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Bloomerang is widely used across organizations to effectively track and manage various aspects of donor and constituent information, …
Starting at $79 per month
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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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Pricing
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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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.
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About Bloomerang
Bloomerang Integrations
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Bloomerang Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS |
| Supported Countries | United States |
| Supported Languages | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
Bloomerang starts at $79.
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
| Consumers | 0% |
|---|---|
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 90% |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 5% |
| Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 5% |
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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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
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
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May 06, 2021
Bloomerang - A Nonprofit Donor Management Software that Returns Your Investment Every Time
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.
March 01, 2019
Bloomerang for Non-Commmercial Radio Donor Management
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.
March 01, 2019
Easy to use and effective!
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.
January 30, 2018
Life is Good
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.
January 19, 2018
Bloomerang saves me time!
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.
November 22, 2017
Bloomerang - a great user friendly solution!
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.
August 31, 2017
Bloomerang has our donors FEELING THE LOVE!
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.
June 19, 2017
Bloomerang
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.
June 16, 2017
Bloomerang is a boon for our nimble nonprofit
We are a small nonprofit that needed an intuitive donor database. We have only two employees, so there is not a lot of time available for database upkeep. Bloomerang has been a time, money, and sanity saver for us. We love it that it provides a one-stop shop for email correspondence/marketing and online integration with our website.
- Correspondence is saved under constituents' accounts which is so helpful for recordkeeping.
- Data uploads are a breeze! Love this feature. It is pretty foolproof.
- The chat feature is great and the people are so kind and point you in the right direction.
- I wish I could split credit card charges into different funds. As it is right now, you have to ask Bloomerang to unlock the transactions. Which they do willingly. We often times have donors wanting to make one charge for multiple things.
- It seems like 50% of the time when someone from our database makes an online donation, a new constituent account is made. It is easy enough to merge, but I have to be more on the lookout for multiple accounts.
- Would love a fundraiser/auction compatible option. Still have to use another software for this aspect of our development.
June 12, 2017
Bloomerang Review
We used Bloomerang as the tool to accept submissions for a prize and to then judge those submissions.
- Great with branching logic
- Super helpful with onboarding and assisting to set up
- Accepted different types of documents (Word, PDF, etc.)
- Good data management
- Reporting wasn't super clear, took some time to figure out how to make reports
- Couldn't figure out how to export by category easily
June 07, 2017
Bloomerang - a good idea with some growing pains
The organization I am working with is a small school with a very small administrative staff preparing for a capital campaign. They were using a very outdated database to store constituent information. We chose Bloomerang because we were under the impression that it interfaced with Firespring, the new website software we selected. The intended purpose is to streamline the development process: entering gifts, gift acknowledgment, donor interaction and reporting.
- The Dashboard is a nice feature for getting an overview when you log on.
- The Summary feature which shows a snapshot of the status of a constituent is also a plus.
- The workshops informative and online training support is also helpful.
- I think the thing I find most frustrating is that you can't do batch posting of gifts. For example, if you have 30 sponsors for your 5K run or I have a list of 150 people who attended an event and just want to post a note to their record, you must post each individually rather than being able to predetermine the parameters which are shared by all. After contacting support to find a solution, I was told that I would have to build an import which would have very strict parameters that would have to be vetted by the Bloomerang team. While I am glad that they are there to help, it is a very time consuming process and we purchased Bloomerang to make these tasks less complicated and time consuming.
- Working with the letter templates is really cumbersome. Bloomerang assumes you are printing letters onto printed letterhead. While there are some fairly primitive tools for formatting, you cannot control the margins and end-up doing a lot of time consuming adjusting so that a letter looks right.
- The report generator is very confusing. For example, if you set a parameter to exclude soft credits, the report still contains soft credits. You cannot edit the report within Bloomerang, you must export to Excel. As a result, when you do want to run a batch of thank you letters, you end up with letters you don't want, formatting you don't want and no way to edit the letters since they are generated and downloaded as one long document.
- When we purchased Bloomerang and Firespring (website), we were under the distinct impression from the marketing by both entities that their collaboration produced integration between the database and the website. For example, if a constituent makes a donation or registers for an event through the website, we could be able to have it track as an interaction on the database. Apparently that is not the case and getting that info into the data is complicated, awkward and time-consuming.
June 07, 2017
Bloomerang
We began using Bloomerang to keep track of our contributors, but now we are using it for volunteer organization. Bloomerang offers us to keep information regarding our contributors in addition to the financial info we keep in QuickBooks. It also allows us to get additional information on our contributors we wouldn't normally have access to.
- Alerts us when a contributor has passed away.
- Allows us to keep all contributor info in one place where all staff is able to reach it.
- We can easily run contributor reports and print thank you letters with receipts.
- One of the features I do not like about Bloomerang is that you must enter each individual contributor separately. For example, if you have a married couple, you need to enter the wife and husband separately and then create a relationship between them. It's very time consuming. You should be able to enter all the info at one time and then Bloomerang separates it for you.
June 07, 2017
Loving the Bloomerang Life
Bloomerang is being used across our entire organization, but especially by our communications and development team, volunteer team, grants and executives. It allows all of us to be on the same page when it comes to donors, volunteers, and VIP's and allows us to better follow up with them and better target our messaging. It's been an incredible asset to all of us.
- We LOVE the reports in Bloomerang because there is so much flexibility. You can get the same answer multiple ways, and even if you don't fully understand it at first it is very easy to learn.
- Bloomerang is great for acknowledgements! Having the ability to send acknowledgement emails in batches has been an incredible time-saver for our staff. Once you create a template and fix your filters, Bloomerang can send hundreds of acknowledgements at once (even if you don't use their credit card transaction systems).
- We also love the ability to assign and view tasks organization wide. It helps us get every department involved with the donor and volunteer retention. It is so easy to use and simply a great tool to have within the database.
- The integrated web forms have caused some problems for us. We had a bot entering bogus data that went into our database, but Bloomerang staff was so great about contacting us and showing us how to fix it. They even cleaned our data for us. The forms also aren't as visually appealing as you'd like them to be.
- Although their email system is user-friendly and a fantastic tool, it does not allow for your organization to use your own font and it has some aesthetic restrictions. It also doesn't allow for your to schedule when the email is sent out and that has been a hurdle for us.
- We'd love to be able to flip through somebody's timeline (instead of going into one interaction and then having to go back to the timeline to see their next interaction).
June 06, 2017
Bloomerang for new development program
Bloomerang is being used by our development department. The program has helped us to organize and collect data on funders to our organization.
- Bloomerang creates reports that detail information necessary for our development planning.
- Bloomerang tracks donations so that we can see where we might focus our energy.
- Bloomerang makes contact information available anywhere since it is an online software program.
- I don't really have any complaints or suggestions for Bloomerang. I still have much to learn about its functionality and have not had the time to make use of all of its features.
June 05, 2017
Bloomerang Boosts Bottom Line
We use Bloomerang for prospect and donor information, gift processing, entering contact reports, and producing monthly reports.
- Being cloud-based, Bloomerang is accessible anywhere and anytime. This convenience is simply priceless. I don't have to be In the office at a particular time to enter or retrieve the information or report that I need.
- Bloomerang is intuitive. It's a system that requires very little prior knowledge in the field of fundraising to be used effectively and efficiently.
- People of all experience and expertise level can use it. Novice and seasoned advanced professionals alike can get the most out of it.
- The support is always there when you need it and you can customize certain features according to your organization's needs.
- Bloomerang could incorporate the total event management features.
We use Bloomerang to track donor information. It is integrated with our accounting software, Aplos. We are a small organization, so it used only by the development director and myself (executive director). FYI ... I currently serve as executive director in a volunteer part-time capacity; it is not on my LinkedIn profile.
- The interface is intuitive and easy to use.
- It offers a good solution to the always difficult challenge of how to deal with multiple people in a household.
- Reporting is very flexible.
- The integration with Aplos needs work. It's not clear to me why names of donors are not transferred from Bloomerang to the Aplos donors list.
- Every contribution recorded in Bloomerang seems to get transferred to Aplos as a Stripe contribution. Aplos tech support is trying to figure out if I can instruct Aplos or Bloomerang on how to report a source of a contribution rather than have all contributions be listed as Stripe contributions.
May 31, 2017
Sense of Smell Blooming with Bloomerang
Bloomerang is currently only being used in one department. However it integrates with other software that may allow it to be utilized by multiple departments in the future. It is a donor database system that we use to manage our contribution and constituent records. Our old software was out of date and didn't have the ease of use that a cloud based system offers. Now we do not have to wait to be at our desks to answer even the smallest questions about an individual or their donation history. Additionally it allows us to keep track of interactions and contact with our VIPs.
- Because of Bloomerang I can get up to date retention and attrition information without having to pull out a calculator or produce 10 reports to compile the information.
- I am a fan of how intuitive the search function is. Many of our constituents are international and have unique name spellings. Bloomerang is able to understand my intention even if I misplace a vowel. Our old system was case sensitive and this caused some search issues at critical moments.
- The reports once set up and saved are constantly dynamic. I can set up a report to show all the donations in the last week and because of the dynamic system it will do this no matter the week, i.e. I do not need to put in the week dates every time I need to pull the information.
- The timeline is one of my favorite functions. I can easily get a glance of all the interactions between our organization and the constituent.
- Donor Search is an amazing feature to have access to. We are able to pull up important prospecting information with ease.
- I wish there was a mass change/update function available. In the post conversion time there are things that need to be cleaned up and this takes up a chunk of man hours.
- The acknowledgement letters are a bit complicated at the onset. I do like that they recently updated to allow you to change it in the system. In future I hope they allow you to download the merged letters in a Word doc and not just a PDF.
May 30, 2017
Bloomerang - A Time Saver
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.
May 30, 2017
Fantastic Donor Database
As a small non-profit, we needed a database that was easy to use and yet still capable of handling our thousands of contacts. Bloomerang has been fantastic. It's enabled us to look at data in a new way that is understandable, useful and relevant to our needs. With so much data to sort through and with a limited staff (no full-time fundraiser), it can be hard filtering out the unimportant or irrelevant data when it comes to constituents. Bloomerang has helped see what we need to focus on and where we need to spend our efforts (retention and segmentation).
- Dashboard: gives a great overview of where you are to date and what tasks you have planned. It helps me stay on top of my contacts.
- Donor timeline: I love looking at this to get a quick overview of a constituent's giving record and relationship with us.
- Ease of use: The ability to quickly and easily update records is so nice. Its frustrating to spend as much time uploading and sorting as you spend analyzing data. Bloom has reduced the amount of time I used to spend creating just the right report to find what I needed. Now, Its almost intuitive.
- Email and letter editors are lacking. They are basically just a simplified text platform.
May 30, 2017
Bloomerang rocks!
Bloomerang is currently being used by our organization for two purposes. The first is donor management. Bloomerang enables simple communication and donor tracking in a way that helps us to organize and identify our friends and supporters. For donor information, we couldn't be happier with our experience ... Bloomerang is easy to use. Second, we are currently utilizing Bloomerang to handle our membership base. This has been a bit of a challenge because it is not set up for membership, but rather donor relations. However, the staff of Bloomerang has been attentive and helpful in directing our management of members as well, though we still have some bugs to iron out.
- Adding and receipting gifts. The process is clean, simple and direct.
- Tracking donor involvement. The information shown on the landing page for the individual contains all the information needed at a quick glance.
- Step by step guidance available 24/7 within the Bloomerang site. There are always new tasks and projects and this portion of the database has been very helpful in covering each step so that our database is at optimum efficiency.
- Live Chat. For our start-up non-profit, the live chat has been helpful in trouble-shooting and answering questions that we either missed or were unclear. They are friendly, prompt and willing to tackle any issue.
- Adding family members. It is simple to add an individual and set up a household account. However, when adding a new family member to that account, all the information must be completely added again. For example, with husband and wife, an option to copy information would be time-saving and helpful because all the address and connection information are the same.
- For online forms, I would like to have the option to have calculations available. For example, we currently have memberships that are potential donors, but not current donors. For these memberships, we would like to offer discounts at various times or have additional packaging available with added fees, but this is not possible. All calculations must be done in advance and offered in a way that appears somewhat messy and confusing to the viewer. (I understand Bloomerang is designed primarily for donors, but this could be an easy fix.)
- More design options within the email/reports sections so that our newsletters and communications have a bit more finesse.
May 30, 2017
Bloomerang is brillant!
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.
May 26, 2017
Bloomerang Review
We are using Bloomerang to manage donors across two organizations. It is in the process of being used across the whole organization to manage our donor database and to provide reporting for our development officer.
- Dashboard clearly shows present time
- All activity is able to be integrated for reporting -- from giving to volunteer to interactions made with individuals from the organization.
- Defining criteria for specific mailings and reports is quite complex.
- There is not a way to show involvement by household and so we have to softcredit each member in order to show involvement.
- It is not possible to record individuals who are part of an organization making pledges on a monthly basis. We have to go back in and change all entrys in an import individually to have them account for the payment after the import has been made.
- It is next to impossible to integrate two organizations in a way that is easy to use with one database
- This is not a good database program to integrate with accounting
May 26, 2017
Bloomerang Works for Me!
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.
May 26, 2017
Bloomerang Review after 1 year
We use Bloomerang as a donor database as well as a volunteer management tool. We also use it as our mass communication tool through emails, letters and newsletters. All full-time staff and a few volunteers use the system.
- It allows you to customize your screens so you only see what you'd like to see. For example, each constituent profile is exactly the information that we chose to show up.
- It is easy to track gifts by dates or totals or appeals or any way you'd like. The reporting functions work well when you understand the filter features.
- Sending and tracking emails is something that works really well. The tracking tool is excellent for us to clean up the database and ensure the folks who we want to get our emails are and update addresses on bounced emails.
- The email template options are too limited. We cannot upload large enough photos and the text fields are really glitchy at times. The formatting just does not work as well as we'd hoped. It's pretty limited to a few fonts and a few sizes only.
- I wish the reports would automatically filter out deceased donors and soft credit gifts instead of manually doing that every time we build a report.
- Inability to edit thank you letters on the spot is a big issue. The fact that all letters are batched into a pdf file is a big pain. There are sometimes changes in those letters that I'd like to make for a few donors but you cannot edit any letters individually. I wish they would download as a word document so we can make the individual edits.
- Sometimes there are also glitches in reports where no results show up at all and it's tricky to figure out what to change to get a report. I think that I am filtering for all the things I want to see, then it shows zero results and I go back and unfilter something and it gives me results I need to manually filter.
- I wish the dashboard would show more instant graphs such as appeals for the year or gifts compared to last year, just some quick report images that are visually easy to see how your progress is.
May 26, 2017
Bloomerang...your new BFF in fundraising!
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).