The best CRM for a small budget...

I tell every small non-profit organization to consider DonorTools. For the price, you cannot find a better product, for a small shop on a budget.

Pros

The price. The price cannot be beaten. For a donor management CRM that covers all the bases, and provides you all the necessary functionality to run a small development team, look no further. This has everything you will need.

Cons

The reports that DonorTools can run are standard, but a bit limited for typical donor CRMs. Admittedly, you get what you pay for, but you can still want some Cadillac features, though you're paying for a Ford.

Love DonorTools, but it has some needs

Overall, I very much like using DonorTools, and I've recommended it to many of my fundraiser friends. There are a few features, however, that could use significant tweaks: - The dashboard screen shows a line graph of funds raised year over year. However, it doesn't allow modification of the graph to sync with an organization's fiscal year. This could be a very helpful snapshot, but right now its basically irrelevant. - The same syncing issue extends to donor profiles, where the graphs (and the smart tags) generally go by calendar year when they really ought to be customized to fiscal year. - DonorTools really needs an app. When I leave meetings, I want to make notes before I forget all the relationships and details I was told about. An app version that focused on note-taking and relationship connections (which are the most important in day-to-day) would be very helpful. - The email sync with MailChimp is problematic. There are plenty of contacts whose email addresses I need to record without having them automatically added to our email list. The only option right now is to mark them as "do not email," which later makes it confusing to know which people opted themselves out of emails and which ones were taken out by me because the contact wasn't at the point yet where we should be sending them emails. - Has DonorTools considered a partnership with Stripe to better manage the donation page? The current donation page is unusable for MCC because there are too many gates and it isn't very mobile-friendly, but I hear Stripe has many of these issues already resolved and that they have quite a few partnerships with smaller databases (Little Green Light comes to mind). Thanks for soliciting feedback. I'm very glad to be using DonorTools, and I believe an even greater number of people would jump on as well if some of these minor issues were addressed!

Pros

Easy to use. Tags are great.

Cons

Can't sync features to fiscal year. Donation page is unusable.

Perfect for Small non profits

We use it every day to track our donor and donations. Great tool.

Pros

After searching different sites to track donors we found Donor Tools to be the best one for us. It has everything we need and for the price, i could not find anything better.

Cons

The reports are not customize like others, it comes out in excel, but once in excel you can customize the entire report and obtain all the information you need.

A pretty solid choice!

Overall this tool was a pretty good solution for organizing and tracking all of our incoming donations. It's not the best on the market, but it's very serviceable.

Pros

I found this software very user friendly. A lot of donation management software can be very convoluted and overwhelming to even just look at. After spending 10 minutes with Donor Tools, I knew how to do pretty much everything I would need to do on a regular basis. It's laid out very easily.

Cons

At least in my experience I found the software itself to be a bit glitchy and buggy. Navigating around the software and trying to create reports, for example, often led to pauses of up to 7 or 8 seconds while the program found its bearings. It seems like things on the coding side are not quite perfect.

Useful, But Room for Improvement

I have been responsible for all entries on Donortools for 3 years now. I think the database is easy to use, however I do have a few suggestions that I think would make everyone's lives easier: 1) Donortools can not automatically connect to Constant Contact: I have to manually upload each new donor's name into Constant Contact in order for our donors to receive any emails from our organization. It takes forever to export the large donor list, sift through the newest names and then re-upload them on Constant Contact! 2) Work Addresses vs. Home Addresses: We have many individuals that we have both a work address and a home address. When doing an export, however, I can not just export "home" addresses. If I enter both the work and home address in the donor's name, and then happen to enter the work address first, I have to manually correct it once it exports on Excel so that only the home address columns show up. If I write the home address first, but also entered the "Company Name" they work for, that ends up exporting too. If I don't catch it, the Corporate Name will attach to their home address. When I have thousands of donors, this takes hours. Sometimes, I have thought to not enter in the work address altogether under the individual, and instead, enter their individual name under the Corporation-this brings up a whole other set of problems. Lets say my organization has a relationship with approx. 20 employees from the company that is entered in Donortools. At first thought, I would enter in all 20 names under the Company's entry, including their email addresses. However, when doing an export, the Excel spreadsheet becomes HUGE and doesn't separate the individual employer with their email-it is all in the same row. Let's say I find one of the employee's home address but didn't remember that I already entered their email in the corporate entry- Donortools does not automatically connect that person already entered with their separate home entry. When doing an export, I end up getting duplicate names because some people are entered under the Company as well as their personal entry...this requires much time to fix this if we have to do a big mailing, i.e. 3) Donortools does not allow me search by Donation $$ Amount: This could be helpful when determining how many donors have given $0 for a few years. 4)Pledges: Yes, I can enter in a pledge, but Donortools does not remind the donor to make their pledge once it's due. It's hard to remember all pledges.

Pros

Easy to enter names. I like the "relationship" tab. I love I can use the "date Range" when searching for certain gifts. I like how my organization's PayPal account is automatically connected to donortools.

Cons

1-Can't automatically connect to Constant Contact 2-Pledges need to be improved, Donortools should remind the donor to make their pledge, or at the very least, let me/the administrators know. 3-There have been double entries in exports of individuals: if we enter their home address in a separate entry and also their information under a company name...Donortools doesn't automatically connect this person together.

The program has allowed us to utilize the basic needs for donor documentation.

The ability to be able to track donors anywhere with online access.

Pros

Provides the opportunity to view a donors history donations over several years. In addition, the opportunity to classify each type of donation.

Cons

We would like to be able to send out an email notification for receiving a donation. In addition, the ability to print labels directly from the program and not having to export to ACCESS.

Suitable Tool For Small Nonprofits

We've been using DonorTools for the past couple of years and it's been an adequate tool for our basic donor tracking, receipting, and reporting needs. We're a small organization that has a robust web-based volunteer mobilization tool that tracks a lot of user data already. We've connected our platform to DonorTools with some custom API that allows us to take advantage of a platform that already exists rather than our own. So far DonorTools is doing what we need it to do, but we also haven't explored the true depths of using it as a donor management tool as a customer relationship tool. We've had a few issues or can see some drawbacks, but because we do our own software development, that is normal for us as we look to integrate 3rd party tools like this. This is the basis for some of our three star ratings. Overall, the package we pay for and the tool overall is just what we need.

Pros

It's cost to value ratio for us. It it well thought out as far as features and has more than enough of them.

Cons

Some user experience work could be done or some additional training modules could be created to help users figure out how to use the tools to the full advantage. We'd also like some greater flexibility to develop custom API to help our website talk to DonorTools to do more things relevant to our needs.

DonorTools

Other than those two small things, I have absolutely loved using DonorTools in my small business and it has truly helped me be organized with all of my information.

Pros

DonorTools is extremely easy to set up and I am able to see the income trends from years prior. I love the fact that you don't have to know how to program in order to be able to develop fund pages. Having the ability to have several users with the ability to limit access is very helpful so that everyone can be on the same page and access the necessary information.

Cons

I wish that we would be able to customize the way emails would come in. I would also be beneficial if there was better usage on a smart device.

Compatibility

Donortools is a fairly easy to understand program with a minimal to moderate level of understanding of programs that consolidate donors and other forms of contacts.

Pros

easily synchronize contact database with many other programs

Cons

Limitations on conducting large-scale customizations of contacts on file.

We used this product for a short period of time, however it is most usefully and easy to utilize.

Pros

This was an effective way to monitor and maintain our donor information for our scholarships, until we were able to install a new software system.

Cons

It would be nice if this product also tied into the other aspect of scholarship awarding, however the donor portion along with the raising of funds is great to use!!

We use DonorTools for Donor Management in a small nonprofit.

Pros

Ease of use, and modern interface are DonorTools strong points. I like the way it is so easy to setup the software; seeing income trends in the Dashboard compared to previous years is very helpful. It is really nice to have all our donor information in one place. I love that it syncs with MailChimp and so we have one organizational list of donors. Even though we are a small organization with 3 active workers accessing the information, it is so helpful that all the information is online and accessible to all of us independently and simultaneously from any computer no matter where we are in the world. Exporting lists are easy and very useful. For our small organization, the ability to setup fund pages for many different projects with boiler plate text is invaluable. There is no programming required and yet we have an easily accessible donor giving website with multiple fund pages available for our donors. It is really so simple that almost anyone can manage and maintain the donor management functions of your organization. Most of our donors probably do not often need or use the donor access functions, but it is very nice to be able to have these features without paying extra for the feature.

Cons

Within the reporting functions (which are really quite good for the provide types of reports), there is a significant omission. It would be really helpful to print fund reports showing totals for a specific time period for all the funds. That just isn't possible with the current software. You can print a report on any ONE specific fund, but printing out fund totals for a year on funds is not supported. Either you must export data to spreadsheets and then produce the reports, or you can prepare reports on each fund and manually create summary reports. We have asked for additional fund reporting functionality, but as of yet this is not possible. DonorTools overall is an excellent program, but this one weakness in fund reporting is problematic. Our wish list would also include automated reporting to an email account, but that might be a bit much to hope for at this price point.

Donor Tools BEST and Most Needed for NonProfit Organizations

Donor Tools is something I looked for YEARS something simple to use that was online and cloud based. It's more than affordable and the support is beyond anything we could have imagined. I have recommended Donor Tools to so many and so has my son who builds websites. Every nonprofit should get rid of their old software and move over to Donor Tools. It took only a short time to get us moved over, 3 years worth, but when tax time comes, the EASE saves us hours and hours. There are too many features to expound upon, but a few are: allowing donors to update phone numbers and addresses, while also having a print off for the end of the year taxes. Also allowing multiple users, different permissions. Having custom thank you notes, with prior donation amounts included. Tags to group donors. Honestly, the benefits are endless and I have yet to find one drawback to Donor Tools.

Pros

As I said, there are too many features to expound upon, but a few are: 1. Allowing individual donors to update their own phone numbers and addresses, while also allowing them to see all their donations, then at the end of the year, have something they can print off for their taxes. 2. Also allowing multiple users within your organization, along with different levels of permissions. 3. Having custom thank you notes, with prior donation amounts included. 4. Tags to group donors you need to list on your nonprofit taxes. 5. Honestly, the benefits are endless and I have yet to find one drawback to Donor Tools.

Cons

NONE, not one.

A hermit shell for our organization

We are a small nonprofit protecting farmland in Maryland. We went from excel sheets all over the place to Donor Tools and that has been the right choice. There were lots more expensive and complicated donor management tools out there but I like how donor tools has lots of useful features but is very intuitive for a non-technical minded staff to manage. I've had to train a new staffer on it and it is been pretty easy. I see Donor Tools as a good fit for us while we begin better management of our data, its possible we will need a more powerful solution as we grow (hence the hermit shell in the title) but I'm very satisfied now. I really wish I had gone with Mail Chimp way back when because not having that integration is my main gripe, but not Donor Tools' fault (we are on Constant Contact). I have gotten an offshoot organization on Donor Tools because of its ease of use. Best Parts: Smart tags are magic! I didn't have to build anything- just add data Thank You notes and tracking of correspondence Reasonably priced for the features offered Searching for lapsed donors is a breeze tracking pledges The donor overview page is very helpful- I like the graph Cons -Sometimes the PayPal integration is spotty, leaving out information (like a last name or street address) -Learning markdown was tough at first but I got the hang of it. Room for improvement -I'd appreciate more ways to graph - break out the dashboard graph with other options- maybe a reflection of the number of new donors or number of lapsed donors year-to-date? -When writing thank you notes, you should be able to name each letter there - viewing them by date is not as helpful as being able to look into that drop down and find the letter I marked "Spring Board Member thanks" or "fall fundraiser" etc. I end up having to save templates in word and cut and paste. -The printouts of donor records are very small print and gray- please make them more legible.

Pros

Smart tags, thank you notes and most of all ease of use generally.

Cons

I wish it had integration with Constant Contact. Pay Pal integration is sometimes spotty, leaving out data on donors.

Gets the Job Done

When I first arrived at this organization as the new CEO, I found that we were using DonorTools, an online-based CRM that I had never heard of before. Belonging to a national federation, I made inquiries, and found that no one else had reported using it either. Having used a few others, and being more comfortable with them, I figured that at the end of FY, I'd just switch, however, we weren't really in a financial position to do so. A year later, and I realized that I had come to love the program for its simplicity, user-friendliness, and above all, cost. The value of the program itself is quite significant, especially compared to other CRM companies that many would consider 'standard'. DonorTools gets the job done, and now that I'm comfortable with it and more familiar with it's structure and capacity for information, I can't imagine using any other product, now or in the future. We have many hands in the system, including me, our RD department and Finance/Administration. The learning curve is simple, which means on-boarding new staff takes much less time than with other systems. The Dashboard and user ticker displays are incredibly helpful to let me take a 30,000 foot view often, without having to get tangled up in flags, and clicking through seven different sections to get an overview. We were a $950,000 organization in 2014, small in comparison to most in my field, but this year will come in just under $1.9million. DonorTools has kept up with us through this remarkable growth, and really demonstrated why it's important in the non-profit field to review practices often, and keep your mind open to other systems.

Pros

Simplicity, Structure, Online Platform

Cons

I wish there was a little bit more flexibility in some functions.

A good starter database for those moving from spreadsheets to CRM

Pros

Integrated thank you letters and emails, all thank yous saved in profiles for easy finding later, ease of use, paypal integration and automatic thank yous, customer service, smart tags are a lifesaver. I'm going to mention ease of use again - very simple to learn and querying is a breeze.

Cons

Thank you letters are saved by date not name, this is the biggest problem - I've asked for this fix before. It seems easy to let me make templates of letters saved by name instead of remembering when I last used the one I'm looking for - example "spring thank you" "board member thanks" "foundation thanks". I've been told I can put the name of the template in the top of the letter but then I'll have to delete it each time - not a solution. Also, the print on printouts is small and grey for no reason - make it larger and more legible. I wish email thank yous allowed more customization like a logo, photos or custom send from address- perhaps even let me upload an email letterhead like I can in letters? I wish there was constant contact integration but I also wish I had switched to Mail Chimp for the sake of the integration of other tools I use so that may be just my problem.

Great as Far as It Goes

For the donation tracking needs of a public library, Donor Tools is an excellent START. The interface is not difficult to use once you've figured out its ins and outs, and it does provide a valuable way to ensure that the same information is recorded and saved about every donor. I also find it useful for tracking whether or not I've sent thank you letters. I find it not at all useful for writing the letters themselves; I do that the old-fashioned way in Word because it actually takes LESS time than wrangling with the templates. What I find truly lacking in Donor Tools is the fact that it doesn't give me any way to record what happens to the donation AFTER we receive it. Does it get spent? What do we spend it on? The progress of donation money through our accounting process is very complicated, and it does frustrate me that Donor Tools doesn't give me any way to track it. This means that I still have a lot of duplication of effort in recording incoming donations. Donor Tools was particularly useful for the big fundraising campaign we initially purchased it for. It is less useful for the day to day small donations.

Pros

It is simple to use (after a little practice), and as a database of donors it does very well.

Cons

Three-fourths of the information I need to record and use has no place in it.

Great CRM for non-profits!

Donor Tools has been a great fit for our small non-profit. It integrates beautifully with Mailchimp and PayPal, and makes it easy to see how our fundraising efforts compare with past years. Thank you Donor Tools!

Pros

Our team likes that DT connects with MailChimp and PayPal, offers graphics on the Dashboard showing fundraising levels, and is a good price for the quality of the product. We also like being able to have different log-ins and a fundraiser page. The customer service has also been really fast and helpful.

Cons

1. Figuring out the smart tags and running reports has been a challenge. We've been using our own tags, and those help, but it would be great if we could more easily tag large groups. 2. Creating a fundraiser page was challenging - we had to design it on our website in HTML and then move it over, and it still needed a lot of tweaking. But it was great that it connected so easily with PayPal, and we could use a graphic tracker to show the fundraising level. 3. It would be great if we could send group emails, and also attachments with emails since we send our acknowledgement letters electronically. 4. It would also be great to have an app to enter and change data using a smartphone. 5. Perhaps all of the above are things we haven't figured out yet, and the product may actually do them. Although DT is not as intuitive as I would like one year in, but it's a vast improvement over using spreadsheets!

Good but use with caution.

We are a small conservation land trust with a membership under 1000. We have been using DonorTools for about five years now and, for the most part, it has served us well. However, there are some potential problems that can get you if you are not careful, and one unaccountably cheap lack of resources. Extracting mailing lists from the data has to be done with a great deal of caution. Extracting a particular set of donors is done with Smart Tags. These amount to logical combinations of rules for selecting donors using functions such as "last donation after {date}" and can be ANDed and ORed. However, there is no way to group the functions such as parentheses to make sure the ANDs and ORs are delimited the way you want them. In fact, according to customer support, using both ANDs and ORs in a Smart Tag definition will give unpredictable results. I can vouch for that. The work-around is to use multiple Smart Tags, one for every parenthetical expression, and then reference those Smart Tags in the main one. So one extraction can take two, three or even four Smart Tags. At the payment level that fits us, we are limited to 10 Smart Tags. It is nice to save extractions from year to year and just change the dates. But there are not enough Smart Tags for all of the mailing lists so we need to delete Tags and re-enter them as needed. The Smart Tag editor is not very user friendly, and does not catch typing errors. (The last extraction I tried resulted in only half as many donors as I was expecting. I checked the typing and everything appeared to be correct I but got the same result. Only by deleting the Smart Tag and rewriting it from scratch did I get the correct result. This is not the first time.) Ten is just not enough Smart Tags. The solution, of course, is to pay twice as much for a full subscription which we don't need for any other reason. This coercion to pay more for a resource that doesn't cost anything seems cheap. I looked around for a different vendor because of this but the effort to move was just too great. Customer support has always been very helpful. They were able to tell me how to do things I could not figure out on my own. There are hidden features. However, they seemed quite aware that my solution was to pay more and were unsympathetic.

Incredible value for non-profits!

I'm able to use the Microsoft Office software for a low price to do my typing, create presentations and spreadsheets, and pretty much all daily work on my computers. My co-workers enjoy the same.

Pros

As a program director for a small (8 person) non-profit, I'm always looking for ways to provide the most value for my team at the lowest price. Since some of our staff work on PCs and others use Macs, the TechSoup deals are awesome because we're able to customize the programs we choose to meet our needs. I found the sign-up process to be simple and we were quickly able to get our software installed. TechSoup is truly wonderful for non-profits!

Cons

I had some initial confusion about the steps of setting up and validating a Microsoft Volume Licensing account. But now that I've figured it out, I'm able to help my co-workers when they need to install software.

Great Product

We were using something that cost a lot more and had many more "features". It turns out that we just needed something that worked better and was easier to use. DonorTools is a great product.

Pros

Easy to use, intuitive, api

Cons

There isn't a way to get a webhook on events, so I can't get two way syncing with an outside service. Certain things that other software does offer out of the box isn't present here. No bulk entry, no end of year letter generation, no easy way to customize the look and feel of emails coming from DT. It would be nice to have some other payment processors integration as well (Stripe). Also, two way data syncing by using webhooks would be amazing. Right now I have to query DT every time I do anything with donations or donors and many times I have problems because someone merged a donor, but my software doesn't know about it (there is no field for 'previous_persona_ids'

Began using Donor Tools soon after it was created; gave suggestions which were accepted and acted on

Donor Tools made it possible for us, a small but vigorous nonprofit religious community, to handle our donations and donor information in an efficient and helpful way--at a most reasonable cost. The developer had experience with nonprofits, but I was able to give input early on about language and how we were using it which benefited the application--and other users. Frankly, we were not able to afford the "big boys" and Donor Tools gives us a lot for our money. We really appreciate it!

Pros

Very responsive to my needs. Easy to search database, to input info, to retrieve info, to write thank you letters and to print reports.

Cons

There's only one thing I want that it doesn't *yet* have: a donation memo that shows on reports but NOT on tax receipts. I have requested this feature, and since DT creator has been responsive in the past, I expect it will be added at some point.

Good service, but needs more

DonorTools is a great service for the price. Very easy to use. However I would like to see the mass ability to change lots of records at once. The integration of services like stripe and moonclerk. The ability to set up recurring donations in donor tools that will automatically populate without imports or manual entries. The service is great for the money, but I think it could get better with more automation possibilities. Perhaps build a donation capture page much like moonclerk that uses stripe and then it automatically updates records in DT. That would be great, plus it would likely bring in more new users. Thanks for listening.

Pros

Easy to use and cheap.

Cons

I wish it had more automation features. Needs a better donation capture page. Please add the ability to change mass records.

Hard to beat the workability, at the price.

DonorTools has been singularly beneficial for our team. It's interface & usability are easily supported & shareable across multiple computers. And the ability to use the program online makes it supported on the go. For the price, it is unbeatable. My only desire would be to get an app version, for easier searching on a smart phone.

Pros

Very affordable. Intuitive. Able to store a lot of donor/contact info, for a very low cost. Easy to search if you set up the categories well, so they align with ongoing projects.

Cons

Unable to apply a Moves Management process to a donor contact, aside from in notes category. Not easily used on a smart phone. No app that goes along with the program.

Great software for a small nonprofit!

As the sole development person for a small startup nonprofit, I needed to move my donor records out of spreadsheets and into something more functional, but for a low price. Luckily Donor Tools turned out to be a great option for us - it has all of the reporting and record keeping functionality we need, and we're able to keep track of donor communications much more efficiently now. We're especially grateful that we can have multiple user accounts even at the lowest pricing tier, which allows the Executive Director and me to stay on the same page.

Pros

Low price point allows us to have donor software when otherwise we would probably be stuck with a disorganized mess of spreadsheets. Export/Import features are great, and I love the syncing with MailChimp to keep our mailing list organized. Integration with Paypal and auto-sending of receipts helps us a lot, too.

Cons

I'm happy with everything. The only issue I've ever had is that a few times I've made errors when importing files, and it seems to freeze up the import tool, not allowing the import to be cancelled or completed. I usually just take a break and come back to it later, and then it works fine, but an option to cancel/clear an import might be helpful.

Loyal customer

My director had set us up with Donor Tools before I joined the organization. When I stepped into the role of Director of Development, I found it invaluable to my work. It helps us stay organized and eases all of our transactions. I work in a different state than my accountant who inputs all of the donations. I am able to easily make notes and track donor interactions all in the same platform. I'm so grateful for the program. Now as the US Country Director, I value it even more since I need to be fully aware of everything within the organization. This is an aspect I never have to worry about and that's a great value!

Pros

Organization, structure and ease of use.

Cons

Wish there was a way to keep track of leads before they become donors and then integrate them over if they do begin supporting our organization.

8 years with DonorTools

I was so happy to discover DonorTools in 2009. We had an ok but pretty limited software, one we had to install on our computers. DonorTools freed us up to use on more than one computer--at home or away, since it's online. Today that sounds pretty backward, but it was a big deal to us and still is. I like the great search function--easy to find anyone even if I only know a partial name. Reports are nicely laid out and give the information I need. I can print letters and envelopes directly from DonorTools, as well as tax receipts, and DonorTools keeps a copy of my letters in my account. DonorTools staff have always been very helpful and especially responsive to suggestions to make it more user-friendly. One thing I would like to see (and I haven't yet talked to them about this) is the ability to export ONLY mailing address information. That would make my work easier. Another feature I'd like is a Memo or Note on the donation form which would NOT show on the tax receipt but would show only on the report. I am very happy with DonorTools--it has made a huge difference in our non-profit's ability to do development work!

Pros

Ease and comprehensiveness of use.

Cons

Not a 'what i like least'--just a couple of suggestions for further improvement which were noted in my review.

A great value

Our church has been using Donor Tools for a little over three years now. It's been a big improvement over an archaic program we had been using for many years before. Donor Tools is a tidy and reliable way to track donations to our general fund as well as several dedicated funds. It's easy to use and provides us with all the information we need. We process contributions from over 2,000 donors per year, and Donor Tools' pricing is excellent for what we receive. Two small downsides: 1) technical support is by email only (to be fair, we have rarely needed to contact them), and 2) report generation is slow, and customizing reports (e.g., year-end giving statements) is difficult without exporting them and manipulating them outside of Donor Tools.

Pros

Pricing and ease of use

Cons

Inability to customize reports (year-end statements in particular)

Amazing Software & Support at a terrific price point!

We absolutely LOVE Donor Tools. The ease of use and customer support is second to none! We are a small non-profit and I really appreciate the customizable features - especially the ability to track relationships (which is so very important in fundraising). All of our emails to customer service receive very quick responses too. I especially appreciate the cloud base software - where I can easily look up donor information on my smartphone when I'm at an event - or simply run into a donor on the street. Thanks for a wonderful product!

Pros

See notes.

Cons

Sometimes it can be tricky to figure out the exact logic of the smart tags. It takes a while for a user to get used to the interface. Also, it would be great to add comparative reports.

Incredibly simple, cost-effective tool for managing our donors.

The benefits to me have been making it easier to manage my organizations relationships with its donor base.

Pros

I love the simplicity of Donor Tools. So many donor management packages (or CRM packages in general) are so feature-rich that their complexity makes them problematic, and not cost-effective, for smaller organizations like ours.

Cons

Often a piece of software's greatest strength also informs its weaknesses. In this case, there are a few social integrations I would love to see happen. Also, cleaning up data is a huge task, even with a relatively small database. We have, on occasion, needed to clean up records, merge duplicates, etc. A slightly beefier data scrubbing toolkit would be nice. Finally, handling households, couples, families...these are things that are important to us, and we do it with tagging. That's okay, but it feels like something that should be a central feature to a software package designed to manage information about people.

Cathryn McFall, Donor Manager

I have two wishes: 1) That I could add PDF files to donors 2) That I could do Pledges with no expiration date. We are no longer asking for $____ for ____amount of time. We are just asking for $_____monthly, or $_____ quarterly, $_______bi-annual, or $______annual , etc. ---with no set ending dates.

Pros

The ability to dig out data my multiple classifications--source, fund, memo, etc.

Cons

That I cannot add PDF files to our donors (such as letters & e-mails from donors, and obituaries) Also wish I could set up a pledge with no expiration date and no total Dollars. We are no longer asking for $_______ per month for _____ years. Just $_________ per month!

Donor Tools- The best value in non-profit management software

I have received very expensive offers from other data management services, but I feel no need to switch and pay so much extra, when Donor Tools does exactly what I need it to do for the most affordable price out there. I am able to so easily generate thank you notes to our donors and keep track of who has donated and then run donor reports and mailing lists from this software for our yearly newsletter. My student interns also pick up on the program very quickly and are able to help me complete these tasks. Once I realized all the functions available within Donor Tools, I was happy to pay the small monthly fee to use it. THank you!

Pros

I love being able to generate and print thank you letters, customizing them for each person and printing them on the spot. Also like being able to tag people with whatever I choose.

Cons

I wish I could "title" the thank yous in the drop-down menu, so I know which one I want to use when I write a particular letter. Also not sure why USA shows up in some addresses but not others and how to delete it...

My favorite donor management tool

Pros

I've been using this software since just after it was released. I love that it's easy to use and to train others to use. I also love how surprisingly robust it is: it allows for a wide amount of information to be saved for each donor/donation, which comes in handy at tax time or when tracking down discrepancies in record keeping . It also provides a simple online giving option for people, and it allows users who would to do so to create an account and view their own donations. It's integrated with PayPal. It allows exporting information as a spreadsheet file (CSV). Overall it does everything I want.

Cons

I wish the cheaper plans allowed more than one fund and source. Our organization is small, and we can't afford the monthly plans that allow more control over these areas. The cheaper plan works fine for us, though.

DVs Review of Donor stoolsm

Overall, we enjoy donor tools for the purpose we use it for. Weve tried other donation databases and find they are much too complex. We appreciate the ease of donor tools and are able to meet the needs for tracking our campaigns.

Pros

This software is extremely easy to use. All the fields are self-explanatory and could be self taught if no training is given.

Cons

It would be. Ive if there were more shortcuts to the system. Certain things require a lot of manual work (I.e. have to scroll through all entries to find a donation).

Intuitive and Easy to Use! (Just wish reporting was better)

This is so easy to use and so clear. Everything is easy to access and easy to see and easy to enter. It is super useful and works like a dream. The only thing it needs is some better reports. To get any sort of report you have to export CSV or Excel files and it's awkward and time consuming.

Pros

The style is beautiful and it's functional and easy to use.

Cons

The reporting needs updated to include printable fund reports and a report giving totals for each fund.

Good Program for Single-Person NPO Shop

As a small nonprofit without a big budget, Donor Tools has served us well. We don't have the complex fundraising needs that larger organizations might have - we just need to track to donations accurately and be able to thank our donors in a timely manner. Donor Tools helps our Development Director do just that and not have to take expensive classes to learn how to use the system. Very user friendly and easy to use.

Pros

Easy to use. Gets the job done with less fuss and low cost.

Cons

Formatting the documents & reports can be a bit challenging.

Sattisfied, although UX could be better

In our organization we use the tool daily. What I like the most is that I can easily access donors' profiles; I can see history of their donations in a well-organized way. On the other hand, I would appreciate if I could add attachments to donations (e.g. photo of thank-you card) and also the system of smart tags sometimes seems confusing (especially when I need to get to specific group of donors according to multiple criteria). All at all, DonorTools is good tool which needs continuous updates & improvements (as all the other tools of this kind do).

Pros

- donor history - donations summary in dashboard - multiple funds you can use at the same time

Cons

- smart tags system is quite complicated - no option to add any files to donations/donors/profiles

Very happy with Donor Tools

DBG is a small nonprofit. Donor Tools has provided the perfect platform for our growing donor base. As we have grown, we've discovered additional tools that allow us to track valuable donor information as we strengthen our fundraising processes. The usability is great for all users.

Pros

It's simple to use. It has the capability to capture any and all details about donors that one might need.

Cons

I'm not sure the thank you notes quite hit the mark, but I've only heard from another team member that they didn't quite work for us.

Been with donor tools for over a decade and the software helped us to maintain a growing database.

I shared that in the review.

Pros

The various reporting features and ease of tags and smart tags are stellar. The ability to quickly merge profiles is helpful and I absolutely LOVE the ability to email a donor directly from the platform and not have to use an outside CRM or email provider to do so.

Cons

I wish there were more options front facing for the donor to manage their own profile and credit cards and the like.

Donor tools review

Donor tools is a fantastic tool for the rescue. The organization & the amount of options makes correspondence & archival of donations & donor records extremely easy. The system is costly, but there are not many systems able to handle the vast amount of options needed for our rescue in relation to donations in multiple forms. The only functions I would improve are merely fine tuning the ease at which you move from one correspondence to the next. In addition, the program's ability to recognize similar donors & merge more automatically & adjust. I would love a program that adjusts the screen & holds your place to the next unfinished job. In addition, it would be fantastic to have options to improve the design such as font, logo, a photo, PDF, or video insertion, as well as areas to insert links to fb or instagram.

Pros

Organization Variety of options for sorting, locating, logging, etc. Solid program for a rescue in need of multiple options, arranging, archiving, tracking. It is extremely useful!

Cons

Lack of design options & personalization for correspondence. Would love a better tracking for completed responses/printed while viewing the screen--logs a "to do" & "completed" job more accurately & moves down screen.

Non-Profit Use of Donor Tools

This software is very easy to use and accessible via the web. The ability to export data to Excel or a csv file is easy. You can also add as many funds, sources and type of payments that you may need. The ability to archive older data but still access via reports and totals is ideal.

Pros

Multi-user functions; tracking of changes by user;

Cons

Totals of donations by donor or grouping may not appear correctly in reports and exports if refunds are made.

Donor Tools could use a facel-ift

We love Donor Tools but feel it could use a face-lift to bring the technology up to snuff - especially the technology that allows Donor Tools to communicate with other software. Right now there are many inconsistencies in the communication.

Pros

Web based

Cons

Inconsistencies in communicating data to other programs

Could use more features

It's a great piece of software for very general donor management. However it could use some more data analysis tools, and donor analysis tools.

Pros

I like seeing the graphical display when I first login, of the donations so far this year, and lifetime donations.

Cons

Limited functionality compared to many other donor management and donation analysis softwares. It could use salesforce integration for instance.

Easy Program for Dummies

I am a self-taught bookkeeper. The Donor Tools platform has made record keeping very easy. It is very user friendly and coordinates extremely well with my Quick Books program. I would be lost without Donor Tools.

Pros

Ease of use; functionality

Cons

Don't have any particular cons. Any limitations are self-imposed.

I have had a very positive experience with Donor Tools over the past few years

Pros

I do like the easy to use, navigate software while using the system. I also like that you are able to clearly look at donations and can organize by month and year to get a clear picture of growth.

Cons

I dislike the way that one has to go about reaching out for support / technical or otherwise. I wish they perhaps had live chat options.

Susan Nelson, Executive Director

Overall ease of use is good however there are limitations to the program that when we want to find out how to overcome those, there isn't a customer service representative that we can call for help. Often, we are required to try and figure out by the manual what to do which takes a large amount of time. It would be nice to have an 800 number to call to get quick answers when needed.

Pros

ease of use

Cons

no one to talk to when we have a question

Excellent choice for a small low-cost charity

We've been using Donor Tools for over 2 years now and highly recommend it. We are a small non-profit organization, although we have about 1300 contacts in our database. Donor Tools is easy to use and is just right for what we need. We also use the connectors with PayPal and with MailChimp. The nicely integrated 3-vendor solution for donor tools, payment, and email newsletters, works great. Very happy with it. (The feature set is simple and not as powerful as more expensive solutions. But that's okay, it's an appropriate tradeoff for us and I'd assume other smaller non-profits.)

Pros

Easy to use, decent feature set, good integration with PayPal and Mailchimp. Works great for what we need.

Cons

Feature set is rather limited compared to more powerful solutions, but then they are also much more expensive.

We found Donor Tools to be very useful for keeping informed about fundraising for our organization.

Having donor history available 24/7!

Pros

I love the donor summary & being able to sign in anywhere at any time to see the donation history of someone I might be talking toon the phone or about to call.

Cons

the software is not very generous about bringing up possible donors if you get the name spelled slightly differently.

Great software, easy to use, very intuitive.

Pros

DonorTools is intuitive, easy to use and affordable. They have a great support team and they respond very quickly whenever we need help.

Cons

The API isn't great. I integrate a couple pieces of software with the API and sometimes I have to do a lot of work to get exactly what I need from the API.

Donor Tools has been a good resource for tracking donations for our missionaries and projects.

Pros

That it immediately syncs with our Paypal account and emails a response to the donor. It is very user friendly.

Cons

I wish there was the ability to give (limit) users access to only their individual donations without having to give them access to everyone else's donations as well.

Amazing Program

We have been using Donor Tools for about four years now and it is great! All the features are easy to learn and when you need tech support they are very quick to respond.

Pros

Easy to learn

Cons

It would be nice when you export data you could customize the fields in the excel file because there is a little to much info for the simple reports I do.