Blackbaud FIMS vs. Pachama

I believe a company starting out with a whole new database may take advantage of MicroEdge GIFTS. However, GIFTS would not work well for an organization which is transferring their old data onto the platform. GIFTS does not update well as time passes and data would most likely be lost and/or corrupted. I have not worked with the newest GIFTS online, so I do not know if that process would be smooth or not, but from what my coworkers told me upon hire, it seems GIFTS was very difficult to customize online. When attempting to use GIFTS online, our organization was told that we'd have to pay an invoice of several thousand dollars to change three words in a paragraph on the online system. Lastly, and most importantly, we found MicroEdge's customer service to be nearly impossible to reach, rude, and never helpful when help was sought out. Organizations which would need help with the program should not expect to be serviced in a timely or helpful manner.

Incentivized

• GIFTS Classics does a very good job of processing transactions. You can track workflow and enter/change important information along the lifecycle.
• My favorite feature is the ability to select almost any field within the database and organize how it will be viewed, either within the system or when exported to Excel. You can relabel the column headers, sort, switch the order, stack fields, and capture all the information that will help in both processing and decision making.
• I find the ability to create a wide range of templates that can then be generated and stored through the document manager tool to provide great efficiency and reduce opportunity for error.

Incentivized

• GIFTS system had many inherent bugs
• Difficult to search for information in GIFTS
• Customer support was difficult to reach
• When reached, customer service was rude and unhelpful
• GIFTS system could not put addresses in alphabetical order by country
• Upon updates, GIFTS system would crash and data would become corrupted
• GIFTS often would freeze and crash when exporting information to Excel
• GIFTS would not allow for the deletion of certain program codes even when user had full administrative privileges

Incentivized

I typically receive a response to an inquiry within an hour or two, if not sooner. Most tech support people are knowledgeable about our problems, and if not, they will escalate to the proper person.

Incentivized

It is really a matter of priority. I can see situations where GIFTS Classic is a very strong option! Once an organization determines its priorities then it should definitely consider GIFTS to see how well it compares with mission critical functionality.

Incentivized

• Good reporting (by program area, geographic area, payments, and backgrounds) for close to 250 grants per year
• Due to familiarity of program (MicroEdge), not too difficult to convert to new program of Blackbaud Grantmaking

Incentivized