If your organization is in the market for a new donor management system or
fundraising software, Idealware has just released a free report to help you make the right choice to fit your needs:
The Consumer’s Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems
is an impressive 48-page document that compares the specific features
of 33 different donor management systems, ranging in price from free up
to $4000+ for the first year.
Which of the 33 systems we reviewed are the best? That turns out
to be a very complicated question. We expected to find a number of
these systems to be noticeably sub-par, which would make it easier to
narrow down our recommendations. But that wasn’t the case—almost every
system we looked at had its strengths, and we could think of a scenario
for which almost every system would make sense. That’s great news for
organizations looking for a system that meets a specific set of needs,
but it makes it very complicated to try to understand the market and
sift through the options.
The Guide discusses, in truly useful detail, the types of donor management systems that are available, what it can do for you, and how to choose the right system for your organization.
A companion document, Detailed Reviews of Low Cost Donor Management Systems,
takes a closer look at the 12 donor management systems the authors
identified as the top contenders, based on a combination of
functionality, price and attractiveness in a variety of situations:
In selecting them we prioritized functionality to manage complex
gift and donor information and to issue printed acknowledgement
letters, but also considered usability, querying and reporting,
configurability, managing constituent data beyond donations, and price.
Idealware’s Consumer Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems and Detailed Reviews
were written by Eric Leland, Laura Quinn, and Chris Bernard, with
contributions from others in the nonprofit community, in partnership
with NTEN, and sponsored by NPower. You can download your free copy at http://nten.org/dms_report, in exchange for your name and email address.
