Blackbaud DonorCentral vs. Kindful (discontinued, now part of Bloomerang)

Specific scenarios where Blackbaud DonorCentral is well suited are definitely in regards to our Development team. They can quickly update our constituent's memberships and keep our communications team in the loop on current member emails and those who are in need or renewals. It also helps with their development and fundraising events. They are keeping track of the highest donors and those big prospective donors for future events. Scenarios, where it is less appropriate, are definitely in my meetings department. It does not sync with our registration database for conferences, so we have to do double work verifying if they are members or not.

Incentivized

Kindful is well suited when:

• Important to integrate with a wide range of systems such as online fundraising tools or event registration without being tied to a single vendor
• Small to medium sized organizations looking for an affordable but powerful donor database/CRM
• Need a powerful but user friendly tool with customizable reports

Kindful is not well suited when:

• You need very advanced customization such as the ability to built entire custom screens
• You need to track donations in multiple currencies

Incentivized

• Has great security and privacy settings. Keeps your donor information safe.
• Has a direct link with donors to our information. Eliminates a lot of double work and or hitting the same donor with multiple emails.

Incentivized

• We particularly love the flexibility of Kindful's donation pages and donation plug-ins. They make it possible for us to accept donations on our website, without having donors have to leave the website.
• Kindful effectively streamlines back-office functions including acknowledgements for gifts - which saves our small 2-person team vital hours each week.
• Kindful integrates to a variety of valuable platforms, allowing us to manage all of our data in one place. Currently, we integrate with MailChimp [so all email recipients are segmented in Kindful, emails are sent from MailChimp], Fundraising Report Card, and several custom integrations through Kindful's open API [including one that tracks volunteer events and another that connects to CauseVox].
• Kindful's basic metrics and "dashboard" give us instant access to live fundraising results that are shown against historical information - giving us the ability to see how we're doing at all times.

Incentivized

• Doesn't interface with our Aventri Registration system.
• Has quite a few advertised features like SKY and DAF that don't get used that much and aren't as impressive as they say that are.

Incentivized

• Detailed custom email campaigns and reports can be confusing to navigate. However, Kindful provides excellent customer support and training to make it as easy as possible.
• The price can be a turn off for many people, but if you have an aggressive plan to increase funding, Kindful pricing is scalable based on the size of your database.

Incentivized

From operations, support, and donor management, Kindful's UX and UI are top-notch.

Incentivized

I gave it a low rating because response times are slow. It does have multiple ways to reach support, but it usually takes a while before you "get in front" of the person you need to fix your issue. Also, problems seem to happen a lot, so it makes the process more frustrating.

Incentivized

I have not utilized the support for Kindful very often but the one time I have was fantastic. It was quick, courteous and thorough. Kindful consistently offers Webinars that outline the best way to utilize their product and get the most out of it. I think Kindful does a pretty solid job with support.

Incentivized

I do not know of any other alternatives, as I do not work in the development department. Our Development team would have sourced alternatives to settle on this one.

Incentivized

Because of the easy-to-use drag-and-drop function, teams do not have to call website design-proficient professionals to assist them since Populr also supports collaboration and entire teams can work together to come up with a beautifully designed website and one that is readable.

Incentivized

• Helps development team keep a clear and concise donor relationship.
• Accounting can forecast money coming in more accurately.

Incentivized

• Kindful's customer service team has saved us a lot of time and effort by being extremely helpful. I can't speak highly enough about the customer service they offer.
• We spend a lot of time cleaning our data base. I wish Kindful had a cleaner integration process.

Incentivized