Ellucian CRM Advance vs. Little Green Light

A potential student calls in and we can enter all the information in CRM right then. Ellucian CRM Advance makes it easy for when we go back a week later to see all the notes on the student rather than asking them all over again. Admissions takes the call and enters all info into CRM Advance and then Academics can just log in and see all the notes Admissions took on the student.

Incentivized

When I came on board, we had a mess. We had so many gift types, categories, and campaigns that it was an epic disaster, and there was no way any reports could easily be pulled. With time, patience, and the bulk edit feature, I could clean up the mess and start again with set campaigns, funds, and appeals...We now have a clean slate for all data entered in 2023 and the future. Thank you for bulk edits

Incentivized

• Ties fundraising efforts to alumni.
• Seamless integration from Ellucian Colleage or Banner.

Incentivized

• Donor touch tracking (calls, meetings, etc.)
• Relationships and stewardship
• Forms for event and other registrations
• Financial reporting and gift tracking
• Great support team! I was initially worried because they don't have a contact number, but they reply to support questions really quickly and are always helpful.

Incentivized

• Some of the data is not in the most intuitive location.
• The initial learning curve of the system was a bit steep, but after working with the system exclusively, our users got proficient very quickly.

Incentivized

• I wish it had email formatting rather than integrating with MailChimp, but a small price to pay since it does in fact handle email communications. I've actually found that donors appreciate the "personal" touch versus the more polished, formatted email of MailChimp because they feel like the email went just to them.
• Wish it had the ability to email year-end statements as easy as it is to print them.

Incentivized

We have had no issues with LIttle Green Light so I do not see us moving to another software platform at this time. We are all familiar with how to use it and we are a small and mighty team so we don't want to rock the boat too much. LOL

Incentivized

CRM Advance is very efficient and overall a great product. We have been using CRM for many many years with really no complaints. It fits our needs.

Incentivized

LGL support is absolutely unreal. Send a question straight from inside the software and within minutes you will receive a response from someone at the company who will help you. Most of the time, the person responding to my questions is one of the developers or owners of the company. They are kind, patient, and very helpful. The online knowledge base is very comprehensive as well.

Incentivized

We actually recently dropped CRM Advance and are now live with Raisers Edge. Raisers Edge was much more user friendly and built around the fundraising experience. Integration was possible through a secure FTP interface with Ellucian Colleague. Other Blackbaud products have since been purchased to further enhance fundraising and gift giving.

Incentivized

Little Green Light blows these other two CRM's out of the water. {Little Green Light has] ease of use, user-friendly prompts, and more pertinent information is captured. Little Green Light is perfect for my small-sized Non-Profit organization.

Incentivized

• We are now able to do a more effective review of applicants and see overall trends of characteristics such as source locations. This helps to focus other efforts such as marketing to support those areas and increase others.
• There is now a full picture of the needs of our students. By being able to view information in a logical progression, trend data can be identified and reacted to.

Incentivized

• In two years of using it, we went from $200,000 annually in donor revenue to $500,000. Many factors went into that, but the ease of communications through LGL is definitely one of them.
• We went from managing communications with ~200 donors to ~400.

Incentivized