Likelihood to Recommend Beyond any pros or cons, the simple fact is that FDO is the industry standard for grant prospecting databases. Others like GrantStation, GrantSearch, and more can offer some other functionalities or different UX/UI, but ultimately I've never found something that other search platforms had that FDO did not. If you are a non-profit organization, you need a subscription to FDO if you have any serious interest in prospecting (and getting) institutional funding.
Read full review If you only want to track donations, I'd go with something simpler. If you want to track donations and programs and connections between them, there may be nothing better. If you have no technical abilities and no budget, restricted yourself solely to what it does as described exactly in the manual. If you can't devote about 0.25FTE to the constant maintenance and upgrades, don't go with it.
Read full review Pros Summarizing foundation information (contact info, funding priorities, geographic priorities, etc.) in a user-friendly format Recommending similar foundations based on certain criteria, this is helpful when looking for new funding opportunities Being able to search through organization's 990s using crtl + F Read full review NPSP is designed to help with donor management. There are free add-ons for volunteer management. There is a new Program Management Module to better manage program participation and attendance. Campaigns help organize and report on marketing efforts though we use a third-party solution to send out marketing materials. Read full review Cons As this platform grows, more data will be available and I'm looking forward to even further narrowed search results. Read full review Learning curve - very powerful, but takes time to learn Batch processing - takes time and advanced skills to reach efficiency for data entry and certain operations which you want to do in batch Mass email is extremely limited - must choose a third party tool which adds complexity and cost to the system Read full review Likelihood to Renew There is really no other tool to compare and especially since Salesforce for Nonprofits is free!!
Read full review Usability I think Salesforce has so much functionality that it makes it difficult in terms of overall usability. Once you can figure it out, it's a 10/10, it's just getting there. If you're willing to do the work to figure it out then you're golden. For what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to find something with this level of functionality that's easier to figure out
Read full review Support Rating Any question is answered within 24-48 hours, professionally. If one person can't answer right away, they will seek answers within their support group and find the answer for you.
Read full review I have never had bad conversations with any support people with Salesforce but we also have not used them very much. I put it a little less because we are struggling to switch to lightning (some of our custom features do not migrate well) and it feels like the help and support for a little organization is not incredibly helpful unless we want to spend a lot of money.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have also used Grant Station and GuideStar for foundation research and have found Foundation Directory Online to be the most user-friendly, provide the most detailed information about foundations, and to have the best search features in order to find the funders that I am looking for as well as to discover new funders
Read full review As a cloud native organization with no previous Microsoft infrastructure, Salesforce was a more logical and effective option for us. The suite of products was also far more comprehensive and required less customization. We were able to adopt a "configure not code" approach to our development of systems to support our mission that lowered the cost of upgrades.
Read full review Return on Investment We don't apply for many grants, however; we use look for resources to direct nonprofit when looking for additional funding outside of our funding process. Read full review Salesforce has allowed us to easily track donor communications in one area, which I believe has improved our donor communication overall. Salesforce for Nonprofits has made it easier on my org to track and pull donation-related information and has reduced the amount of time we need to do these regular tasks. Read full review ScreenShots Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud Screenshots