Bonterra Network for Good vs. CharityEngine

I used Network for the Good to run a fundraising event it was awesome. My organization is part of a larger regional non-profit dedicated to servicing those in our community who need a little help. By banding together under a larger regional organization, we can extend our impact through the utilization of Network for the Good across all associated organizations. It empowers smaller groups to have a larger impact on their community.

Incentivized

CharityEngine has the POTENTIAL to be a good CRM, but both unresponsiveness to the more complex problems go unresolved for months at a time. Employee turnover is huge, which is likely because upper management is doing nothing to solve the internal problems. I would NOT recommend this CRM at this point. While CharityEngine does allow reasonably robust storage and querying of data if you plan to send emails through your CRM, look elsewhere. CharityEngine's framework is clunky and counter-intuitive, in addition to frequently just not working at all.

Incentivized

• The donation software is very user friendly to add donations to.
• The report section is very easy to use and to run what you need.
• The contact portion is extremely user friendly and is easy to keep track of donors, what they've paid and communication to them.

Incentivized

• Allows users to create unique queries to generate targeted data.
• Allows the entry of addresses from all around the world, not just US addresses.

Incentivized

• In exporting reports, it would be helpful to have a "select all" option so you can easily select everything without having to manually click each one.
• In exporting reports, it may be helpful to have the option of saving various options for different needs so you don't have to manually click or unclick each choice every time, as you can currently only save one type.
• It would be helpful to be able to change an event/ticket information after it has already gone live for sales as we recently had an issue with this.

Incentivized

We are still learning and rebuilding our nonprofit using this platform, so this year is a trial run to see how we can increase our network and our donations. So long as we are able to see a significant return on investment in terms of donations received through the platform, we will renew for next year.

Incentivized

BGF is an easy-to-use platform for entering, editing, and analyzing customer or donor data and giving. I would highly recommend it to any organization looking to improve its customer relationship management functionality. As a previous user of different CRM platforms with other non-profits, BGF has made tracking donor information and communicating with donors much easier.

Incentivized

There are a lot of frustrating things about the general usage of CharityEngine. It syncs with a nine-digit zip code database, but doesn't automatically populate exportable fields with this data - it must be manually requested for each record. Buttons that allow a user to quickly move to a specific area of the data in a customer record frequently stop working after updates; are found by users and reported, and then take a month or longer to be fixed. A clunky and counter-intuitive "creative" database frequently fails completely and is always slow.

Incentivized

In 5+ years we have never had an issue with it not working when we needed it to. It is very reliable and doesn't seem to have a lot of bugs or interruptions in service.

Incentivized

It is always fast for us and reports have a very quick upload time. We don't integrate it into other programs so I'm not 100% sure about that, but it always works when we use it and is very reliable. Even when we run Excel files for complete information on donors, it always works very fast.

Incentivized

Most of the time they are quick and friendly and help me resolve any issues. There have only been a couple of times that we couldn't find a resolution and I was just told that NFG didn't have that capability.

Incentivized

We only had one hiccup with the domain that was an issue on our end but NFG struggled to help us. It was finally resolved and we've been good ever since

Incentivized

I like Bonterra Guided Fundraising more than OneCause because OneCause was only used for events at the last nonprofit I worked at. Bonterra Guided Fundraising allow nonprofits like ours to have event pages, fundraising pages, and donor management software at a better cost than OneCause. Ultimately, I would always choose Bonterra Guided Fundraising!

Incentivized

We are happy with all of the options

Incentivized

It works for the departments we need it in, finance, administration and fundraising and marketing. It does everything we need.

Incentivized

• We went from raising only 12k at our gala to needing to implement the auction software as we work to raise 75k at our next gala. We wouldn't be able to facilitate such a large event without our software.
• We're able to streamline a lot of tasks. Instead of using several interfaces, we're able to rely solely on Bonterra Guided Fundraising, which saves a lot of time.
• We're able to dream about expanding the ways we reach people. Instead of simply sending out emails or using Facebook, we can send out newsletters and promote events with their own website link, which is a huge step up.

Incentivized

• CharityEngine has allowed our organization to grow in the past few years, but it has not kept up with industry trends and avoids making changes and updates requested by users.
• Our overall business objectives cannot be met with CharityEngine alone. We must export data and use other applications to generate the data we need.

Incentivized