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.
N/A
Virtuous CRM
Score 6.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Virtuous Software, headquartered in Phoenix offers a nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer, and marketing tools used to create more responsive donor experiences and grow giving. The CRM unifies fundraising, marketing, and donor development activities.
N/A
Pricing
CharityEngine
Virtuous CRM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter (under 5K contacts)
Contact Sales
Up to 5 users and includes 1,000 supporter records
Platform (5K-30k contacts)
Contact Sales
Unlimited users and includes your first 5,000 supporter records
Enterprise (30k-Millions)
Contact Sales
Unlimited users and (potentially) unlimited supporters
Virtuous is one of the premier donor management and fundraising platforms. It has more capabilities than DonorDock and DonorPerfect, but it is not as clunky as Raiser’s Edge. It is similar to Bonterra, which used to be called Salsa Labs, but it definitely has more automations …
I think the way to look at a CRM is really based on what provides the easiest user experience for you and your team. These days, they all do basically the same thing. Nothing about Virtuous stands out as significantly unique compared to the others. So if you like it, use it... …
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.
I think it's great for organizations that simply need to manage their donor base in a user-friendly way. If you treat all of your donors the same and do not do much segmented communication, Virtuous is great for you! if you do need segmentation, they need to improve their email marketing software. Also, if you plan to use other tools, they really lack any kind of integration, which is not ideal.
Virtuous only keeps track of contacts on forms for a given period of time, not the lifetime of when the form was deployed.
Virtuous Customer Support can sometimes lag, and you end up waiting days for a response to your inquiry or issue.
Virtuous reporting, while very detailed and segmented, can sometimes be a little overwhelming, and the terminology does not always translate to what you are looking to accomplish with your reporting outcomes.
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.
It does take a little time to understand the dynamics and mechanics of how the Virtuous CRM platform works, as it offers extensive capabilities for donor tracking and record management. Another reason is that the terminology can be a bit confusing, making it hard to know where to navigate for the information you need.
Virtuous is one of the premier donor management and fundraising platforms. It has more capabilities than DonorDock and DonorPerfect, but it is not as clunky as Raiser’s Edge. It is similar to Bonterra, which used to be called Salsa Labs, but it definitely has more automations and features that nonprofits would appreciate and utilize.
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.
Virtuous has allowed our clients to keep a detailed record of donor and constituent giving history and engagement with the organization.
Reporting features have enabled us to see which digital and traditional marketing campaigns are resonating with donors and which need evaluation.
Automated workflows allow donors to go through a series of touchpoints without having to manually send them through or keep tabs on reminders when they interact or are on the verge of lapsing.
