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Bloomerang

Bloomerang

Overview

What is Bloomerang?

Bloomerang is a cloud-based donor management platform that is designed to help nonprofit organizations to reach, engage and retain the advocates they depend on to achieve their vision for a better world.The vendor says their donor management application is rooted…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Bloomerang is widely used across organizations to effectively track and manage various aspects of donor and constituent information, …
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Solid choice

8 out of 10
March 01, 2019
Incentivized
Our development and finance teams use Bloomerang to manage all donor relationships and track all donation and pledge transactions. We used …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Standard

$119

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://bloomerang.co/pricing-plans

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $79 per month
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Product Demos

Plants vs Zombies 2 Toys Action Figure Catapult Zombie - Demo ...

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Plants vs Zombies 2 Toys Action Figure Bloomerang - Demo and ...

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Product Details

What is Bloomerang?

Bloomerang is a cloud-based donor management platform that is designed to help nonprofit organizations to reach, engage and retain the advocates they depend on to achieve their vision for a better world.

The vendor says their donor management application is rooted in principles of philanthropy; simple to use and focused on empowering an organization’s team to achieve remarkable results through enhanced donor loyalty.

The vendor’s value proposition is that Bloomerang is designed to deliver maximum results, maximum utilization by the organization’s team and maximum flexibility with no need for additional technology spending on their part.

Additionally, the vendor says their solution, plugs in the latest technologies and delivers them with a clean, modern interface - thus giving organizations a cloud-based system that is their “go-to” for better fundraising.

Bloomerang Screenshots

Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Letters & MailingsScreenshot of Constituent TimelineScreenshot of Report TemplatesScreenshot of Email AnalyticsScreenshot of Email EditorScreenshot of Communications AuditScreenshot of Constituent SummaryScreenshot of Constituent ProfileScreenshot of Twitter Listening HubScreenshot of Task ListScreenshot of Constituent Relationships

Bloomerang Video

About Bloomerang

Bloomerang Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS
Supported CountriesUnited States
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

Bloomerang starts at $79.

Blackbaud eTapestry, DonorPerfect, and Neon CRM are common alternatives for Bloomerang.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Bloomerang are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

Bloomerang Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)90%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)5%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)5%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(160)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Bloomerang is widely used across organizations to effectively track and manage various aspects of donor and constituent information, communications, and fundraising efforts. With its user-friendly cloud-based system, users have the flexibility to access and manage their donor CRM system from anywhere. This ease of access allows for efficient tracking and management of individual donors, corporate, foundation, and government grants, event attendees, newsletter subscribers, website visitors, and more.

One of the key benefits of Bloomerang is its capability to streamline the development process. Users can easily enter gifts, create gift acknowledgments, manage donor interactions, and generate comprehensive reports. This platform offers tremendous functionality at a reasonable cost. It allows users to create and manage custom fields without requiring external support or consultants. This customization feature enables organizations to tailor the system to their specific needs.

Organizations rely on Bloomerang to address various challenges they face in donor management. The platform simplifies tasks such as segmenting donors, tracking donor retention rates, managing event attendance, and collecting online donations. It also provides robust reporting and communication features that help organizations identify weak spots in donor retention and track the results of direct mail campaigns. Overall, Bloomerang solves the problem of ease of use for multiple employees while providing simplicity, customization options, powerful reporting capabilities, and effective communication tools.

Intuitive and User-Friendly Interface: Users consistently praise Bloomerang for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, with many stating that it makes the software easy to navigate and perform tasks quickly. This sentiment is shared by a majority of reviewers, who appreciate the simplicity and efficiency that the interface provides.

Helpful Chat Support Function: The chat function in Bloomerang's support system receives high appreciation from users, as it allows for easy and immediate assistance. Several reviewers have mentioned how valuable it is to be able to connect with customer support through live chat, enabling them to resolve their queries or issues promptly.

Comprehensive Donor Relationship Tracking: Users highly value Bloomerang's donor relationship tracking feature, particularly the timeline view which offers a comprehensive overview of each constituent's interactions. Many users find this functionality extremely helpful in managing and nurturing their relationships with donors effectively.

Confusing User Interface: Some users have found the user interface of Bloomerang to be confusing, which has made it challenging for them to efficiently manage tasks. They have expressed difficulties in navigating the system and understanding how to perform certain actions.

Steep Learning Curve: Several reviewers mentioned that it took them a significant amount of time to learn how to use Bloomerang effectively. They had to rely on watching instructional videos and reading blog posts in order to grasp the functionalities of the software.

Limited Customization Options: Users desire more flexibility and customization options within Bloomerang. Specifically, they would like greater control over customizing online forms according to their specific needs. Additionally, they express a need for more automated report generation features that cater to different purposes and requirements.

Based on user reviews, users commonly recommend the following for Bloomerang:

Consider specific features and needs. Thoroughly evaluate the specific features and needs of your organization before choosing Bloomerang. Explore different donor databases to find the best fit for your individual needs and comfort levels with cloud-based CRM or donor databases.

Try it out and utilize support. Give Bloomerang a try and experience its ease of use. Take advantage of the strong support provided by reaching out to staff with any questions. Make use of the helpful resources available on the website.

Keep database organized and avoid duplicates. To keep costs down when using Bloomerang, it is advised to keep your database organized and avoid duplicates. Clean and accurate data is emphasized for effective use of the software.

Overall, users recommend Bloomerang for smaller nonprofits as it seems to be an ideal fit for their donor management needs. They highlight its ease of use, strong support, and cost-effectiveness. However, they also suggest considering specific requirements and thoroughly vetting information before switching to Bloomerang for an easier conversion process.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 99)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Bloomerang is our donor constituent tracking program that keeps us informed on current donor activity. Bloomerang allows us to see what our weak spots are in donor retention, as well as keep track of results from our direct mail campaigns. Every donation that is made is logged in Bloomerang which makes it an important hub with donor information.
  • Donor logging
  • Running Report
  • integration with other programs
  • Some missing report functionality
  • Can be confusing
Bloomerang is essential for us as a donor information catalog. Every donation that walks through the door or comes through online is immediately logged into this system which in turn allows us to track our weak points. Bloomerang walks the walk and talks the talk. Not only is it a great platform but its help center is top-notch. Any questions one might have about the software can be easily answered with a chat or in the solutions center. It does exactly what it says it does with no real issues. It is continuously evolving with new partnerships and extensions that only make it better.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is the donor management database for my organization. We use it to track all constituents and have integrated it with our donation page. It handles all email blasts and tracks donor interactions for us. Before Bloomerang we handled all of this on the fly. Bloomerang has come a long way in centralizing our donor and constituent management.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • Seamless integration with donation page hosted on website.
  • Bloomerang is integrated with Twitter but is not with Facebook or Instagram, our main social interfaces.
Bloomerang does an excellent job of tracking interactions with donors, has reporting that is easy to customize, has a great timeline feature that shows donations and interactions on the same graph, integrates well with our donation page, and seamlessly handled our end of year tax letters to donors. It does not handle social media for your organization.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang as a CRM for donors - it allows us to track donations, link them to a donor profile, and accept donations on our website via a form that is connected to the Bloomerang software. Forms can be connected to a specific campaign, which is really helpful for splitting out different fundraising efforts. We can run reports on our donor base, look at profiles individually and see a rating for a donors engagement and target campaigns based on whether a donor is warm, cool, or hot. There is also an option for researching a donor’s giving capacity with an extra add-on that we have not yet purchased but are interested in.
  • CRM - Bloomerang is really useful as a CRM for tracking donors and viewing their donations on a timeline for a quick visual of a specific persons engagement with our organization.
  • Automatic reporting - gone are the days of exporting CSV files and pasting them into master spreadsheets. By setting up the forms on our site everything automatically goes into the Bloomerang database. Donations made off our website can be imported into the software from a CSV file.
  • User-friendly for non-technical staff - Non-technical staff can easily run reports and get a visual representation of donors and their relationships with the organization.
  • Dashboard views - I really wish Bloomerang would show all donors in a single view. As it stands right now, I have to search for a donor that I know exists in the database instead of being able to see a dashboard page of the most recent donors or most active donors, something of that nature. I was extremely surprised to find out this feature was missing.
  • View of all transactions - similar to the donor issue, it is not possible to see a list of recent transactions/donations. This makes verifying information a bit tedious, the data itself is pretty hidden so it’s hard to get a global view.
  • Form styling defaults - Bloomerang forms are functional, but not necessarily pretty. You can do custom CSS styling, but not all organizations have a developer on staff that can make it look better than a form from 1998.
If you are a small organization just getting started, Bloomerang can be a good fit. It is simple and straightforward for development staff who maybe aren’t super savvy with data management or analysis in spreadsheets. In the sales demo they will try to upsell a lot of extras that are ultimately not necessary unless your stuff is very unfamiliar with database software. The base price of the software is something like $300 per year, as long as you mix all of the training and phone support add-ons they initially present you with.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang has been our donor management software for the past five years. Our finance and donor services teams have greatly benefited from Bloomerang's easy to search records, robust and clear reporting features, simple receipting process, excellent donor communication options (direct email, Mailchimp integration, mail merged letters), and clear communication and donation timeline.
  • Easy to navigate donor and donation management.
  • Robust, complex reports for users willing to learn.
  • Excellent donor communication features.
  • Consistent updates.
  • Knowledgeable and quick customer support.
  • Standard website integration is bland and unclear for potential donors; you cannot customize even a header to show what fund they are giving to.
  • No suggested merge feature for duplicate profiles.
  • No user accounts for donors; donors must contact my org to make changes to recurring gifts or pledges.
  • No restricted user accounts for my org; if someone has access, they can see anything in our Bloomerang.
Bloomerang is well suited for non-profit organizations looking for clean and simple donor management software with robust reporting features. If you have a large volume of donors with recurring electronic donations, note that they will have to contact you to make updates to their gift (they cannot even set an end date when they set up a recurring donation. Bloomerang also does not offer restricted user accounts, so you have to limit access to members of your team for whom it is appropriate to view and edit the entire donor database.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is used by a number of volunteers and contractors involved with fundraising, crowdsourcing, campaign generation, and donation/gift management. It is a one-stop shop for recordkeeping, contact management, analytics, and marketing, without an external need for using other standalone software, such as Excel spreadsheets (except for importing and exporting data, new contact groups, etc.).
  • Household management for related or residence-sharing donors--plenty of fields for capturing data on individuals living under the same roof, with the ability to also link them to others by relationship (such as siblings, cousins, in-laws, co-workers, etc.)
  • Funding analytics--first rattle out of the box when signing in. Thumbnails of how the organization is doing over short- and long-term spreads, most recent donors, etc.
  • It's not as intuitive as I'd like it to be. Although most of the training videos make features look easy, I've had to search through menu items with some degree of frustration, but eventually found the workarounds needed.
  • Creating a specialized marketing segment requires building a report based on filters. The reports can be saved and tweaked. But sometimes, you know, I'd just rather reverse the process and start with an importable list from the database so I can consider contacts with complex criteria, in advance of creating a segment.
I'd say Bloomerang is good for nonprofit users that have a contact list of a few hundred to several thousand names and annual funding campaigns. My experience with this SaaS is less than 1 year with one nonprofit with a database of less than 4,000 mostly individual donors (monetary and in-kind gifts). It is also very good at tracking fundraising event histories, as well as individual donors. It also ranks individual donors with categories based on how much and how often, which are easy to immediately see (such as "hot," "cool," etc.). So far, my experience with this organization doesn't involve hands-on campaign building yet, but others have done a good job in previous years, and the records trails are all there in the system to see and use for future modeling.
November 07, 2019

Bloomerang or Bust

Michelle Green Arnson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang to track and manage individual donors; corporate, foundation, and government grants; event attendees; newsletter subscribers; website visitors; and more. While our program staff could use Bloomerang for a variety of other purposes, it is primarily a tool for our administrative team. It's allowed us to condense our mass emailing and donor data tracking into a single tool, and has generally streamlined our fundraising and communications processes.
  • Reporting: Once I understood the logic behind Bloomerang's reporting tools, I could not believe I'd ever worked a different way. Some of our funders request very complicated reports and getting the relevant data out of Bloomerang is SO much easier than it was with our previous CRM tools.
  • Website integration: I love the tracking functionality that Bloomerang offers, as well as how easy it is to integrate event ticket, volunteer, and other forms into our existing website.
  • Intuitive design: I've introduced total novices to Bloomerang and been very impressed with how quickly they've been able to figure out all the top level navigation as well as deeper functionality.
  • Mass updates: The top thing that Bloomerang currently lacks is the ability for users to execute their own mass updates. You can currently pay a relatively small fee for this type of work, but I do miss being able to update a huge group of accounts in one fell swoop on my own.
  • Email layouts: I'd love to see a nicer interface and better WYSIWYG editor for creating emails. The existing set up is fine, but could be so much nicer.
  • Dashboard: It would be nice to be able to customize the home screen dashboard a bit. I'd like to be able to choose a few different reports to see automatically, and to be able to hide other things that aren't as relevant.
I can't speak to Bloomerang's functionality for a very large organization, but for a small-to-midsize non-profit, I don't know what else you'd need! Need to register volunteers, or sell tickets, or generate e- or print communications, or pull donor data? Bloomerang does it. Bloomerang is my third CRM tool in my current organization and it is vastly superior in almost every way to the others that came before.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company has been struggling to bring In donation money. We hired a development director to increase revenue. She was in charge of maintaining the database to track donors, trends, and volunteers. As IT, I was brought in to set up the system. While she was employed the database was updated and some donation forms created. She has since been terminated and not replaced so the database is not being well maintained anymore.
  • Easy to use interface
  • Good reporting that is easy to modify
  • Easy setup
  • Has built in way to do online donation form
  • Web forms are ugly and clunky
  • Settings are not the best organized
  • Cannot do suggested donation amounts on an online form without including a text item next to each amount (ex/ $100 Gold Level $50 Silver Level cannot just do $100, $50, etc.)
If you’re looking for a donor management system that isn’t as complex Blackbaud, Bloomerang can work for your business. I wouldn’t recommend it if you will have a lot of online donation forms unless you want to host them on your website. We didn’t want to do the additional work to get approved to host online forms on our domain and wanted to use their external link so it was their domain. That severely limited the customization.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization currently uses Bloomerang to track all donations and donors, as well as being the backend to receive donations via our website. It’s also useful for tracking any correspondence with donors. It's being used primarily by our Development department, but also our Finance department has access obviously to track incoming donations. Bloomerang solves efficiency problems by keeping everything in one place as it tracks all things related to donors, and because it's online based, our staff have access to information from anywhere.
  • Easy to set up campaigns and to receive online donations for specific campaigns.
  • Report running is easy and comprehensive.
  • Sets apart donors who are very active and need special attention.
  • Currently, only one person's contact information can be used for online giving pages they host, so if you have multiple events or campaigns that are not handled by the same person, this gets confusing. We ended up making a generic email address that is a distribution list to each person.
  • They use Sendgrid for the mass mailing. Over the timeframe we have been with them, Sendgrid has had different "glitches" that Bloomerang had to have us use workarounds for.
I think Bloomerang is well suited for any nonprofit organization. It's a tool that helps you keep on top of what matters the most to a nonprofit, donors. I can't really think of any situation where this product would not be a good fit.
Peter Georgson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang for our donor management system. We use it to track donations, interactions, and engagement with our donors. We send and track mailings through Bloomerang.
  • Bloomerang is web based and so easy to access. Recording interactions with donors is easy and enjoyable.
  • I send an email newsletter through Bloomerang. It is easy to set up templates and update them. After sending a newsletter it is easy to see detailed tracking info (when launched, deliverability, opened stats, recipient engagement, and links clicked).
  • Bloomerang's interactive connections is so helpful. There are so many connections to find things one may want to follow. As I mentioned in the email tracking portion you can click any number of links to follow or find detailed information (unsubscribes, bounced, etc.)
  • The Bloomerang email portion could use some additional formatting options. I'd like to see the active links be allowed to be a larger font. I'd also encourage them to establish pre-headers. I used them a lot before I started sending my emails through Bloomerang - still the positives of Bloomerang outweigh the previous program I used because it is integrated with all my donor records.
Bloomerang in my experience is great in so many ways - User-friendliness, ease of reports, embedded email (we used to use MailChimp which made us maintain two address lists), the dashboard, donor-retention focus, email "bcc@bloomerang.me" to note email interactions in donor profile, Active Tasks, new Donor Surveys, integrated DonorSearch (which I've barely begun to utilize), and the list goes on...
March 01, 2019

Solid choice

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our development and finance teams use Bloomerang to manage all donor relationships and track all donation and pledge transactions. We used to have our whole staff on the platform, but decided to limit it to just those two departments. It does the job of keeping our relationships and donations organized, while being very user-friendly.
  • Donor profile - it's very simple to see who's very engaged and who's not.
  • Online donations - hosted giving pages make donations easy to manage from within Bloomerang.
  • Robust reporting - I've never found a reporting engine with more granularity. it's really amazing.
  • User permissions - currently only two levels of permission for users, and both levels grant access to all donor profiles. Unhelpful if you want to give staff members limited access to a certain report or certain band of donors.
Bloomerang is well-suited to small-team non-profits.
Ari Strauss | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a non-profit organization which provides permanent supportive housing to former homeless individuals with chronic mental illness in Washington D.C. Or organization began as a social action project of an area synagogue but is now an independent entity. Prior to acquiring Bloomerang, our donor database consisted of ill-maintained Excel spreadsheets. As we grew in size, our development needs demanded a better solution. The addition of Bloomerang allows us to track who our hot donors are, create targeted campaigns, and track other helpful information on our donors.
  • track donor history and identify "hot" donors.
  • organize targeted campaigns
  • automate donor acknowledgements.
  • There could be a more efficient way to record contributions which are "in honor of" or "in memory of" an individual.
Bloomerang is well suited to take a growing non-profit organization to the next level in creating a sophisticated development program. It could use a bit of work interfacing payments processed through a website--the website to Bloomerang interface is finicky at times.
David Jenkins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang as our donor management system and CRM. It helps us greatly make our Annual Campaign goal and keep up good relations with our donors. Their customer service is supreme! Highly recommended!
  • Customer management
  • Donor retention
  • Donor cultivation
  • Email system could use an upgrade.
Bloomerang is perfect for a small not for profit.
Jim McDermott | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang to track donations from listeners and for communication with those donors. The donation totals in Bloomerang are balanced against the actual financial data in Quickbooks. We also use Bloomerang to hold the demographic info on a larger list of listeners beyond just our donors.
  • It allows us to see at a glance the involvement level of any given database participant.
  • It has great search capabilities to provide various pieces of specific station performance.
  • It interfaces well with other databases and donation processing companies.
  • It needs a keyboard short cut to search for a donor.
  • They need to work with more than one ACH processor.
  • It would be nice to be able to make global changes to a group of searched records.
Bloomerang helps us with rating the engagement level of our partners and communicating through email with our partners. It is programmed, however, with the typical non-profit mindset of getting one donation at a time, whereas most of our donations are on-going monthly gifts.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang as our donor management software and our database for students, donors, supporters and alumni. Our organization is small and we use it across the entire organization. I am the primary user. It helps us track donations, campaigns and send out a weekly email to the college students and a monthly newsletter to our ministry friends and partners.
  • It gives us a very easy to manage way of tracking our constituents, donors and friends.
  • We can create constituent fields that help us send information out to only those who need it.
  • It makes donor management very easy and allows us to thank our donors and track giving.
  • It is very user-friendly and the online tech support is SO good!!!!!
  • They have honestly added so many updates, that I don't currently have an area for improvement. They have kept ahead of my needs to this point. They are very responsive to users.
It is great for organizations that are starting up to build a constituent database. We were able to take advantage of some partnering organization discounts to help us afford the software in our first few years.

We are a small non-profit and it works great for us.
Elaine Hinckle | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang not only for Development but also for Communications (to send email newsletters) and for Volunteer Management. I can track gifts, as well as create email newsletters and track opens and click through for individual donors. There is a CRM function as well so I can manage/plan future communications with donors and contacts. I manage my grant process through the system as well. I can see at a glance what level of engagement my donor has including volunteer hours. We track all volunteer hours through the system as well. We are able to easily report on any data that is entered in the system.
  • Provides an at a glance snapshot of donor engagement... email opens, gifts, volunteer hours, interactions, emails, etc.
  • Easy to use reporting functions and full support to create reports
  • Manages our grant process and tracks when grants are due as well as all other pertinent information
  • I would like to see some more pre created industry standard reports.
  • I would like to see a Word document output of thank you letters.
For a one person or small department, time is key. Bloomerang allows me to very quickly find and record information I need about donors.
Sara Sedlacek | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Communications and Development Department uses Bloomerang to manage and communicate with our donors. We did a number of demos with different constituent management software and chose Bloomerang and we absolutely made the correct decision. We have about 10,000 records. The transition from DonorPerfect to Bloomerang was very quick and only had a couple minor hiccups which were easily remedied. Since then, we have been able to increase our engagement with our donors and our donors' engagement with our organization. We have doubled our revenue and increased efficiencies in the department. Bloomerang has made engaging with our donors and tracking that engagement so much easier. The webinars have been incredibly helpful. We have only had to contact tech support once for an issue but we've made suggestions for how Bloomerang can improve and they've taken those suggestions and actually implemented a couple of them. We have just had such a good experience with Bloomerang and are so thankful we decided to switch to them! It's been a wonderful experience and they've just been really great to work with. Would recommend them to anyone, especially smaller to mid-sized organizations.
  • Website integration for online donations is awesome! It makes it so much easier to raise money online. We've tripled the amount of money we raise online, mainly because of this and the ability to send emails through the system.
  • Emails are tracked directly in a donor's record, so we can see instantly their engagement with our content.
  • Integration with DonorSearch is awesome and seems to be improving often.
  • They listen to their customers' needs. If enough customers request a feature, they'll get it for us. We feel like the development of this software is always happening and it's a partnership, rather than a transaction.
  • Imports aren't as user-friendly as we'd like, but we can manage.
When I first started, we did not engage one-on-one with our donors very often, if ever. With DonorPerfect, it was very difficult to develop a portfolio and move into a more major gifts-focused program. Bloomerang has allowed us to develop a portfolio and begin engaging with our donors on a more meaningful level. This wouldn't have been possible without it.
January 30, 2018

Life is Good

Lisa Moorhouse | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang for donor relations and communications. I am the point person in our organization but numerous staff members have access and do access the program for information to help them do their jobs more efficiently. Before Bloomerang, communicating with donors, volunteers and market patrons took much longer.
  • Bloomerang can generate reports that are incredibly specific with the "and" "or" buttons. I recently created reports of holiday giving received before a particular email went to all constituents and then after that email was sent. This allowed us to consider how effective the email was.
  • Tracking who opens emails, who clicks on certain links and who visits our website has helped us to fine tune our emails.
  • It may be that Bloomerang has a way of doing this and I haven't taken the time to figure it our or visit with support, but I am finding the increasing number of letter and email templates harder to navigate through.
  • I wish Bloomerang would remember the most recent email, letter or report that I worked on like it does for constituent. I'd also like the history to stay even after I log out instead of clearing it each time.
I recently had a question about how to send one letter to a couple versus generating one letter for each member of the household. Online chat with a Bloomerang representative not only helped me with that report but helped me understand how to make that happen in future.
Dana Borick Brigandi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Bloomerang is used as our development/donor database. It is primarily used by two people within the library, although two others have access. Bloomerang allows us to record donations and interactions with donors.
  • Bloomerang is great at generating letters and addresses.
  • I love the "note" function to add communications and updates to a donor's file so that others can see an interaction, address change, phone call, etc.
  • I recently learned how to create end-of-year letters and reports, which saved a tremendous amount of time.
  • Reporting functions for various development needs.
  • I would love to see the "head of household" not default to the male. At my organization, the female is often the one passionate about our cause, so it is a pain to go in and keep changing the way the system defaults.
  • The letters download as a PDF so changes are not able to be made in one or two letters before printing without taking more time than just editing the individual letter on the constituent's account.
I have to thank Bloomerang for the amazing and quick support. When I took over this role about 6 months ago, no letters were done in Bloomerang – we downloaded reports, added headers in Excel and then merged documents to create letters. It was extremely complicated and frustrating for our small two-person team.

As I started taking more and more Bloomerang webinars, I asked my boss if we could consider using the letters function in 2018. Once I got some kinks worked out on my end (understanding terminology, and more how the program functions, etc.), it has worked AMAZINGLY. I created year-end letters in a matter of hours, which previously took two weeks. I’ve been slowly adding new letters for our various campaigns and it’s working out so well. My boss, who works on another floor, knows exactly what I’m doing because the letters generate notes and now she can go in and make changes if necessary. I LOVE THIS PROGRAM!
Tess DeGeest | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang for tracking donors, donations, volunteers, event registration and online giving. Bloomerang is our core client relationship management system.
  • Bloomerang is very intuitive and user-friendly, even for staff and volunteers that are not technologically oriented or experienced.
  • Bloomerang is built on the concept that donor retention is key with a dashboard that shows donor's love (on fire to cold) for each constituent, making for a very quick survey of current relationship status.
  • Bloomerang has a fabulous tech and user support staff making it easy to reach out with questions. We have never had to wait for someone from Bloomerang support to chat online!
  • Bloomerang incorporates online giving and event registration seamlessly.
  • Bloomerang can export to QuickBooks easily.
  • Event registration could be improved by adding the ability to select more than one item in a transaction. This would allow for a single transaction to include multiple types of registrations and/or sponsorships.
  • Adding the capacity to "undo" a data import would reduce anxiety around adding data en mass.
  • Additional standard reports would be helpful for those without deep experience with donor database usage.
Bloomerang is well suited for small to mid-sized non-profits who want more than a basic donor management system but don't want to pay a premium for a larger or highly sophisticated database. Bloomerang is great for non-profits that don't have a dedicated database person because all staff can use it. Bloomerang is a savvy, flexible database for a fraction of the cost of other, Cadillac models.
Kristin Boyce, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang every single day, as we are a non-profit and Bloomerang is our main donor database! It helps us manage every aspect of our organization from tracking donor relationships, cultivating relationships, managing gifts, online giving, thank you letters, emails and more. It's a very robust, user friendly database that is constantly emerging to meet our needs.
  • Tracking donor relationships (love the timeline view).
  • Tracking various campaigns (dashboard view and graphics are great).
  • Reports (so many options to build reports and share your data...data is key!).
  • Letter and email generation.
  • Linkage to our website (online giving!).
  • Having access for volunteers for our bi-annual fundraisers (when we provide user access it's not able to be limited to certain screens, they have access to view all data).
  • Sometimes the Household icon is not ideal when pulling data, would rather have an option to not use Household icon.
  • It would be really nice to have an auto address verification to recognize incorrect addresses.
I've already recommended it to several other non-profit radio stations like ours! Many of us are tracking the same information and have the same needs. I did lots of research when we were looking to update our antiquated database and found Bloomerang to be user friendly, with a great support team. Loved that it was web-based as our previous database was not. In addition, the cost comparison showed you are getting a great return on Bloomerang!
Christopher Chirco | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is being used by our fiscal department and our Development department to keep track of contacts and donations. In the past donors were kept in various Excel files which was not very conducive to tracking their giving history or managing duplicate records. We were looking for a software that would address this issue, while at the same time be very easy to train someone on the basics of using it, which Bloomerang is.
  • New contact entries are a snap. It literally takes about 2 minutes to train someone on how to enter a new contact into the system.
  • Entering donations is also a very easy process and super easy to train someone on how to do it.
  • The dashboard is useful and gives a nice rundown of current donations.
  • Processing credit cards within the system is also very easy, however we still use Paypal for non-profits to process donations that come in over the phone due to the cheaper rate.
  • The process of entering new tributes (In Memory of/In Honor of) could be much more streamlined.
  • As with most of these donor management softwares that I've used, the Thank You letters could be more functional. I usually export the information that I need into an Excel file and do a mail merge with a Word doc.
  • The event module has been useless for us. I've tried to set it up a couple times so people could buy tickets to events, but it's not super-flexible or user friendly.
  • It's frustrating that if you're going to use it for your online giving form, you have to have a description next to each amount. For example: "$25 - This will buy meals for a local senior for a week" or something to that effect. You can't make a form with just the dollar amounts. Therefore we're using QGiv as our online donation form.
If you're looking for an easy to use donor management software for people that might not be that tech savvy, this is a great choice. Most of the day-to-day processes that you will use it for are very straightforward and easy to learn.

If you're looking for a all-in-one solution that you can use for events, online giving forms, etc. you might want to shop around a bit. I find that this is where this software is lacking a bit. Even though we have these modules available through Bloomerang, I still find myself choosing other options like Brownpapertickets, Paypal and Qgiv over the built in module.
Candi Summers | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are a nonprofit that transforms the lives of needy children in Liberia, West Africa. We are using Bloomerang across our organization to manage our constituents and donors. Bloomerang makes it easy to see exactly what our donor retention rates are, the commitment level of each donor, and makes it easy to track the effectiveness of our campaigns. We love that we can send emails, edit letters, and create online forms all within the platform and it incorporates the information directly into the donor profile. The ability to create custom fields that are specific to our organization, and the flexibility of a cloud-based system are also a big plus. Bloomerang's employees have been positive, professional, and supportive every step of the journey from our first inquiry through final conversion and daily operation. We feel proud to be Bloomerang customers, and our confidence level in our marketing is higher than ever because we can see the results. Bloomerang is continually working to improve the already-fantastic suite of tools built into the system. Thank you, Bloomerang, for helping us leave desktop-based donor (AKA a big clunky spreadsheet!) management behind.
  • Cloud-based system. I can access my donor database from anywhere on the planet from my laptop or phone.
  • The built in Ahern audit guides you in making sure you are staying donor-focused and using appropriate grade level.
  • Custom fields allow me to build reports that are specific to our organization and donors.
  • Dashboard with current overview of donor retention rate, campaign progress, and tasks keep me focused on moving my organization forward.
  • I would love to see the ability to automatically generate reports for specific things.
  • Autosave on email and letter editing functions.
  • Email reminders for tasks.
Incredibly responsive, easy to use donor management software that has improved our ability to love on our donors! Fantastic campaign management with built in email server, letter editing, and task dashboard. Flexible fields that we set up for our specific organization. Everything is integrated into the donor profile, making it simple to see exactly how engaged each donor is. The dashboard shows us exactly where we are on donor retention, gifts for the week, month and year. Easy user management and coordination on tasks between users. We love Bloomerang!
Scott Dishman, CFRE | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as our main fundraising database. We started essentially from scratch, and now have about 3,000 records. This is the second nonprofit in which I've launched Bloomerang.
  • The reporting interface is very clean and intuitive. By the far the best and easiest I've used.
  • The engagement index is helpful, along with the donor retention meter. Just as constant reminders.
  • The overall record interface is clean, easy to read and easy on the eyes.
  • The email builder is very limited. More and more users are going outside Bloomerang to build emails, and that's not particularly helpful since there's the tie to the donor record is then lost.
  • Until recently, the inability to edit letters created in batches was a BIG miss. Took WAY too long to start fixing that one.
Well suited to users who are new to the fundraising database world. Well suited to offices that do a good amount of reporting, parsing through data, etc. Not terribly well suited to orgs with sophisticated email design needs. Not great for volunteer tracking. Not great for event signups, etc.
June 19, 2017

Bloomerang Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We love the ease that Bloomerang provides for our staff. It builds the connections we need for donor retention.
  • Very user-friendly
  • Reporting is easy
  • Connecting people is a breeze
  • Adding fields is simple
Ease in building fields we have needed to segment list.
Megan Devenport | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Building Bridges uses Bloomerang for constituent relationship management, and it has been implemented across our whole organization. The key business problem the platform addresses is that of consistently capturing, managing, and using our constituent data to support organizational fundraising and marketing efforts. In addition, we've been able to use the mail and email features of Bloomerang to communicate with segmented lists of our constituents. This added feature of the platform has meant we can stop using Constant Contact and save a little on that monthly subscription.
  • User-friendly: Bloomerang is set up to be extremely user-friendly. Learning to input data, manage records, and run reports is intuitive and does not require a steep learning curve. This means that our small team was able to get up and running on the platform quickly.
  • Powerful reporting: We use the reporting feature to segment our constituent list to better tailor communications, 1:1 outreach, and follow-up.
  • Donor Appreciation: Bloomerang is founded on the premise that thanking donors is the cornerstone of effective fundraising for nonprofits. The system is built in such a way as to make donor appreciation easy, timely, and authentic.
  • Limited options for bulk updates: The import feature is currently the only option for making bulk updates to records. This adds an additional layer of difficulty for users and in our experience increases the possibility of error in making updates to records.
Bloomerang is an excellent solution for small to medium sized nonprofits looking for a cost-effective, easy-to-use, and efficient CRM to manage donor data. The tool is powerful enough to handle all the demands we place on it, while not being so intense as to require a dedicated in-house expert to manage and train our staff team.

The platform would be less well-suited for organizations managing a large amount of data or who need the system to seamlessly integrate with accounting, email, and/or billing software.
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