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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 26)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
June 19, 2017

Bloomerang

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is used organization-wide. We use Bloomerang to manage not only donors, but volunteers and families that we serve. This is the fourth database that we have had in the 30 years that our organization has been in existence. We switched to Bloomerang to better serve the three groups that we serve.
  • The customer support is amazing. The live chat is so helpful and my entire organization has benefited from taking the classes.
  • I work for a small organization and it is crucial that everyone on the team be able to use the database, Bloomerang is so easy to use that it was an easy transition for all of our staff.
  • Bloomerang has built in features that help us to identify ways to help increase donor retention.
  • Bloomerang did have a very hard time converting our data from the old database.
  • When generating letters, they cannot be edited, which can be frustrating.
  • When querying data for reports, it could be easier. I would love to be able to query by any category in any report. For example, I would love to be able to change use both constituent and donor data.
My organization is very unique in what data we track and who we maintain in our database. I would definitely recommend Bloomerang to organizations that solely track donations as it is built perfectly for that. Bloomerang is also very easy to manipulate, to make work for you.
Karen Griner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang to record our donors and volunteers. It is used by our CEO and members of our fund development department. It allows us to track donations, volunteer hours, and any interactions we have with donors and volunteers such as email correspondence, meetings, or solicitations.
  • The reports are comprehensive, very customizable, yet easy to use and read.
  • Bloomerang allows you to assess which people are most loyal to your organization and those that require more stewardship.
  • The staff at Bloomerang encourage input and suggestions for improvement, and there is a process in place to address all customer concerns and to make system improvements to continually improve the system.
  • Constituent profiles resemble a Facebook timeline, making it easy to see highlights at a glance without having to analyze a spreadsheet.
  • The system tracks your donor retention. Currently it does not track giving by household, but this is something the Bloomerang team is working to change.
  • You cannot set triggers for emails to go out on specific dates, like on a constituent's birthday. However they have plans for this to happen in the future and recently rolled out the ability to schedule mass emails.
  • When you create what you believe to be a new constituent profile, you are not alerted if you are possibly creating a duplicate entry. They do have help forums and webinars, however, on how to clean up duplicates in the database.
Bloomerang is a great tool for nonprofit donor and volunteer management. You can even use it to manage tasks and grant deadlines. It could use some improvement in the area of membership management and event registration.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is being used for donor CRM at a nonprofit. Users cross some departments--development and accounting. It addresses the issues of consolidating and managing donor data, tracking donations and generating reports for management and Board decisions.
  • Ease of use. It's fairly intuitive even for new users.
  • Customer support. Helpful and prompt responses
  • Instruction and tutorials. Well done, complete and clear instruction is available online.
  • Some options on drop down menus don't exactly fit our situation. They're close, but could be refined.
  • Functionality for relationships that aren't directly part of a household could be improved, such as relationships that individuals may have to organizations, grant makers, etc.
Bloomerang seems well suited to mid-sized nonprofits, especially those looking to move fund raising to a more sophisticated level. The fact that it is easy to learn to use is helpful to nonprofits who haven't had a fully functioning CRM system in the past. Nonprofits who already have a system in place may not find it as useful.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization (high school advancement office) uses Bloomerang as a donor management system for parents, alumni, and corporate donors. It is only used by our office and we use it for accepting online donations, acknowledgements, communications with donors and alumni, as well as tracking yearly campaigns, appeals and generating tax letters.
  • Conversion ease - the conversion from our previous expensive complicated system to Bloomerang was relatively easy due to their established conversion process and conversion manager assigned to us.
  • Ease of use - our old system was very powerful, but no one knew how to use it correctly. Bloomerang is easy to use and train people on. Very intuitive.
  • Outstanding customer service. I use the online chat when I have questions and the support person is always knowledgeable and helpful.
  • Relationship reporting (I believe this may be in the works)
  • I would like to be able to have different logos or pictures on the web forms - not just 1 per organization. Ex - School Logo for school donation, Alumni Logo for Alumni donation. Currently only one is permitted. Same with some social media handles.
We only needed minimal customization to track the additional information we need for our school alumni. Communications and donor cultivation are done well in Bloomerang. You can see who opened your email and what email was bounced or dropped. The constituent timeline is a great tool for donor cultivation.
June 07, 2017

Bloomerang works!

lisa limonciello | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am in charge of our donor data base. We use it for tracking events, online donations, and reports. I have been very happy with results and customer service. This company has changed they way we do business.
  • User-friendly, this system is very easy to use and if you don't understand something there is a ton of resources to help you.
  • Support & customer service are immediate!! No need to wait more than an hour.
  • Constantly having online classes to improve skills.
  • Better reporting ability with filters. Many are confusing to get the results you want. I would love a feature that says "show me ...... ".
  • Sending thank you letters right from a transaction entry (specifically a manual entry).
  • Better ability to run a year-end tax report for all donors.
The cost is fantastic. I can view my information much easier. I can run an annual report confident that the information is accurate.

[It's] less [suited for] online fundraisers - still working on marketing our website for events and donations.
Teresa Donaldson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We purchased Bloomerang nearly one year ago. I use Bloomerang as well as my donor development coordinator. The fundraising software that was being used prior to me joining the organization was difficult to use and did not provide us with the features needed to capture donor information and manage our newsletters and other communications.
  • Bloomerang was very easy to customize. We were able to create constituent types that are unique to us.
  • Bloomerang's customer service is exceptional. The purchase and installation was smooth and easy to navigate. Whether using the chat feature, email or phone support, our questions have been answered quickly and completely.
  • Bloomerang's email feature is one of my favorites. We can easily create professional and interesting emails about events, for stewardship and even newsletters. One the email is sent, we can view instant results including open rate, who clicked on links in the email and if the email bounced.
  • We use the online event registration feature. We would like the donor to be able to add the organization name to the registration.
  • We would like to be able to print envelopes for letters directly from Bloomerang.
Bloomerang is easy to use. We could customize it and set up records on the first day. Our donor database is still relatively small and each record is set up individually. This gives us flexibility in adding constituent types as needed. To date, we have not found a scenario where Bloomerang would not be well suited.
June 06, 2017

Bloomerang Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Bloomerang for the development department. We use it as a donor database, as a way to send emails, for sending letters to donors and funders, website integration, and more.
  • Bloomerang allows you to integrate giving forms onto your website in a seamless manner.
  • Bloomerang's email integration makes it really easy to segment audiences.
  • Acknowledgement letters are easy to create and edit.
  • Not being able to schedule emails in advance really makes the email function a drawback. Other software, like constant contact and MailChimp, have this function and I still have to use those services for the December emails when I am not in the office.
  • Bloomerang does not let you use the event registration function for free events.
  • The number of constituents allowed in the database without additional fees is limiting.
Bloomerang allows you to create a donation form and integrate it onto your website but you have to enter names for each giving level. I have to go through the code and remove that but if someone who is not familiar with coding [is using this], they would not be able to make this customization.
Mark Slocum | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is our primary database and we use partner companies for additional services. Love the complete integration!
  • Lots of intuitive built in reporting
  • Integrates with our website
  • Customer service has been exceptional
  • Nothing yet. Most everything has been thought of and is somewhere in the queue. We would like the ability to add our corporate fonts - but that isn't an issue.
Bloomerang works well with partner companies eliminating the need for duplicate entries. A great time saver and leads to more accuracy.
Vickie Lootens | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is used as our donor database and is used in our Development and Marketing departments. The only problem we've encountered is that you cannot customize a current pledge in the system.
  • Bloomerang is extremely user-friendly. The timeline is easy to read and allows for a quick glance of your touches without clicking on each individual contact.
  • Bloomerang's customer service is exceptional. Whenever we have a question, we can chat right online and they will provide a very detailed step by step instructions. They really hold your hand through anything.
  • We switched from eTapestry to Bloomerang which is saving us thousands of dollars without giving up what we need.
  • The biggest recommendation is adding a feature to customize current pledges so that the pledges can merge together.
  • If a couple donates, it will only show the donation on the primary person's profile. For reporting purposes, it would be nice to show both names.
  • During the conversation, customized pledges did not convert correctly which lead to a lot of clean up on our end.
Bloomerang is fantastic and listens to their customers' needs. We requested to have the ability to attach documents, and within weeks, we were able to attach documents. Reporting is easy and efficient. Saves up time for sure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is our donor software for the entire organization. It addresses the capture of donor data and event sponsorship/registration while providing donor communication tools (letters and emails) and reports regarding donor retention, et. al. and dashboards to manage individual fundraising campaigns. We also use the credit card feature (Stripe partnership with Bloomerang) for easy payment processing.
  • Very intuitive system to use--functionality is a strength. Customer support through ongoing webinars about different functions of the software have been particularly helpful.
  • Like the letter writing template that checks for use of reader-level language that will make our appeals more effective.
  • Like the drag and drop donor/event registration email communication templates that are easy to use. We were able to boost attendance and revenue at a recent fundraising event because of a strategy that made use of the email communication feature.
  • Still getting the hang of the reporting function, but much easier to use than our former software. Like the link to Donor Search but haven't used it a lot yet.
  • May be a missing piece of knowledge on my side, but printing mailing labels has been a challenge to have all the fields where I want them to be. I seem to have to enter all of my basic data into the "individuals" tab instead of "organizations" to make this work (even if I would like the data to be in "organizations").
  • Publishing emails/event registration to our website has a bit of a challenge--it's not an intuitive process. But Bloomerang customer support was able to assist our IT technician to help provide a solution.
  • It's my first year using the system and I am still learning about many aspects. The custom conversion from our former system had a number of bugs in it that I am still weeding out--that has been time consuming.
We purchased Bloomerang because it offers a variety of features that we felt would help us increase our base of individual support, make it easier to register event attendees and provide tools for more effective donor communication. While we are still learning how to use the various features the system provides, we are happy with our purchase.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I did not make the decision to get Bloomerang myself. It was a decision made by the executive director and myself with input from the board. I am the board chair. It's a small arts organization. I am employed at a large nonprofit in the human services sector, and we use Raisers Edge. All that is background because the answer choices on the last page were not exactly indicative of my true answers. At the arts organization, we did not have any constituent management database. I researched the field of offerings, and Bloomerang seemed ideal for our small nonprofit. Besides, their HQ is just down the street. We liked the simplicity of the interface, the training, the price, and the features of Bloomerang, without the complexities that other databases have. Our first task in using Bloomerang was to undergo as much training as we could and start entering our constituents into it. The assistance from the company was outstanding as was the online help and the user groups' various advice on matters that we were challenged with. The database is used by myself, the executive director, a volunteer, and our program manager. We do not yet use Bloomerang for most reporting and mailings though. We are very small and still learning the system.
  • Well designed interface (system graphics).
  • Easy to understand their tutorials.
  • Quite comprehensive for our purposes as a small organization.
  • For the purpose of our small arts organization, I do not see any need to improve it. I did arrange for a demonstration when my employer (large human services organization) was looking for a new constituent management database. We previewed Bloomerang, but it wasn't robust enough for our needs (20K+ records).
I think it is well suited for a small to mid-sized nonprofit.
May 23, 2017

Work in Progress

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by the whole organization as our CRM. Overall, it's utilized as an amplified address book for our constituents. We wanted to have one place to house all of our constituents versus separate Excel lists for different programs.

Everyone uses it for their respective portfolios and are responsible for their own content upkeep.
  • It is cloud based and changes to a constituent/organization are made in real time.
  • Tracks engagements very well, along with visually seeing the timeline of your interactions.
  • Overall user-friendly to use and provide online training for staff.
  • It has been a challenge to customize Bloomerang for our needs. It is created for fundraising and donation engagement, not general engagement. We've had to put a lot of time and effect to customize for our needs.
  • We appreciate their way of continuously updating the system but it also takes forever to implement those new features, which is why we decided to go with Bloomerang.
  • They have a lot of online training and online reference materials, however they don't have set user guides for new comers. We had to create our own user guides using the material they had on their website.
We wanted Bloomerang to migrate all of our constituents into one home that we all could manage and get rid of other services we were paying (constantcontact, eventbrite, Salesforce, etc). However, their system isn't great yet at customizing mass email templates (generic and non-original/limiting) and not great at handling complex events. We're continually making adapting to new ways to use it for our needs.

If we didn't have our consultants that assisted with selecting this system, I don't feel we could have customized it enough on our own to fit our needs. It is unfortunate considering the amount of time it took to get it up and running, almost 4 full months.
Jeff Mendola | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Bloomerang as my fundraising/donor CRM system. I am a one-person shop and needed something easy, efficient and able to do a variety of tasks without requiring high cost or intense support. It is a cloud-based solution to give me more flexibility on where I access my info as well as providing off-site information back-up that I lacked before. Besides tracking my donor data, I also use it for online donations that provide me with donation form flexibility as well as automatically propagating donation data into the database. I also use the event registration and e-mail subscription variants on these forms. If I was deriving the majority of my revenue from events, this might not be the right platform. But, it provides me with tremendous capability, reasonable cost, and the ability to create and manage custom fields without needing to pay for consultants or support. I used to use Raiser's Edge, but adding the capabilities I get with Bloomerang would have tripled my expense. Bloomerang has been very supportive and responsive so far.
  • Custom fields: you can easily tailor it to your exact circumstances rather than using one field for a different piece of information because it doesn't fit anywhere else.
  • Intuitive cloud based application that is easy to navigate: very quick learning curve, no need for expensive consultants or support agreements.
  • Transition and support: smaller organization that genuinely cares about its customers.
  • Designed for fundraising: has several tools that focus on donor retention which is a key goal of all fundraisers.
  • User restrictions: they currently don't allow different access levels. I can't let my board members in as "look only" users or restrict information access. they are currently working on this, but right now it's "all or nothing."
  • It doesn't have a dedicated events module.
Great for a small-to-medium shop that needs to do a little bit of everything. Maybe not optimal for organizations doing a lot of events or peer-to-peer fundraising.
Dorothy Granger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang to assist with our fund raising endeavors inputting donations, creating donor records and tracking communications/stewardship/solicitations. It is great for running reports on a variety of topics that help us plan our fund development campaigns. The administrator also uses Bloomerang to reconcile financial records with donor income to make sure we're always on the same page.
  • Bloomerang is easy to use; very straightforward data entry and records are easy to retrieve by those familiar with Bloomerang and those with little experience! It is very intuitive.
  • Reports are also easy to run in various ways. I can manipulate the data to get the comparisons I want and, for the most part, very intuitive.
  • Customer support is the best I've seen! They are very responsive to individual queries.
  • The whole system is very cost-effective for small non-profit organizations but without skimping on options.
  • For the price, I think the system is extremely functional as is. The only thing I was interested in was the capacity to load attachments to records, as we would often receive letters and cards from donors that we wanted to "keep," and they added this option! AND it is easy to use.
I have used Bloomerang only in small, non-profit organizations and I think it is perfect! For a large organization, I think functionality would be limiting.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it for the non-profit I work at and we use it to track our donors and how we retain them. We use it to activate our lapsed donors as well as separate initiatives that we are running at a given time. It helps see which donors we should be targeting and the time between gives.
  • Donor Retention
  • The reports are helpful to gain a larger picture snapshot
  • So user-friendly and easily navigated
  • Merging of data
  • Tailoring to meet more specific needs
  • Expanded capabilties
It is very well suited for how you track donations and to see giving over the course over the past years. I found it helpful to see when specific donors gave in order to strategize for the coming year. Also with the appeals feature you can see which donors give by which means. I like the additional features where you can email, but the email system isn't robust enough for us to use so we go through a different emailing service for that. I also wish the search function better matched, sometimes it's hard to locate the donor I'm searching for.
Kim Westermann | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is used primarily in our fund development and finance departments. We use Bloomerang to track donors, potential donors, and donations; to manage our e-newsletter communications; and to collect donations online. We also use Bloomerang to report on fundraising and communications strategies throughout the year and to balance the books with our finance department.
  • Bloomerang has greatly improved our online giving platform. It integrates seemlessly with Stripe for credit card processing, and forms look great embedded on our site. We use Bloomerang for general online donations as well as online registration for events.
  • Bloomerang email communications are good looking and easily branded. Bloomerang also makes it easy to track our open rates and click rates for each email we send.
  • Bloomerang makes it easy for us to track our communications with individual donors by providing a way to note interactions of different types as well as make personal notes in a donor's record.
  • Bloomerang's timeline feature makes it very easy to look in a donor's reocrd and understand their history with our organization in a matter of seconds.
  • The reporting function in Bloomerang can be somewhat difficult to use. The reports are run by constituent, interaction, or transaction, which makes it hard to pull information across modules into one report. Bloomerang's improvements to reporting have been huge over the last year, but there's still a ways to go to make it a little more intuitive and user-friendly.
  • The relationship feature in Bloomerang is somewhat clunky. You can see relationships for an individual donor, but you can't pull reports by relationships. It also takes a long time to set up households and leaves room for inconsistent data entry if more than one person controls the database.
  • Customer service around added services (such as Prospect View) is slow and unresponsive. Bloomerang should develop partnerships with effective and professional donor prospecting and donor research companies to help nonprofit clients.
Bloomerang is an excellent tool for small to medium sized nonprofits who benefit from the ability to customize the database to their specific needs and who dedicate a large portion of their fundraising budget to digital marketing strategies. For organizations who rely heavily on complicated reporting, Bloomerang may not be quite robust enough at this point.
Shanna Harris | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Bloomerang as our only fundraising database. All donors and donation information is entered every day. Weekly we send thank you letters that are easily generated through the Bloomerang system. We also use the database information to reconcile with our daily bank deposits and that makes our end of the month accounting go very smoothly. We often refer to the donor information when we are looking for sponsors for different events in areas around the state.
  • Because Bloomerang is so easy to use, initially entering donor information and adding to a donor account leaves little room for errors to be made. Instead of having software with no flexibility and one donor with several accounts, we have one donor with one account. We are confident in the data we retrieve instead of "hoping" it is accurate.
  • We have the ability to tabulate YTD donations for a donor along with the donation just made.
  • Even I can use it!
  • Excellent! Excellent! Customer service.
  • We would like the flexibility of adding graphics to the bottom of the donation letter.
Very well suited for our organization. We like the search capabilities and record keeping.
Jon Dize, CFRE | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang is a donor management system (CRM) for nonprofits. It is utilized to track donors, donations, and donor trends.
  • Cloud-based/intuitive navigational tools.
  • Multiple pricing options to fit the needs of large and small nonprofits. I have had clients work with them to "make it happen" several times.
  • Integration with Quickbooks, online giving, etc.
  • It is obvious that this system was built from donor experts down, rather than tech designers up.
  • The assignment of staffers to walk new clients through setup, etc. is great.
  • Name recognition... still growing its presence; however, it is working hard!
  • Perhaps more integration with other services... such as Greater Giving event management software, et al. That again will grow.
I am going to guess that for a large org, such as a national health charity or a university, it is too small of a product. Otherwise, it is well suited for just about any size org.
Sue Trnka | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bloomerang stores all of our donor and volunteer constituent information - such as names, addresses, connection to our organization, participation in special events, personal interests, and more. Bloomerang also keeps records of all donations (cash or in-kind) made by our constituents. There is more that we could be doing - such as tracking grants - but we haven't done that yet. We are excited about the way that Bloomerang organizes our information and makes it so easily accessible through reporting filters.
  • I love that I can create custom fields for constituent profiles and then use them in my filtering. For example, I can keep track of who participated in a particular event in a specific year by creating a field for that - and then when I want to send correspondence to only those constituents - it's a piece of cake. When working with constituents, details matter!
  • Bloomerang reporting filters are powerful, yet easy to use. When I need to create a complex report, I map it out on paper from the largest criteria to the smallest - then give it a try in Bloomerang. I can then see from the results whether I need to make adjustments here or there - and then be confident that I am getting the results I need - and if I run into a question, Bloomerang customer service is always able to help me quickly and completely!
  • Bloomerang customer service is rockstar! Access via chat is fast and easy, and I always feel like Bloomerang reps are not only expert in helping me find solutions - they also really care about my needs and want to help me.
  • Bloomerang should create additional access levels for users. Currently, users can be administrators (able to see and edit all constituent records plus make changes to custom fields, settings, etc.) or users (able to see and edit all constituent records). There is no way to allow someone to only SEE records - and there is no way to limit which records someone can see. I would like to allow others in my organization the access to SEE records (without any risk of them changing entries), but I can't do that. There would also be value in the ability to set up a dashboard containing select constituents with the ability to create notes or interactions (e.g., in the case of a board member assigned to solicit a certain group of donors).
  • I would like Bloomerang to improve the process for corresponding with notificants when honorarium or memorial donations are received. When a donation is received, Bloomerang keeps track of the acknowledgement status (yes, no, do not acknowledge) and automatically changes the status when a letter is created to acknowledge a donation. A similar mechanism for donations where there is a notificant would be very helpful.
Bloomerang is well-suited for keeping customized, easy-to-access data about constituents interested in my organization.
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