Likelihood to Recommend It works well enough for fundraising purposes and donor tracking. I think it would be less appropriate for instances or industries where you don't need so many data points on someone. You are able to attach a lot of information to a record so if you don't need that info (simply need contact info for example) you might want a simpler system
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 Accessing in-depth data for a single constituent is easily done and customizable by user working with "tiles" on the home screen Generating lists of possible prospects with specific similarities can be done with a few clicks and then stored for more research later well designed relationship options allow for a a look at specific constituents and how they might relate to other constituents in the system leading to more effective prospecting Screens can be easily customized by user or user group eliminating irrelevant data and presenting only truly relevant information 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 Certain aspects of Blackbaud are oddly non-customizable. Blackbaud updates/support is slow and often ineffective - our organization switched to Microsoft 365, which is apparently incompatible with Blackbaud. Help/support recommended clunky workarounds that don't actually work, rather than proactively enhancing compatibility There should be a flag in constituent search to show which people in the results list are deceased. Query isn't very user friendly. It should be simple to locate the information that you want to pull, and add parameters to that information. Instead you have to write multiple queries to set parameters, then write a query that looks at those other queries. It's time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and the knowledge/proficiency is difficult to explain or transfer to new staff. Blackbaud generally just feels like its technology is outdated. It wasn't built for the needs of a modern organization, and its developers have failed to make the necessary improvements over time to stay competitive. 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 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
Read full review Support Rating 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 Implementation Rating Most of our issues were self-inflicted and related to BB's work. We did not "staff up" correctly, our data to be converted was not in great shape and we set some unreasonable goals. With BBs help we were able to clean our data and prep it for conversion and we adjusted the goals to be more achievable with the timeline we were given. We found the BB staff to be responsive and focused, especially when working on-site with us.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Blackbaud CRM is more robust and has better functionality. It is necessary for a bigger fundraising shop. Blackbaud
Raiser's Edge and NXT worked well in smaller organizations with fewer users and fewer donors/prospects. RE was more affordable than CRM was for the smaller organization.
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 Return on Investment Change is always expensive and painful, but CRM is worth the time and effort. One immediate benefit is improved transparency internally, especially for internal accounting, controls, and compliance departments. Cloud hosting helps cut cost and demand on organization staff. Improves access and meets compliance on every level. Ability to make global changes to recording donor phone communication makes it a one-stop resource for a well-run development team. 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 Kindful, a Bloomerang product Screenshots