Bloomerang is a helpful tool for small non-profits as a first CRM
May 03, 2021
Bloomerang is a helpful tool for small non-profits as a first CRM
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Bloomerang
We use Bloomerang as a CRM for donors - it allows us to track donations, link them to a donor profile, and accept donations on our website via a form that is connected to the Bloomerang software. Forms can be connected to a specific campaign, which is really helpful for splitting out different fundraising efforts. We can run reports on our donor base, look at profiles individually and see a rating for a donors engagement and target campaigns based on whether a donor is warm, cool, or hot. There is also an option for researching a donor’s giving capacity with an extra add-on that we have not yet purchased but are interested in.
Pros
- CRM - Bloomerang is really useful as a CRM for tracking donors and viewing their donations on a timeline for a quick visual of a specific persons engagement with our organization.
- Automatic reporting - gone are the days of exporting CSV files and pasting them into master spreadsheets. By setting up the forms on our site everything automatically goes into the Bloomerang database. Donations made off our website can be imported into the software from a CSV file.
- User-friendly for non-technical staff - Non-technical staff can easily run reports and get a visual representation of donors and their relationships with the organization.
Cons
- Dashboard views - I really wish Bloomerang would show all donors in a single view. As it stands right now, I have to search for a donor that I know exists in the database instead of being able to see a dashboard page of the most recent donors or most active donors, something of that nature. I was extremely surprised to find out this feature was missing.
- View of all transactions - similar to the donor issue, it is not possible to see a list of recent transactions/donations. This makes verifying information a bit tedious, the data itself is pretty hidden so it’s hard to get a global view.
- Form styling defaults - Bloomerang forms are functional, but not necessarily pretty. You can do custom CSS styling, but not all organizations have a developer on staff that can make it look better than a form from 1998.
Salesforce is infinitely customizable, but Bloomerang is pretty straightforward and works out of the box. It is simple enough that folks who are not familiar with the robust features of something like Salesforce can hit the ground running. Even as it is simple it is powerful as far as showing visuals that can help fundraising staff more clearly understand where the organization is and what donors they can next target for upcoming campaigns.
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