Bloomerang CRM vs. Bonterra Network for Good

I can't speak to Bloomerang's functionality for a very large organization, but for a small-to-midsize non-profit, I don't know what else you'd need! Need to register volunteers, or sell tickets, or generate e- or print communications, or pull donor data? Bloomerang does it. Bloomerang is my third CRM tool in my current organization and it is vastly superior in almost every way to the others that came before.

Incentivized

I used Network for the Good to run a fundraising event it was awesome. My organization is part of a larger regional non-profit dedicated to servicing those in our community who need a little help. By banding together under a larger regional organization, we can extend our impact through the utilization of Network for the Good across all associated organizations. It empowers smaller groups to have a larger impact on their community.

Incentivized

• Website integration for online donations is awesome! It makes it so much easier to raise money online. We've tripled the amount of money we raise online, mainly because of this and the ability to send emails through the system.
• Emails are tracked directly in a donor's record, so we can see instantly their engagement with our content.
• Integration with DonorSearch is awesome and seems to be improving often.
• They listen to their customers' needs. If enough customers request a feature, they'll get it for us. We feel like the development of this software is always happening and it's a partnership, rather than a transaction.

Incentivized

• The ability to create fundraising pages has streamlined our fundraising efforts.
• Our fundraising coach has given us multiple ways to go about getting donors and has provided some creative problem solving.
• We are finally able to track our donors and update them as soon as possible!

Incentivized

• Some of the searches did not bring up the expected results. It would be good to see the logic be a little more "fuzzy".
• More pre-set reports would be helpful for small organizations who do not understand the logic behind how to get the results they are seeking.
• An ability to just page through donor records would be nice. Sometimes you just want to browse the data to get inspired.

Incentivized

• Every organization you enter has to have a point of contact with their email address listed. The point of contact also has be entered separately as an individual. If you use “email all” to your donor list, the contact gets emailed twice. This seems like it would be easy to prevent in the system but it’s currently not possible.
• Event ticketing is extremely limited unless you pay significantly more as an add-on. This should be included as a default feature.
• Emails sent through the system can end up in spam filters. Given how much email gets sent through their system, they should find a way to overcome that.

Incentivized

#1 - I am very happy with the product and support so far.
#2 - With significant data migration costs, I wouldn't even consider another option for at least 3 years no matter how much better it might be.

Incentivized

We are still learning and rebuilding our nonprofit using this platform, so this year is a trial run to see how we can increase our network and our donations. So long as we are able to see a significant return on investment in terms of donations received through the platform, we will renew for next year.

Incentivized

Data and settings are very customizable to fit the needs of our organization. We are able to not only keep track of donations, but also other interactions we may have with a constituent. Support is extremely helpful when issues arise.

Incentivized

BGF is an easy-to-use platform for entering, editing, and analyzing customer or donor data and giving. I would highly recommend it to any organization looking to improve its customer relationship management functionality. As a previous user of different CRM platforms with other non-profits, BGF has made tracking donor information and communicating with donors much easier.

Incentivized

In 5+ years we have never had an issue with it not working when we needed it to. It is very reliable and doesn't seem to have a lot of bugs or interruptions in service.

Incentivized

It is always fast for us and reports have a very quick upload time. We don't integrate it into other programs so I'm not 100% sure about that, but it always works when we use it and is very reliable. Even when we run Excel files for complete information on donors, it always works very fast.

Incentivized

Any time i had a problem or question it has been easy to find an answer or tutorial. When I cannot find an answer, it is easy to email or live chat with support and they resolve my problems very quickly.

Most of the time they are quick and friendly and help me resolve any issues. There have only been a couple of times that we couldn't find a resolution and I was just told that NFG didn't have that capability.

Incentivized

We only had one hiccup with the domain that was an issue on our end but NFG struggled to help us. It was finally resolved and we've been good ever since

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Givebutter is not as user friendly, even though it is fairly easy to use. Bonterra Network for Good has many of the same options for running donor campaigns but goes beyond in data tracking and user friendliness. Bonterra Network for Good is extremely easy to learn. The only downside is the cost factor.

Incentivized

We originally used it only for philanthropy and now our Outreach team is using it for newsletters, our Advocacy uses it for volunteers and tracking, and our Volunteer Coordinator puts in volunteer hours and in-kind donations.

Incentivized

• Because my organization has been using Bloomerang for only one year, we haven't yet studied what impact it has had on our ROI. We have, however, noted that we are able to more efficiently and more rapidly communicate with constituents now than we were able to before we had Bloomerang. We can quickly and efficiently generate acknowledgements and tax receipts - and do so - better than we ever did before.

Incentivized

• Increased donations - the majority of our donors do so through this platform
• Time savings - we are able to take care of a large majority of tasks through one easy portal
• Higher donor engagement - It's simple for us to pre-plan emails and texts and send them out to donors from the portal
• Time savings - the various ways we can search our records provides easy access to data which in turn saves time

Incentivized