CharityEngine vs. 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.

Incentivized

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.

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

• Great platform for managing website, social media, and donations in a single dashboard.
• Some particularly helpful features includes turf maps for walking door to door.
• I really appreciate the included voter files.

• NationBuilder lacks the ability to create a message board.
• NationBuilder needs to add threaded comments so you can respond to people who comment on your page.
• NationBuilder needs to make it easier to offer tiered memberships.

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

I'm not sure. I was not involved at this stage of the decision-making process

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

• 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

Incentivized