CharityEngine is a CRM specifically for nonprofits. It allows nonprofits to centralize and leverage their data to enrich donor relationships and raise money. Features include forms, advocacy campaigns, text-to-give, email marketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, and real-time personalization, and PCI-certified payment processing.
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NationBuilder
Score 10.0 out of 10
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NationBuilder is a content management software offering from NationBuilder.
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.
If you are managing a nonprofit agency, advocacy group, or political campaign, NationBuilder is likely the best tool available for the job. It has everything you need in one package, excellent support from NationBuilder reps, and plenty of reputable case studies that show its effectiveness. There is also a robust network of capable partners that build custom solutions and provide consulting.
Customer service: We used to have a dedicated account exec who met with us monthly to give us insight into our NationBuilder, as well as tips or suggestions for things like increasing our email deliverability or duplicates. While we're busy doing the work we do, it helped raise red flags for us that we didn't know existed. Our current account exec has zero communication with us in terms of providing any tangible support and that's been a complete 180 from our initial experience.
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.
While it isn't the easiest to use for someone coming to it for the first time, it has become like second nature navigating it. I find that because I understand it's functionality, I have a very easy time navigating.
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.
The NationBuilder ecosystem is a well-connected, supportive bunch and it has been great to be a part of that
Most inquiring clients are already aware of NationBuilder's benefits and know what they want to accomplish. This saves time during the on-boarding process
NationBuilder's sales team is undereducated about the platform and I have received feedback from clients that they are sharks/difficult to work with. This is a big problem and I have lost business from it
