Bloomerang CRM vs. Slate for Advancement

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

What features/functionality pushed your team to select Slate for Advancement? The main winning aspect from our perspective was that all touch points of the donors record would be managed, maintained, updated in one location. We would not be reliant on a third-party vendor for main aspect like e-mail or texting or calling or payment processing. Slate for Advancement has an approach to technology that is embracing of our modern world of technology that I have not seen in other vendors. What lessons learned can you share? Any migration for your CRM is a huge change management project. If you don't have a strong project manager onsite then consider bringing one in as a consultant. If you could make the decision again, would it be the same one? Absolutely What peripherals were you able to replace with the Slate solution (giving portal, events mgmt, etc)? Our institution was a little bit different where we had already built out custom solutions for our alumni portal our event management and our honor roll of giving. Being able to replace those with a platform that's supported by a vendor and has a large community of knowledge base that can be leaned on was huge and another main consideration in moving to slate. For us one of the main selling factors was the depth and willingness of the community to support the rest of us in the effort of making slate for advancement successful in our institutions. And this continues to be the case to this day.

• 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

• Amazing community support
• You don't have to be a huge tech person to use Slate for Advancement
• Just about everything can be customized to meet your needs

• 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

• Dynamic reporting and data visualization

#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

Perfect tool for our institution and it only keeps getting better.

Data and settings are very customizable to fit the needs of our organization. We are able to not only keep track of donations, but also other interactions we may have with a constituent. Support is extremely helpful when issues arise.

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.

Slate's business model does not assign a person to service your instance of the application. To receive effective support, you MUST engage in the online forums involving the greater Slate community. Once you embrace that model, the support team meets or exceeds any service standards I've experienced over the last 20 years.

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

Slate for Advancement was more customizable, there is more community support, less expensive both overall and they don't overcharge you for phone calls and texts (if I remember correctly, they charge the customer what they are charged for each phone call or text). Overall, Slate for Advancement was the more innovative option. We switched from Banner to Slate for Advancement, with Banner we constantly had to create workarounds for what we wanted to do with the software, we no longer have to do that. If we dream it, Slate for Advancement can most likely do it.

• 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

• Reducing the number of other systems needed, saving overhead and man-power to automate data integrations
• Crowd fundraising capabilities that allow for real time reporting and decision making
• Campus-wide partnerships