I do recommend their Apricot Admin training to polish your skills). The majority of users are able to adapt immediately with minimal training.Staff that have challenges with technology in general do adapt to using the system once you can create buy in and engagement (although it does take time and training)
Read full review Reliability and Availability It is usually available when I need to use it
Read full review Performance The system does tend to run slowly when pulling more complex reports
Read full review Support Rating This is a difficult question to answer because when I hear the word "support" I think of this in multiple levels. The customer service on the front end, with my account manager is pretty good. There was a time for about a year and a half where I didn't even want to get to know this persons name because they wouldn't be there there long enough for me to get to know them. For the past 8-9 months we've had the same account manager, and this is helpful as a way to grow our trust in Apricot social solutions as well as the account manager understanding the needs of our organization. The technical support is also fine. The issues we most have problems with is how the technical support is calculated and the lack of roll-over of technical support time. If our account has 1 hour of technical support per month, but we don't need any technical support for 4 months, it would be great to have the ability to use those 4 hours (as time allows per the IT calendar) when we need them, even if it falls within one month. We've also had instances of working with IT persons who didn't seem to care at all about our issues, and seemed eager to put our call behind them and get onto the next without much thought as to why we were calling them in the first place. We've also had instances where the IT person didn't seem to really be listening to what it is we needed, and was heck bent on what they THOUGHT we needed rather than listening to what we actually did need. While we also have had experiences of working with IT persons who were absolutely great at working through issues. They were patient and understanding and would explain why a solution (c)would or (c)would not work. We even worked through those options in real time if they were unsure whether a data solution would work or not. That was great because we felt heard.
Read full review I have not utilized the support for Kindful very often but the one time I have was fantastic. It was quick, courteous and thorough. Kindful consistently offers Webinars that outline the best way to utilize their product and get the most out of it. I think Kindful does a pretty solid job with support.
Read full review In-Person Training Online training only
Read full review Online Training There are good training guides.
Read full review Implementation Rating There need to be specialists who know how to best work with an organization developing a new program, not just transferring existing forms to a digital format.
Read full review Alternatives Considered The ability to customize Apricot and the simple interface is incredibly appealing.
Salesforce CMS may be more well known, and cheaper for nonprofits, but it's also seen as the "Cadillac" version and is overwhelming for many small to mid sized organizations. The build out can be expensive as well, although there is a more general knowledge about the product and integration options.
Read full review We recently added HarnessApp to our software tools.
Harness has a strong donor interface but not the backbone that Kindful has to offer. We find them a good match. I looked at dozens of other platforms that compare to Kindful but we always find ourselves sticking with Kindful as our primary CRM.
Read full review Scalability This software doesn't work well for our organization
Read full review Return on Investment Our data reporting capability. We're able to do the most robust reporting we've ever done. Was able to handle our rapid expansion (doubling program in 1 fiscal year). We did have a loss of data near the beginning of our use of the system and never got a clear answer why it happened. Data was never recovered. The cost to add additional users is really high, and there aren't many options to bundle or review user licenses to ensure we're getting the best deal. Read full review It is great to be able to quickly tell a prospective sponsor how we are doing financially in each fundraiser along with repeat donors that are helping to keep us going. I love that it sends a receipt to the donor immediately (if the email address is included in the profile) without me having to do anything! I am sure our donors love it too. Read full review ScreenShots Bonterra Case Management Screenshots Kindful, a Bloomerang product Screenshots