Bonterra Development + Digital

Formerly EveryAction

I have used the Bonterra Development + Digital tool at 4 different organizations since 2016. I think Bonterra Development + Digital is an excellent tool for smaller non-profit organizations as well as those organizations that have not used a CRM in the past. Its functionality, ease of use, and excellent customer support make it an excellent tool for small non-profit organizations. Once an organization has more than 5,000 donors/prospects the tool becomes less effective primarily because of the inability to track contacts, integrate with desktop email systems such as Outlook.

The system does very well at tracking and reporting on individual gifts and actions, but attributing individual donations to across donors in households and organizations remains a difficult manual process. EveryAction source codes are also so helpful for seeing campaigns holistic impact, yet the event function struggles to reliably track attendees who did not register online.

Broadcast email design, database management - putting contacts into targeted groups, online actions to contact public and corporate officials.

As United Way, we are unique, in that we collect pledges in a fiscal year, but the payments on those pledges are made in a calendar year. For example, the pledges are received in the fall. Beginning in January, payments on those pledges begin through December. So, the opposite of a fiscal year. It makes Viewing our actual dollars and pledges extremely difficult. We must run multiple reports every day to be able to see what I need to see on a daily basis.

EveryAction is a very robust platform and a great solution for managing our database deployment of actions and audience segmentation. There is room for improvement, however, with customizations across the platforms from reporting to design on Online Actions items.

At this point, I can only in good conscience recommend EveryAction to organizations that really do require something close to the wide array of functionalities that EveryAction offers, and have no other way to put all their organizing data together in one place. There aren't a lot of alternatives out there that offer even a decent fraction of what EveryAction offers, and it can be incredibly important to have one place to see everything about your supporters - we need to know which of our event attendees are also major donors when doing follow up, for instance! But the problem is that other tools out there are better than EveryAction at one or a few of the functions it offers. And they also might be easier to adopt because they're focused on a much narrower range of things. So if you don't need most of the tools built in to EveryAction, or if you have another way to bring all your data together, I suggest you make sure you do plenty of due diligence on alternatives (which might be a bunch of different tools) before committing to EveryAction.

Keeping people informed and providing content quickly. The templates help to streamline the creation process. I didn't have to recreate the wheel and redesign outgoing content. I was able to focus on making great content and making it quickly. The interface is very easy to learn and understand. Almost everything is user friendly.

EveryAction is the gold standard for Customer Relationship Management in the nonprofit sector.

EveryAction is good for smaller nonprofits with at least 1,000 supporters, (not sure if worth it for smaller ones because of $$) and nonprofits with tens of thousands of supporters. I’ve worked with EveryAction at three different organizations ranging from 2,000 contacts in the CRM to 100,000. If you’re just looking for a donation platform, EveryAction may be too much, but if you’re also sending emails and targeting multiple areas, it’s great.

I work in Democratic campaigns. This product is the standard. I've used many of the competitors, including Action Network and NationBuilder. NGP works best, and I think I speak for others in the industry when I say that. It's not as good for volunteer management but I don't really do that.

EveryAction is perfect for advocacy organizations or organizations like nonprofits that seek to raise money. It's not a great solution for small-budget organizations that can't afford their tools.

EveryAction is a versatile, flexible CRM that manages contacts, segmented lists, automations, and important integrations with other online apps. It does require training to fully utilize and may be complicated for a staff that isn't high-tech-literate/savvy.

Suited for fundraising. Not necessarily suited for small standard marketing due to cost.

When we have had to rapidly deploy advocacy actions and measure progress forward specific goals it has been great. The ability to integrate email and fundraising to support that work is also great. Making it easy for staff and volunteers to follow up and engage people works well too. The biggest challenge has been weak support for local advocacy. School boards and some local data aren’t available, and custom targets aren’t sufficient when trying to support statewide work. It might be okay on a county-by-county basis but still, the lack of school board data is a problem. The other challenge is the out of the box tools don’t look great unless you embed them with code on your current website. Depending on what that is it might be a challenge. We use WordPress and regularly embed actions and forms and it works well. I previously had a problem embedding them in Wix and square space because it would strip codes that help us track information.

It is great for advocacy work. Sending advocacy emails to legislators and other targets is super easy and helpful in EveryAction. I also love how we can reach our base quickly and easily using targeted emails. It is great for advocacy updates and soliciting donations. The different list options are great.

In our experience, EveryAction is appropriate for small to mid-sized non-profit organizations that engage in a wide variety of fundraising operations. It is geared primarily towards political fundraising, and some of the vernacular and features are clearly oriented to campaign or issue-based fundraising, which makes the tool particularly apt for those organizations. That orientation has not proved to be a hindrance for our non-political fundraising, fortunately. However, I imagine some development time will be 'wasted' (from our perspective) in building out those features.

When running a campaign that is not time-bound or could easily go over election seasons, EveryAction will be perfect for you to maintain your contacts, connect to voter file data, and take action with your voters. It would be too much for a short campaign that just needs quick access to voter file information through the VAN.

EveryAction is well suited for large organizations that need or desire an integrated database for their fundraising and constituent engagement. While there are other platforms that nominally have similar functionality, EveryAction stands out in terms of everything being integrated by default. Smaller organizations, or those with channel-specific needs, may find EveryAction to be too much for their needs. Large organizations that desire a high level of customization, and don't mind the work and resources that go into it, may also find that EveryAction doesn't best suit their needs.

Well suited for nonprofits with medium- to large-sized development departments that can take advantage of more of the communication features, such as targeted emails, acquisition list finder files, detailed tracking of all donor communication, online forms, etc. as well as modules like Wealth Engine integration and moves management. Less well suited to organizations that want a single database for donor and accounting records.

EveryAction is the optimal platform for non-profits that have email lists and are seeking to elevate the way they manage contacts. If you have a need to track activity, acquire new users, send emails, and convert users to donors, advocates, or loyalists, EveryAction offers a great experience. EveryAction allows you to transfer data from previous CRMs, but if you don't believe you'll use all the features of the software, it may not be useful to transition until your data is clean and you're ready to elevate your strategies.

Excellent email communications manager, donation page builder, and political advocacy to electeds.

EveryAction is great for donor management and engagement. You can create easy-to-use forms quickly and post them anywhere, be it your webpage, social media, or even in an email. All you need is the link! If you know how to write code, that would be a bonus, but not necessary. I've only been using it for about a year and it has decreased my office work significantly; it does the hard work for you. I highly recommend this platform if you have several people you would like to manage and keep in contact with on a regular basis.

EveryAction is great for progressive political organizations that wish to deploy digital campaigns to their audience, grow their audience reach, and keep the audience engaged. The tool is very intuitive to use and I've seen updates to the platform that has made the tool even easier for someone without a technical background to build campaigns. Anything in the realm of email, form submission, reporting, and automation is very well done.

EveryAction is about the best single platform for nonprofits that engage in advocacy work or campaigns. It has huge functionality and the ability to do so much in one place--emailing, fundraising, action forms, and so much more. It's less good for running a survey, for example, which would be useful.

Great system. Impressed with reporting features, emails, online actions.