Blackbaud CRM vs. DonorPerfect

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

I love that I can integrate with Donor Search to learn about a person's past giving history to learn more about their interests. DonorPerfect also lets us upload a photo of our donors so we can easily identify them when they visit us or Attend a function. I wish the photo upload offered a larger image and multiple images, some donors send me pics of their visits and pets and it would be great to also store those right in their DP account.

• 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

• DonorPerfect is extremely customizable in every possible way. I love that you can customize what you see when you view a donor's record and how you see it. Fields can be active or hidden, and arranged in any way you choose. In addition, you can create custom fields and parameters, which can be used to enter text freely, as a drop-down box, or as selections with check boxes. The other awesome thing about the options for customization is that you can add, remove, or change fields at ANY time. My organization has used DonorPerfect for over 10 years, but just a few days ago, I added a field to the main screen in our donor records that is now relevant and helpful to my colleague and me as we work together. I feel like the possibilities are limitless in making it DonorPerfect your specific needs.
• DonorPerfect reports are extremely versatile, and can literally be created to produce any data set imaginable. You can create, name, rename, save, and delete any reports in your profile. You can run very broad, lengthy reports, (which generate surprisingly quickly!), or very specific, detailed reports. You can create and save filters for quick use, or start from scratch each time you run a report.

• 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

• It could provide some of the standard reports fundraisers need as canned reports
• It could provide optional salutations so you could mail to only one person - not both
• It could enable us to set up monthly giving categories without using their donation program

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

It is by far the most cost-effective

Incentivized

Poor cash batch interface. Almost half of our receipts are generated by cash and this interface does not support our needs very well.

Incentivized

It's always up when we need it. There are some errors that happen and are not reproducible and cannot be resolved. But [they are] very few and none that cause disruption for the organization.

Incentivized

DonorPerfect is as reliable as your internet connection. It is a cloud based application and therefore you cannot pinpoint where the bottleneck is should you have one. But for the most part the app runs quickly.

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

Support is so easy. We use chat most often - as we can get someone quickly. The support folks know the product and get answers quickly. If they need to escalate an issue, they do so quickly. The training is great and easily accessible. You can take classes over and over until you completely understand concepts

I was able to utilize the support team to train me in areas where I could not figure out how to use the application.

Incentivized

It was decent.

Incentivized

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

DonorPerfect provides an extremely easy to use importing tool and the support team was awesome. You don't have to do it in house; for a reasonable fee you can get it done by them.

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

I have only ever used DonorPerfect, but I have looked into two or three other options over time. I apologize that I cannot recall all their names at this time. What I found was that even though they typically brought more to the table at that time, the cost jump was huge and I couldn't justify the ROI to myself. But DonorPerfect has continued to add to what they offer and I was glad I never changed platforms.

Incentivized

[There have been] only two outages since we have started using it and they were extremely information proactive. This should scale easily based on your internet connection.

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

• Positive - using a standard Donor management system across a wide geographic area has reduced our infrastructure costs and training requirements
• Negative - We are not realizing the full potential of our donors because we are missing opportunities for engagement, and missing connections and opportunities because DonorPerfect's limitations.
• Negative - Limited/poorly implemented API has significantly increased our development costs as we struggle to implement DonorPerfect data with other internal systems.

Incentivized