CharityEngine vs. DonorPerfect

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

I love that I can integrate with Donor Search to learn about a person's past giving history to learn more about their interests. DonorPerfect also lets us upload a photo of our donors so we can easily identify them when they visit us or Attend a function. I wish the photo upload offered a larger image and multiple images, some donors send me pics of their visits and pets and it would be great to also store those right in their DP account.

• 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

• DonorPerfect is extremely customizable in every possible way. I love that you can customize what you see when you view a donor's record and how you see it. Fields can be active or hidden, and arranged in any way you choose. In addition, you can create custom fields and parameters, which can be used to enter text freely, as a drop-down box, or as selections with check boxes. The other awesome thing about the options for customization is that you can add, remove, or change fields at ANY time. My organization has used DonorPerfect for over 10 years, but just a few days ago, I added a field to the main screen in our donor records that is now relevant and helpful to my colleague and me as we work together. I feel like the possibilities are limitless in making it DonorPerfect your specific needs.
• DonorPerfect reports are extremely versatile, and can literally be created to produce any data set imaginable. You can create, name, rename, save, and delete any reports in your profile. You can run very broad, lengthy reports, (which generate surprisingly quickly!), or very specific, detailed reports. You can create and save filters for quick use, or start from scratch each time you run a report.

• It could provide some of the standard reports fundraisers need as canned reports
• It could provide optional salutations so you could mail to only one person - not both
• It could enable us to set up monthly giving categories without using their donation program

Incentivized

It is by far the most cost-effective

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

Poor cash batch interface. Almost half of our receipts are generated by cash and this interface does not support our needs very well.

Incentivized

It's always up when we need it. There are some errors that happen and are not reproducible and cannot be resolved. But [they are] very few and none that cause disruption for the organization.

Incentivized

DonorPerfect is as reliable as your internet connection. It is a cloud based application and therefore you cannot pinpoint where the bottleneck is should you have one. But for the most part the app runs quickly.

Incentivized

Support is so easy. We use chat most often - as we can get someone quickly. The support folks know the product and get answers quickly. If they need to escalate an issue, they do so quickly. The training is great and easily accessible. You can take classes over and over until you completely understand concepts

I was able to utilize the support team to train me in areas where I could not figure out how to use the application.

Incentivized

It was decent.

Incentivized

DonorPerfect provides an extremely easy to use importing tool and the support team was awesome. You don't have to do it in house; for a reasonable fee you can get it done by them.

Incentivized

I have only ever used DonorPerfect, but I have looked into two or three other options over time. I apologize that I cannot recall all their names at this time. What I found was that even though they typically brought more to the table at that time, the cost jump was huge and I couldn't justify the ROI to myself. But DonorPerfect has continued to add to what they offer and I was glad I never changed platforms.

Incentivized

[There have been] only two outages since we have started using it and they were extremely information proactive. This should scale easily based on your internet connection.

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

• Positive - using a standard Donor management system across a wide geographic area has reduced our infrastructure costs and training requirements
• Negative - We are not realizing the full potential of our donors because we are missing opportunities for engagement, and missing connections and opportunities because DonorPerfect's limitations.
• Negative - Limited/poorly implemented API has significantly increased our development costs as we struggle to implement DonorPerfect data with other internal systems.

Incentivized