Blackbaud CRM vs. Bloomerang

It is advanced and relatively easy to use. It keeps track of information well and makes it easy for fundraisers to manage their relationships. It may work well for organizations with a lot of alumni (maybe 20-30,000?). Not sure. It may not be best for smaller nonprofits because it is a significant financial investment.

Incentivized

If you are a small organization just getting started, Bloomerang can be a good fit. It is simple and straightforward for development staff who maybe aren’t super savvy with data management or analysis in spreadsheets. In the sales demo they will try to upsell a lot of extras that are ultimately not necessary unless your stuff is very unfamiliar with database software. The base price of the software is something like $300 per year, as long as you mix all of the training and phone support add-ons they initially present you with.

Incentivized

• It is incredibly user-friendly! From the first time I opened a constituent profile, I could easily navigate between tabs and find the information I need in a timely fashion without confusion.
• It allows personalization! Depending on what information is most relevant to me, I can organize the widgets that are shown first. I typically look at the same few pieces of information on every profile, so I don't have to dig for it!

Incentivized

• Reporting: Once I understood the logic behind Bloomerang's reporting tools, I could not believe I'd ever worked a different way. Some of our funders request very complicated reports and getting the relevant data out of Bloomerang is SO much easier than it was with our previous CRM tools.
• Website integration: I love the tracking functionality that Bloomerang offers, as well as how easy it is to integrate event ticket, volunteer, and other forms into our existing website.
• Intuitive design: I've introduced total novices to Bloomerang and been very impressed with how quickly they've been able to figure out all the top level navigation as well as deeper functionality.

Incentivized

• The marriage of event registration (on-line) and CRM needs some work.
• Challenges to adapt to organization culture surrounding things like "naming conventions", specialized reporting needs, some bugs in roll-up reporting on couples or families.
• Tribute giving tracking/reporting is awkward.
• Better shared language of function between BBCRM and other BB products like Netcommunity and Raiser's Edge. Can cause some errors in the implementation process.
• Netcommunity functionality pushing data to CRM is messy and fraught with challenges.

Incentivized

• Some of the searches did not bring up the expected results. It would be good to see the logic be a little more "fuzzy".
• More pre-set reports would be helpful for small organizations who do not understand the logic behind how to get the results they are seeking.
• An ability to just page through donor records would be nice. Sometimes you just want to browse the data to get inspired.

Incentivized

We've covered a lot, but mostly because we are happy with the system overall. There are a few kinks, and sometimes it takes a minute to figure out the right wording to pull a report or the best way to code a new category that we want to track. But Blackbaud is always there to help us, and once things are figured out - they are super simple to replicate. It wouldn't be worth it to switch to a new system and lose of all our information and time put in to mastering the system

Incentivized

#1 - I am very happy with the product and support so far.
#2 - With significant data migration costs, I wouldn't even consider another option for at least 3 years no matter how much better it might be.

Incentivized

I have found no difficulty in using any of its features. However, I have been using constituent managementt databases for 10+ years, so I am accustomed to them, and to a great degree, there are a lot of similarities among the various platforms.

Incentivized

It is purely dependant on who you reach and speak to. You can call twice in an hour period and get two completely different answers. You can get people who are willing to help, people who just tell you no, or people who have no idea what to do. They need to work harder on training their support people. The chat function works very well for simple questions and is my preferred go-to when seeking help.

Incentivized

Any time i had a problem or question it has been easy to find an answer or tutorial. When I cannot find an answer, it is easy to email or live chat with support and they resolve my problems very quickly.

It is highly customizable in some respects and not so much in others. Overall, it is great to pilot, review, and continually review the functionality of it

Incentivized

In comparing Blackbaud CRM to Raiser's Edge, there is more room to configure, customize and seems more refined. In terms of more refined, I am referring to the user interface, the capturing of data, ability to perform simple or complex marketing processes.

Incentivized

We left DonorPerfect for Bloomerang. I had come from an organization that used Raisers Edge and there was no way I was going to stay with DP. RE is great for larger organizations with staff dedicated to the database, but we were a much smaller organization and needed to have something we could all use easily. We demoed Salsa and Neon and liked them both, but Bloomerang had better integration features and seemed to be the most user-friendly.

Incentivized

• If you go with Blackbaud purchase the extended training package. Your staff will thank you.
• The mantra is "If it isn't in Blackbaud it doesn't exist" is a contradiction because best practice with Blackbaud is to not use attachments which means we had to archive copies of donor letters or membership in a completely separate system. Really? What is the point? Or pay more and more and more...

Incentivized

• Because my organization has been using Bloomerang for only one year, we haven't yet studied what impact it has had on our ROI. We have, however, noted that we are able to more efficiently and more rapidly communicate with constituents now than we were able to before we had Bloomerang. We can quickly and efficiently generate acknowledgements and tax receipts - and do so - better than we ever did before.

Incentivized