It is used as our donor software for donations and communications.
Pros
Robust database.
Cons
Donors cannot update their own information - credit cards, amount of donation, address information.
Likelihood to Recommend
Donors cannot update their own information - credit cards, amount of donation, address information - and if we weren't already in it, it would be a deal-breaker.
Right now we are in the process of using it to gather volunteer information and to improve our volunteer experience. We will be using its peer-to-peer tool. We use Salsa CRM to send out monthly newsletters and we also use it to send out automated emails. It has been easy and good looking to embed forms and donations forms to our website.
Pros
Autoresponders and automated emails have been really cool and simple to use, that tool in itself has added a lot of value and has been a powerful way to keep supporters engaged.
Donor management is one thing that Salsa CRM gets really technical with. There is so much information that you can have on each donor.
I like the forms and how easy they are to embed on the website, like email sign up forms or donation forms. I can make them look seamless as they sit on the website and gather information and donations.
Cons
Starting up with the product was taxing, slow and generally not pleasant. Although the learning curve is real and tough to manage by yourself, I'm not really talking about that. It took over a month for Salsa CRM to get the thing activated and working so I could start using it. I was allocating a lot of my time to make sure they had everything they needed, and it was a lengthy process. I was also bugged by how many duplicates they put into the system from the donor information I gave them.
I think a few things were oversold about the product, the data conversion being one of those. And although I like the forms, they do not meet all the needs we were hoping for when it comes to signing up and retrieving data from volunteers.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited for sending mass emails or emails to certain groups, sending automated emails, collecting donations, and peer-to-peer communication. They have a good support team.
I'm still figuring out how to best manage supporters, it's not as intuitive as I would like. I used to just manage all donor information on Google Sheets, and I still prefer Google Sheets.
Salsa CRM is utilized in our development office primarily. We do use Engage as our primary fundraising source. As we use Engage, we then push the donors very easily over to the CRM as constituents.
Pros
User-Friendly. As a user, it is an intuitive product. When you are working, it is easy to navigate.
Fundraising Pages: Salsa Engage allows you to easily and quickly make fundraising pages that can be pushed out to your community of donors.
CRM: Easy to manage the constituents. When someone signs up for our fundraising pages, the software captures the demographics and either matches up to the existing donor or creates a new constituent.
Salsa CRM listens to their customers and works well with the user base. Most ideas are listened to and can see that requests are pushed out in updates.
Cons
I would LOVE an app on my phone rather than using the native browser but I do understand that there is a lot of work on creating this.
Likelihood to Recommend
As I mentioned before, I was the decision maker for Salsa CRM. I worked in software prior to moving to nonprofit. I reviewed several software platforms. Salsa CRM was the most intuitive and met my needs as a whole.
Salsa CRM is being used by the Foundation, our fundraising subsidiary. We use the events module for a variety of special events hosted through the Foundation. Our Agency supports people with intellectual disabilities and behavioral health challenges through five individual subsidiary organizations with most of our services being provided in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Pros
The software is easy to use
The dashboards are a great way to compare results on an annual basis
The online browser is handy when working from home or out of the office
Cons
Reports can be a bit cumbersome
We haven't mastered the art of exporting files and tagging records
Likelihood to Recommend
There are some small nonprofits that may not need all the functions provided by Salsa and/or the cost may be prohibitive for them. Nonprofits need to choose a software package that works best for their needs and functions that are most important to them. An organization that is membership based may not need the advanced fundraising tools provided by Salsa.
We use Salsa for organizing contacts and sending emails to potential donors to our non-profit organization. Salsa helped us organize our donors and keep track of their donation amounts, how often they donate, future donations, and monthly donations. It is an online service. The customer service was responsive and helpful. They also help guide you in setting up email campaigns and email series. There is quite a learning curve for using the software, and it takes several months to implement. It is somewhat user-friendly but requires some training. Salsa has several options to help customize needs to fit your particular company, and definitely allow for company growth. I would recommend Salsa, with the understanding that there is a learning curve.
Pros
Managing donations - Salsa helps keep track of the donations coming in whether they are a one-time donation or a series of donations.
Automatic email series (set it up once and it will run without you once you initiate the trigger point.)
This software also allows you to set up roles within the company for controlling access to things like donations and data entry.
Cons
When we started with Salsa, not every option was available online, some were desktop specific. As it has been some time since I worked with Salsa these have probably been resolved.
The ability to communicate between Salsa CRM and other Salsa software options. Sometimes the crossover was not as efficient as was needed.
Tagging and setting up rules for particular donors was somewhat confusing - meaning, therefore, that the amount of training needed to implement the software was somewhat intensive.
Likelihood to Recommend
Salsa CRM was a great software for managing a non-profit organization. I am confident it is appropriate for a non-profit situation, as I have not worked with a for-profit organization needing a database. I am not sure this is the best option; however, we were pleased with the features it allowed for managing a database.
My agency uses SalsaCRM daily to record donations, to research donors, to run mailing lists, and to analyze data. The product is easy to use. When contacting customer support, they are quick to connect with you, don't talk over you in tech-speak, and genuinely want to help you use the product to the fullest ability. We saved money from our previous CRM by switching over to SalsaCRM and are still very happy with it.
Pros
Customer support - they don't talk in technical terms but in plain English. They get back to you quickly with a solution.
Cost - we saved money switching to it - $10,000 in the first three years.
Reporting is simple and easy to use. We get what we need in our reports.
Cons
I'd love to seem them add AI functionality to some of the repetitive tasks
Likelihood to Recommend
While my database size is considered medium-sized based on the number of constituents, I know of agencies with much smaller-sized donor bases and larger-sized donor bases that are equally as happy with it as I am. There are plenty of training tools, both on-demand and personalized training, for you to become familiar with the database.
We use the CRM to hold all of the addresses for our agency-wide mailings.
We are managing our database and fundraising. It has been amazing to streamline the two! We used to use several platforms for all of our needs and we found that it was nearly impossible to maintain accurate records that way, the inconsistency was inevitable. Salsa has really helped us solve that issue by creating a system (with a reasonable price tag) that talks to one another. For example, a ticket sale online will go directly into a record!
Pros
Integration with its marketing software, Salsa engage, is great! Most software companies require you to pay additional for such an integration.
Constant updates to meet the needs of its users!
Its integration with other software such as wix!
Cons
With the constant updates comes challenges. Often times, with an update comes several small bugs that Salsa has to work to fix.
I believe their customer support works from home so it is challenging to get a concrete answer on the first phone call. It often takes several follow ups.
The implementation was a bit rocky but customer service worked with us a lot and we got through it! We were moving from google drive and several other platforms for ticket sales, emails, etc. so we didn't have any experience with this. It eventually all worked out and the Salsa team really stepped up to accommodate our needs.
Likelihood to Recommend
Salsa CRM serves nonprofits exclusively so it has been great for us, a small to mid-sized nonprofit. The solutions work to meet the unique needs of nonprofits and that has been incredibly helpful. We are thankful that the software is relatively user-friendly however, it takes quite a bit of training to utilize all of its features.
We use Salsa CRM to keep track of donations and donor information. We migrated from Abila Fundraising 50. The data was migrated without any issues. Salsa CRM is being used by the Development Department. Salsa CRM allows our Development Department to keep track of donations and donors. It also allows Donations made off campus to be entered into the CRM database Automatically. This is something that Abila Fundraising 50 was not able to do. When donations were made off campus someone from the Development Department had to manually copy the donation information into Abila Fundraising 50. This was extremely tedious and a major reason for migrating away from Abila Fundraising 50.
Pros
Ease of Data Migration from Abila Fundraising 50.
Automated Donation entry from mobile events into the CRM database.
Flexible web based and Application based use. Allows using the CRM using a browser or a dedicated locally installed application.
Cons
The 1st time setup is a bit confusing. It could have been made simpler but as it is it requires you to do some extra work because the Installer does not automate some of the tasks.
The extra steps required in the 1st step is a bit confusing and took more than 1 try to get correctly.
They have a separate app called Salsa Engage fundraiser component which they will try to upsell with Salsa CRM.
Likelihood to Recommend
Salsa CRM is well suited for a non profit organization to keep track of donors and donation campaigns. It works great for organizations with limited server and staff resources. There is no need to worry about upgrading servers and software and maintaining backups. If your organization would like to maintain a donation management software without worrying about server hardware and software this works great. It may not be appropriate for organizations that have highly invested server infrastructure and would like to maintain the data and server onsite. If you invested a lot of money into servers and want to make use of those resources you may want to consider a CRM that uses local servers and resources.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
