Being cloud-based, Little Green Light allows several board members to access, add, and alter donor information. This turns our database into a collaborative crowd-sourced information bank we can all use wherever we may be even on our mobile phones. The sort and search features in the reporting system are as powerful as any I've seen in far more expensive software. We moved to Little Green Light from a Filemaker Pro database maintained by a single board member. She is still our key administrator, but now she feels appreciated and supported instead of isolated. The improvement in morale alone is worth the price of admission!

Powerful and versatile, Little Green Light has all the features I was accustomed to from software at other nonprofits I've worked at including eTapestry and Bloomerang but at a fraction of the cost. The interface is highly intuitive, and LGL has shown a real commitment to continual improvement over time. I truly enjoyed the data migration process from our old system to LGL in part because we worked one-on-one with a Little Green Light consultant (Carrie Grote) who treated us as if we were her only client. If you're a startup nonprofit wondering whether or not to take the leap into state-of-the-art donor management, I strongly recommend Little Green Light. It may easily be the only software you'll ever need to track and nourish donor relationships.

There are some minor tweaks that might improve Little Green Light. For example, when a donor wishes for a gift to be anonymous, there's a checkbox you need to hunt for. But honestly, the folks at LGL are way ahead of me when it comes to finding and fixing flaws. I bet the next LGL upgrade will be light years better than anything I can even imagine.

Overall, my experience with Little Green Light has been enormously positive and I would highly recommend this product!

Little Green Light is so easy to use and relatively inexpensive. Our small non-profit has been using LGL for almost 5 years, and we continue to be impressed by how adaptable and customizable it is, and the excellence of the customer service!

I think there could be improvements with the management of recurring donors - specifically, I'd like to be able to set up an automatic monthly gift entry so I don't have to enter the same info every month. Because we are a watershed council, I would also love if there was a way to connect LGL to mapping software so we can have a way to visualize where our participating and non-participating landowners are located.

Customer service is friendly but I don't like that I can't reach them immediately.

This is great if you are a smaller organization--maybe no more than 2,000-3,000 donors. It features basic gift entry, pledges, contact info, etc. If you are a nonprofit just getting started, this could work for you.

Not intuitive. Hard to learn. Tutorials are complicated. I've been working with it for 4 years now and still not sure how to run reports. Not robust nor intuitive. Our organization has moved past the effectiveness threshold of this product, and we are looking at others.

Totally satisfied with LGL. It does everything I need to manage this 501(c)(3) Public Charity LGL also has many other features that I do not use, but may be valuable to others.

I like LGL because it was relatively easy to set up (all those many years ago) with just a bit of help from the Customer Service team. Today, it is an invaluable tool for me. Can't imagine life without it.

Quite frankly, I cannot think of one single deficiency with LGL.

Coming from Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge ridiculously expensive and overly complicated system, every single thing about LGL is a breath of fresh air and a joy to use. From working with our consultant on data migration to every day use, it's intuitive and simple to use. I'm still learning new and impressive functionality and am pleasantly surprised every time. Updates that are rolled out actually fix issues or improve functionality ( they listen to their users!). Customer service is email only, but usually quick and very helpful. The Facebook community is a nice addition as well - sometimes I can get answers there without needing to contact support. I only wish we had made the switch sooner - would have saved our organization tens of thousands of dollars and myself so much frustration.

1. The price absolutely cannot be beat, especially compared to Blackbaud. 2. It's just so simple to use. Intuitive, quick, and easy, yet still packed full of useful features.

Initially, what I liked least was that there was no live phone or chat support; email only. But, the longer I use LGL and see how little I need support, the more I don't mind it at all. Plus email support usually replies quickly and has the solution I need.

I'm able to clean up a database that had become a hideous mess in GiftWorks Cloud. I'm able to identify and easily clear duplicate donors and duplicate gifts. (I've removed about 300 duplicate constituents so far … roughly 8% of my total database … about 100 more to go)

It's super easy to learn and use. Everything you need is built in -- the dashboard that keeps you focused on what you have (or haven't) recently raised against your goals, the basic reports (which can be customized). Donor record entry includes US mailing address verification -- yay! LGL is also clear about what it does and doesn't do. So it doesn't claim to link directly with a peer-to-peer product -- and it's also not messing up my database by uploading a duplicate entry for every single person who registers in the peer-to-peer product (which has a different default name protocol).

So far, I don't have any complaints. I'm already using features I didn't expect to (emailing directly through the system, which allows the Contact to be automatically logged in the Constituent record). I suppose LGL could be prettier. But given the choice between pretty and functional, I'll take a product that works any day.

My overall experience has been pretty seamless. Everyone is helpful and friendly when you contact them and it is very reasonable priced!

I implemented LGL at my previous school and inherited it at my current one after having recommended it to my predecessor. We have about 10,000 living alumni and it's the perfect software for small to mid size shops. The reporting isn't always as sophisticated as some others I've used in higher ed shops but it get the job done. And it has more features than one realizes so like any software you need to make sure you're utilizing them all as best you can. I used a recommended consultant when setting the system up and she was VERY helpful and talking through the implementation specific to my organization. I highly recommend investing in that service to get you off on the right foot.

Reporting isn't my strong suit, so I'm not sure if it's me or LGL but either way I think that area has the room for continued improvement, which is the nature of reporting anyways. And it still gets the job done right now. It's not bad at all!

We used to have our constituents' contact info, contact report info, and giving data scattered across a motley collection of manually- and inconsistently-updated platforms, and none of it was integrated with Constant Contact or our email. It was extremely difficult to search for constituents or financial gifts or tag them in any useful way. All truly meaningful information was stored in our team members' heads, where it could be lost track of, and this was having a negative impact on our fundraising. LGL has enabled us to pull our many disparate forms of data into a single platform, unify them within each constituent's record, start sending out automated acknowledgements for donations, stay in close communication with each other about each constituent, and overall just improve our ability to provide a high-quality experience for our constituents when we reach out to them.

Its customizability; its absolutely top-notch and responsive customer support; its rich metadata and extensive set of features; its powerful import engine; its flexible report functionality; its integration with automated acknowledgement emails, Constant Contact, and webforms / online payment processing; its great support for task management and communication between team members; and the fact that we can download a comprehensive export of all its data at any time, which makes keeping backups easy.

Navigating through all of its complexity can sometimes be confusing and intimidating at first, until you learn its workflows; search is fragmented—you can't just search and get all records that might match: you have to search in one place to find constituents and search in a second place to find financial data and search in a third place to find activity data; the inability to hide UI elements for features we're not making use of; not quite as much roles & permissions flexibility as we'd like.

We are now able to effectively track: -Donor history -Donor relationships -Send auto-acknowledgments The entire dev team can now work from the same set of data--increasing our transparency with each and improve succession of responsibilities.

Has all needed functionality--especially relationship creation--for an absolutely affordable price.

Layout, aesthetics. In particular, the categories section of the constituent profile record is difficult on the eyes.

It's been great. Used it with two organizations now and it's fairly intuitive and well documented.

The price was the first great thing, but ease of use is another. You can easily teach yourself to be good at this platform vs more complicated ones.

I have no complaints with it. The box says it needs more characters...

This software has helped us create a resource development program that is trusted by our board members and staff.

The online data base is great as it allows me to log in from my home or anywhere and review our constituency.

Exporting thank you letters and incorporating email templates have been a challenge.

Little Green Light has everything you need, nothing you don't, and is an excellent value for nonprofits on tight budgets.

Little Green Light offers many of the same features as much more expensive donation management software/CRMs, at a much more affordable price. Small to mid-sized nonprofits often don't have the budget to invest tons of $$ in the big-name donor CRMs, and I've found that many organizations don't need all those bells and whistles anyway. It tracks donors and donations, there's are solid events and grants management functions, you can create custom forms for event registration, donations, and other purposes (honestly almost worth the price right there), it integrates with several other common tools used by nonprofit communications & development staff (i.e. Constant Contact, last time I checked)... what more do you need? LGL was designed with nonprofits in mind (unlike some other tools out there that were originally designed for sales and only later shoehorned into a nonprofit tool) and this makes a difference. The terminology/field labels, the customer service folks, everything - all nonprofit-centric.We switched to LGL from a more expensive, but in my opinion less functional, donor CRM, and the process was pretty smooth. The worst part was cleaning up the data from our old system before loading it into LGL because our old system had not been well-maintained. The LGL customer service folks were helpful and responsive whenever I had questions, and overall it was a pretty painless experience, aside from the tedious work of cleaning up my old data!

I don't really remember any major cons. When I last used it, it had a few integrations with the most common software/tools, and probably has more now. It may not have quite as many integrations as some of the more expensive CRMs, so if those are very important to you, it's just something to check before you buy. You can probably use Zapier to set up any integrations that aren't built in.Another small thing to know - not really a con, because I think this is totally fair for the price, but just good to be aware of - is that their built-in email tool is more suited to sending event reminders, donor thank-yous, etc. than to email marketing. That isn't its purpose. In other words, don't expect to use the email function for your e-newsletter. You can integrate with Constant Contact or MailChimp (probably others by now) for that.

I've been a fundraiser for 25+ years, primarily with very large organizations (raising $100 million+ annually), and had an opportunity to use a range of nonprofit databases, including home-grown systems and some of the best-known products from large companies. I've been through database conversions on large scales (50+ users, 25,000+ records), and advocated for and managed budgets as a member of the management team. I chose Little Green Light (LGL) after researching options for a small nonprofit where I'm the executive director. (5000 records, 3-5 database users, $350k annual budget)

As a fundraiser, it's intuitive and has all the features I appreciate and need to support my moves management work. As the database administrator, chief data entry staffer, list- and report-creator and website integration specialist, it's intuitive with great customer service and on-line resources to allow me to meet our organization's needs. Given the opportunity, I would have selected LGL for my previous organizations. It's got all of the meaningful and useful features to support fundraising and data management needs without requiring us to pay for bells and whistles that sound great to upper management (and those who aren't on the front-lines for fundraising) but keep the majority of users from being able to take full advantage of the system.

There are a lot of great integrations, but since we don't use the bulk emailing products supported by LGL, we've had to try to create our own. We LOVE the ability to create web forms that integrate with LGL and the ease of adding them to our website, although sometimes figuring out exactly how to map the data is beyond us without a fair amount of trial and error. On the other hand, these are tasks I never would have attempted with other systems and that we're able to do without paying thousands of dollars to consultants - which is vital with our very limited budget. We've got access to big-budget possibilities and investing the time and energy generally makes them possible for us. That said, without experience working with bigger systems in the past, I'm not sure I would understand the opportunities or be able to figure out how to tap into them.

We track our donors in it, including all contacts and correspondence.

We're a modest organization and some of the fundraising software is incredibly expensive, up to 5-10 times LGL's modest $400 yearly cost. LGL is extremely reasonable, but also very powerful. It lets us record all the key data about our donors and prospects. It lets multiple staffers enter and access the data, all for one reasonable price. I love how you can do a BCC to their dropbox address on a letter to a donor and it gets automatically added to the person's record. There's a slight learning curve to segmenting donor lists and spitting them out in reports, but it can really do pretty much anything you need. So we're very happy with it and will continue to use it.

I would like to be able to delete some of the standard fields that are designed for schools, which is where the product got its start. And it would be nice to be able to call for help, but their staff is very quick and responsive when you email them. Maybe they could offer a premium option for some phone help. But honestly, it's just a really good product, especially if you look at their extensive online help section of how to explanations and videos.

LGL facilitates the business-critical task of entering, tracking, and acknowledging gifts. It aids in segmenting donor groups and making 'touches' throughout the year as appropriate to each group. Customer support is outstanding, with quick response and helpful suggestions to achieve desired function or process.

Web-based product eliminates software maintenance issues. Great functionality, including integration with e-mail and physical letter production. Facilitates team management of data for multi-location or traveling workers. Most functions very intuitive. Customer-focused support staff very quick to respond to inquiries. Powerful query & data selection, great control for construction of reports and letters. Attaching documents & comments to record is easy. Tribute function facilitates handling of one-time gifts in memory of deceased constituent.

We have 20+ letter templates in LGL that we print onto an MS Word letterhead template that changes at least annually due to Board composition. We haven't yet determined how to have all the LGL templates point to a single Word template. For each change, we have to re-associate the new Word template with each LGL template.

We have more time to more smartly cultivate potential donors (to gain insights from our data), and spend less time on data entry and maintenance.

Little Green Light is intuitive, easy to use and fast. Data entry, updates, searches, reports, etc., are all at your finger tips, accessible from a variety of ways depending on what you're doing (context sensitive). Bulk editing speeds along what used to be (pre Little Green Light) painfully slow and cumbersome; import/export functionality is easy and powerful; gives you control over your data. Little Green Light just makes getting "stuff' done fast; way quicker than a glitzier but slow-to-navigate product we previously used. Little Green Light is terrifically designed and executed; rock-solid stable; server/db response is lightning fast - usually immediate. Using Little Green Light is akin to driving a sports car. At its heart, Little Green Light is nimble. Customer support (via email) is excellent; quick, knowledgeable, helpful/friendly.

We don't have anything we don't like about Little Green Light.