Bloomerang vs. Foundant Grant Lifecycle Manager

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

From where I stand, GLM is well-suited for use by small-staffed charitable foundations who make more than thirty (30) grants a year and distribute more than $500,000 in funds to non-profits. The software is able to handle every step in the grant-making process from receipt of a request, to the evaluation and decision regarding the grant, to tracking the pay-out, and to closing the grant when the work or the year is completed.

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

• Foundant provides a streamlined grants management solution for reasonable cost.
• The company listens to its users, collecting ideas and making improvements. Updates to the software are rolled out several times a year. When something cannot be changed right away, the company gives context and forecasts when the change might be possible.
• While the software is easy to use, it also offers more advanced features (such as merge templates) that allow more customization for the advanced user.

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

• Need a smother process for third party responses. Currently individuals recommending more than one student for scholarships have many emails to deal with to find the correct link to upload the correct student's letter.
• Questions that would filter which applications the applicant would apply for.

#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

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.

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

I have not used other online grantmaking products or evaluated others. I used to use MicroEdge Gifts, but not the online application version. It was a stand alone management system. This is hands-down better, easier to use and a more complete system

• 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

• Positive customer service--fairly easy to use for applicants.
• Positive--easy to run reports you have already set up, so [it] saves time.
• Negative--limited question types makes it harder to gather the data we want to track.
• Negative--our budget is more complex than can be tracked in Foundant, so we have to use a separate program.
• Negative--we have to track potential grantee conversations in a separate program.
• Negative--getting data ready to display in a dashboard takes a lot of time to manipulate in Excel.

Incentivized