Donorview was a HUGE upgrade from many systems into just one!

Donorview has made some great modifications based on our suggestions and has worked with us to create affordable personal solution when we really needed it. They are super quick and response to helping probelm-solve and understand the system.

Pros

We moved our database from a FileMaker system which was customized for us but was OLD and was housed on a harddrive instead of the cloud. Additionally, we used an email software, event software, an application/forms software and paypal and NONE of the programs talked to one another. All updates to the database were manual and time consuming. When we moved to Donorview it was such a breath of fresh air to have access to our database anytime/anywhere. Additionally, its exceptionally helpful to have purchases, events and donations associated with client records. We do a lot of events and the event software works flawlessly almost every single time. We also have been able to get creative with the forms/surveys function and recreate documents like waivers and applications in that system. Again, extremely helpful to have applications associated with records instead of having to manually update. Overall, we are so grateful to have a software that does pretty much everything we need it to do. We also appreciate the pricepoint for the amount of functionality that we have. We are a small non-profit so it was a good mid-range product that was accessible to us.

Cons

Donorview has an incredible breadth of functionality that is hard to find all in one software. If you analyze any one of these features by itself (event ticketing, email marketing, surveys etc) there is a bit less functionality and is less user-friendly than if you paid for any of those items individuallyl on their own. (For example, our old ticketing software gave us a few more options and was a bit easier to set up) However, having all that functionality ALL in one place at an affordable price really makes up for those minor inconveniences. (Ex. Our old ticketing system did NOT talk to our database so we had to do waivers/tracking manually which was a real pain in the butt). Overall, it has been totally worth the switch. Also, Donorview seems to be very responsive to suggestions and ideas and as a young company seems to be trying to make constant improvements in their system based on feedback. I imagine that as feedback comes in user-friendlyness will just continue to improve!,

Makes my life easier

Pros

I really like DonorView. There was a bit of a learning curve but you will have that with any new software. Any time I have questions or problems, they have been very quick to answer or to figure out what is causing the problem (and sometimes even letting me know that the problem is me). My biggest problem was figuring out the report function (I still have some problems but again I just send an email and they walk me through it). We looked at a few different options and by far this was the best deal around. I am very pleased with DonorView. In fact someone in our organization mentioned about maybe looking into changing software and I flat out told them that I like using donor view, it is very user friendly and if they decided to change it would be without me. That is how much I like using DonorView.

Cons

With our previous software our donors could be listed as a married couple but with DonorView (as with other softwares we looked) at each person is an individual and then put into a relationship. Not only did it significantly increase our donor base but it just didn't work for us so I ended up merging the married couples together to create one donor instead of two. It would have been nice to have that option of keeping them a married couple at the beginning of our conversion so that I wouldn't have had to do all the merging (which took quite a bit of time).

DonorView - The all in one software for non-profit organizations

We work in the non-profit youth ministry sector and have locations across 8 different states. After maintaining a software that we created many years ago, we made a decision to get out of the software business and outsource all software to allow us to focus more on our mission as opposed to software management. All this being said, we spent a few years researching different software companies all to find that we were unable to find a company to fit all of our needs in one place. After visiting with a lot of the large and leading software companies in this industry, we came across DonorView which gave us the opportunity to find a company that had the different pieces of software we were looking for that was all under one roof like donor tracking/management, tracking leader to student interactions, event registration, email communication and much more.

Pros

The best part about DonorView for our organization is that it fills our need of being an all-in-one software that allows us to do donor tracking/processing/management, event registration, email communication, student and volunteer tracking, and much more.

Cons

The thing we like least about DonorView is that it is taking us a little while to get used to a new system and we have found things along the way that needed slight adjustments to make them work for our specific needs. Though this has been a small hurdle for our organization, DonorView has been very helpful in providing continued training and has been very willing to work with us to make the software work for us.

Great software - so much functionality, great quality for the price, excellent customer service.

We are able to keep our database clean, consistent, and reliable. It is easy to use for all levels of experience and the capabilities of the software are enormous. We love how easily it syncs to our website as well as the ease of reporting to members of the staff.

Pros

I just started using the software within the past year. It has been an easy transition and continues to be as I ask for help with certain areas and suggest improvements. I find the customer service team always timely and knowledgeable. I look forward to increasing my knowledge base with the software as I continue to use it and gain better use of the overall functionality. I appreciate all the time that the team has put into cleaning up our old data to make it work for DV.

Cons

The only suggestion for improvement would be to make the mail merge templating easier to use. I find it difficult to format a letter, especially because I have no experience with HTML. I would prefer to either copy and paste from Word with it working perfectly the first time. I feel as if I always have to do a trial run with a new letter and adjust accordingly.

A great concept but not ready for prime time

I'm not looking to switch away from DonorView, simply because it's better than the patchwork of applications we were using and it's in our budget as a non-profit. I'm still holding out hope that DV will start putting some investment into seriously improving their product for the end user, especially for power users who are responsible for maintaining enterprise data. If they don't, I'm worried that the company will go belly up. But for now, I'm sticking with it despite how frustrating the system is to actually use in the real world.

Pros

The idea behind DonorView is great. You keep everything in one place to get a 360-degree view of your constituents and replace all the various individual systems for email, web forms, payments, events, donor tracking, CRM, etc. And you do it at an affordable price. All these features are, in fact, in the system, which is wonderful. It's in the execution things start breaking down.

Cons

When we signed on to DV over a year ago, I knew there were practical problems with the system but hoped they had an aggressive development team which would stay competitive by continually improving the product. By now, it's apparent that they do not have an aggressive development team and appear to be putting almost no effort into improving their product to stay competitive, which is frustrating for the user and makes us worried that the company may fail and leave us hanging. DV obviously doesn't use this system themselves, at least not in the full way it's intended to be used, or I'm sure the more glaring problems would have been solved by now. There is no power-user interface. You can only search for constituent records with a single string across all fields, for example, rather than being able to search for combinations of field values with wildcards. You lose your found set whenever you drill down — extremely frustrating. You cannot edit multiple records at once if you find a widespread problem (although DV will offer to write an ad hoc script for a fee). Constituents can create duplicate records without the system flagging that event for you. Couples with individual records can use a DV campaign page to donate as a couple, creating a third record, and there's no automated way to split that out to the pre-existing records. You can use a "Family" field to create households, but there's no way to tell the system that you want to mail to some of those households as a household (e.g. we have some donors who tell us they want a single mailer every time, yet they don't always donate, purchase, or volunteer as a couple, so there's no automated way to ensure that they get just one mailer — it has to be done manually every time). Also, the email "templates" are not templates, they're just saved emails. Actual templates would be so much easier to work with. DV has effectively locked down certain design choices by preventing override, which is a real pain when their choices are bad, such as a hard-to-read gray font — I had to go in and tinker with the code to stop the system from ignoring my commands to use a darker font. You can't create any conditional auto-completes (e.g. having all new constituent records within certain cities, ZIPs, and counties automatically fill in a Service Area field). The list goes on. In short, DV doesn't really pay attention to the needs of the actual user in the field and they don't seem at all focused on creating a superior product for the end user.

Fantastic! Meets a variety of needs for an enitre nonprofit!

Having one database that performs the same functions as our previous three, it is extremely user friendly.

Pros

So far, myself and my organization has had a great experience with Donorview. The transition period was very simple from our old database since Donorview provided ample support and answered all of our questions and concerns over the transition while also merging our data very quickly. Whenever we have any questions or issues the support team quickly responds and helps resolve any issues. My team and I are always excited to see the new features and updates donorview creates as it is always bigger and better. Thank you to the donorview team for such an amazing diverse software!

Cons

The reporting is the part that we struggle the most with, it is not as robust as our old database so that has been a struggle in terms of acquiring donor retention reports with ease. I know that this will soon be an issue of the past as the software continues to develop.

Donorview has been a great software for our organization.

Everything is in one place. We were able to combine a few of our software programs into one.

Pros

I like the great customer service. They are very responsive to our needs. We have been with Donorview for a few years. We are happy that they take our suggestions seriously and are able to add features to the software as we have needed them. It has been very helpful. We like Donorview because we were able to combine multiple softwares we were using and now just have one.

Cons

I wish that we could use our current ACH provider for online donations. This would save us cost and additional paperwork.

Overall, so far so good. I like the software.

Pros

My experience with Donorview has been fine. We still haven't fully learned all aspects of the software, or utilized it to its full capacity, which is a bit frustrating on our end because of the amount that we are investing. We are still a very small organization so it's essential that we get our bang for every buck utilized. I did find that some areas could be more user friendly, but that could just be a user issue... need to do more research/studying to better utilize the services.

Cons

I honestly still need to delve into the system. I'm still not completely secure in my knowledge of utilizing all of the platforms and therefore still need to research and learn more. It would be nice if there were lower price points for smaller organizations, as the amount that we are investing in the software is a bit much. At the current moment that would be my only concern and feedback. 

Great Software + Awesome Staff!

Pros

The thing I like most about Donor View is their quick and friendly customer support. Any question or issue that I have ever had over the past two years was able to be solved immediately. Their software makes it easy for us to manage multiple moving parts of our organization in one place. We are so grateful for the relationship that we have with Donor View and are looking forward to utilizing their software in even more complex ways in the coming year!

Cons

I would like to see improvements on the Email and Social Marketing platform. Uploading images, resizing and changing fonts should be easier. I also would like to see it so that when being viewed on cell phones, it renders correctly and fonts are the right size. It would be nice to just drag and drop photos, crop and then have them be sized correctly. I use a program called Canva, which sizes photos really easily- I would like if your program mirrored theirs.

When we started with Donor View they may not have had every feature we wanted, but EVERY time we mad

Better service, good price.

Pros

We use the email customer service option. The promptness of reply on our requests is outstanding. They also offer a phone assist option but they do so good with email that the telephone response option is not necessary.

Cons

you could provide our service for FREE, but other than not charging us (insert smiley face here) I do not think there is anything we wish you would do better.

DonorView makes CRM easy and affordable with very reasonable prices and great support staff.

Better control of donor information

Pros

The DonorView support staff is first class. They go out of their way to get you what you need, even if it's not part of the normal package, and their response time is the fastest I've ever encountered. After learning a few ins and outs, the program itself is very easy to use. I do wish there were some standard "canned" reports rather than relying on expert knowledge in Excel to manipulate the data.

Cons

Although DV has been extremely accommodating to my requests for additional fields, it would be wonderful it all fields from all tables could be available on any screen. This would allow various cross-tab reports that are so important to analyzing donor patterns.

I use DonorView to track donations, pledges & event RSVPs for both one-time and on-going patrons.

I like the event campaign features.

Pros

DonorView has a log of functionality that is customized to my organization's needs. The customer service is friendly and timely.

Cons

I have a lot to learn about DonorView's functionality. I have records that are associated with an organization, but I also need to use the data to address individuals that are associated with the organization. This has been difficult to manage when I export the data to send correspondence to the organization/donors. As our donor base increases, this will be more difficult to decipher.
DV charges 5% for online credit card transactions. This is higher than average. I am currently exploring other options for this functionality.