LGL has made my work much easier (they all promise that you'll spend less time in administration and more time raising money, and in this case that is the truth). LGL has also helped involve more of our staff and volunteers in the fundraising process.

This software is the perfect price for a small or mid-sized nonprofit both in terms of the subscription fee and the transaction fees on their donation form system, LGL Forms. They offer unlimited users, which can be given access appropriate to their role (for example, a volunteer manager can use LGL and only see constituents who are volunteers). While the program may lack some of the automation more robust (and expensive) platforms offer, a little work on the front-end pays pretty big dividends in speeding up reporting, sending acknowledgements, list building - pretty much any standard development activity. The team at LGL are also extremely responsive to email and they seem to work around the clock on improving the software to fix bugs, add software integrations (such as Zapier and Constant Contact) and expand functionality.

There are some things that LGL doesn't do yet, or doesn't do as well as I would like. Depending on the payment processor you use (LGL forms only pairs with Stripe, PayPal, and ProPay) it lacks options for accepting ACH payments. There are some limitations in membership and volunteer management, and I would bypass LGL completely with a different software solution if those were major parts of our development operations.

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.

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.

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.

Of all the software I use daily for my work, LGL is the one that consistently makes my job easier.

This product is incredibly easy to use. If and when I do come across issues or questions with the software, even my specific use (or misuse) of it, the LGL Help resources can usually direct me to a solution. If I can't find help there, the LGL support team always has a solution for me in a timely manner.

I thought that it was difficult to begin using the software, importing constituent data, etc. but that was simply because I hadn't ever used CRM before and was completely new to the system.

I LOVE that the are multiple ways to get to the pages with the information that I need. I LOVE that it is super easy to use and easy to adjust to my needs. I LOVE that I could import all the data by myself with no need for an external developer. I LOVE that I could undo most of my changes (if I make mistakes or change my mind about the way to store my data.

I don't like that there isn't a customer service phone line (although I could find answers to most of my questions on their webpage OR got an answer by email). I wish there was an App version and that LGL forms had a mobile option.

Not enough accolades to define our experience with LGL. It has solved hours of previous individual copy and paste of information, and ease of correspondence templates and reporting! Again, we couldn't be happier with any program!

LGL is by far the best CRM I have ever used for price, functionality, integration options, and Customer Support!!

I would like to have video options included in the future. However, so far, every option I would have liked has been implemented in the two years we have used LGL. The support and constant improvement are just outstanding!

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...

For the price, this is absolutely the best marketing decision our team has made. It does eveything we need it to do and is tailored for the nonprofit sector.

This product integrates directly with our email marketing software - Constant Contact. We were able to create a form on Little Green Light that links directly back to our contact database and put it directly on our website. Each person that signs up for our email newsletter is put directly into our contact database and into our constant contact list. It has made our work more streamlined which for a nonprofit with very little staff and resources, has made a huge difference in our workflow. Another amazing feature is the Little Green Light Knowledge Base. Any question you could possibly have about the features of this software are covered in their knowledge base. It's easy to search and find the information you need. Everytime I look for something, I've easily found it.

The user interface could definitely use some work. It looks a little outdated and can take some exploring to discover all of the features. Also the original transfer of contacts was pretty time consuming, but that's to be expected with any big switch between CRM softwares.

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.

I can't say enough good things about LGL support. All the questions and problems I have had have been dealt with via their knowledge base, online training documentation and videos and their periodic online group training sessions. Anything that needed a support person to get involved was handled above and beyond my expectations. Any support request I submitted was responded to within an hour or so and if it had to be escalated for next level assistance it would never be more than a day for a response and resolution. The excellent support is not something I'm used to finding when dealing with vendors online these days, so kudos to LGL.

Although LGL is promoted primarily as a donor database, it has built in features to manage memberships. We have been using it some 4+ years to manage the members for a very large Garden Club (300+ Active members and another 200+ guests/donors). As the main person that evaluated and converted their membership tracking, which was done on spreadsheets, to LGL, I found it to be perfect for what we needed. It brought organization, online automation and member communication capabilities for the members and donors that could never have been accomplished through their manual spreadsheet process. LGL provides easy migration/import capabilities so the conversion was very smooth. Advanced features like LGL Forms for creating online data input forms, personalized mailing/emailing and integrations with numerous 3rd party services like Paypal, have been easy to use and indispensable for administering the membership. The membership loves it because they now can do payments and profile changes efficiently online. The Club Board loves it because it has automated almost all of their manual processes and eliminated the data entry errors that were causing so many problems previous to LGL. What is so great is all theses benefits are so affordable. Any other online database alone would be prohibitively expensive for the Club, never mind all the additional functionality and support that LGL provides.

I can't say there is much of anything that is missing in LGL functionality for what we have requirements for. Over the years the few things we needed were eventually added throughout LGL's ongoing enhancements. Although LGL has some level of user access controls (Admin, Fundraiser, Volunteer, Gift Entry) I would like to see them add Read Only access.

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.

It's given me hours of my life back due to all the work it does automatically. It makes me look like a superstar in my job. It gives me the ability to look back on years of data and see trends and improvements. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my data is stored safely on the cloud. It gives me something to say when sales people for Salesforce come calling...and it has healed the psychic damage that was done to me by trying to make Salesforce work for us. It satisfies my love of data and databases and perfection.

I love the way it integrates online donations into my donor records -- so easy and so professional. I especially appreciate their customer support -- if I have a question, I just send an email and I get a quick reply within hours. The software is very user friendly and adaptable to my way of doing business. Clearly it was created with a great understanding of nonprofits!

While I love having the ability to track and create acknowledgements, there are some features in this area that don't fit my process. I write cards by hand, and sometimes I only get a couple done at a time. I wish I could mark them done individually rather than by batch. I also would like to have the choice of Volunteer Hours under Related Gifts--several companies, like Microsoft, donate to us for volunteer hours put in by their full time employees. And I wish that when a recurring donation fails that the donor would automatically get an emailed notification from LGL Forms.

The Vermont Italian Club is primarily a membership organization whose purpose and mission is education of Italians and non-Italians in the Italian culture and heritage. We do this by encouraging participation and study of the Italian language, arts, and culture through lectures, presentations, films, study groups, formal classes, celebrations, and other educational events and activities. We are a small group with about 200 memberships and 475 entries in our database. When the group was smaller and before we invigorated the organization in 2009-2010 with new leadership, all membership information lived on spreadsheets. We knew that we needed a system that could grow with us and deliver the kind of information and reporting we needed. We evaluated other systems, but they were either far too expansive and/or too expensive for our meager budget. With no offices or paid staff, a fundamental requirement for our donor/member management system is that it be browser-based and accessible to our volunteers from their PCs in any location. In addition, the system had to be easy to use, reliable and include features that we would utilize as we grew, developed an online presence and added people to our database. Little Green Light seemed just right for us both in capabilities and price. Although it was fairly new at the time, we decided to adopt it because we believed LGL would grow as we did and it more than met our needs at the time. The conversion process from spreadsheets to LGL was far easier than anticipated when we adopted LGL in 2010. Staff was very accommodating and helped us through the transition smoothly. We were up and running within a few days. The ability to administer the various functions, categories, tags for member/constituent data is very flexible and easy to grasp. LGL has continually enhanced the system with new features. We have never looked back and remain enthusiastic that we made the correct choice. LGL continues to evolve and they listen to their customers for new feature development. In recent months they have launched tight integrations with WuFoo (online forms), MailChimp (email management), and PayPal (payment processing). All are useful services that offer a small non-profit like VIC easy and affordable integration with robust third party offerings. Those we have implemented work smoothly to reduce data entry and the inevitable mistakes of manual processing. LGL service has been outstanding, better than I have encountered from any systems vendor, to small and intermediate sized users. Their online knowledge base and responsive voice and email support is well beyond my expectations.

Overall we are extremely happy with Little Green Light. The use of the Little Green Light forms helps us easily track where our donations are coming from, and the rest of the constituent management tools allow us to have a complete picture of our donors. I I would (and have) recommended this product to any non-profit that does not have a dedicated data team to manage their database.

I love this nearly everything about the software. It is easy use with an intuitive UI. The reports are easy to run and manipulate the export fields and being able to schedule reports to run is fantastic. I also find the ease of creating contact reports and tasks to be refreshing and helps to stay on top of donor relationship management.

We've run into a couple of relatively minor problems. Specifically, only being able to have a single gift batch open at a time, setting permissions for users is not as flexible/easy as I'd like, and (everyone I work with knows this is the one thing about the software that truly drives me crazy) is the inability to have a pledge paid off with a third party.

I am pleased with it. LGL offers ways to automate processes. We're still learning how that works since we just started using it a month ago, but we will take advantage of it.

It's fairly easy to use. They have a knowledge base with training videos and written information along with live virtual classes. There's a Facebook users' group where one can ask questions. They also offer webinars where the max class size is four and the instructor addresses specific questions. They have been very responsive to my emails. The flex importer was great to have for importing all our donors. It took time to set up our spreadsheet, but it was worth it not to have to manually enter each donor.

Since I'm new to this type of system (constituent relationship management), there's a lot of new terminology to learn. It's not so much a 'con' as a steep learning curve for me. One piece of advise for the Flex Importer: be sure you understand the difference between a campaign and an appeal. I had to make corrections to our data since I misunderstood it. Fortunately, we're new and have few enough donors that I could make corrections.

Overall I am very pleased with LGL. I've had issues with the program, but can eventually get it solved by the LGL problem-solving team. (It might take a year or more, but eventually the issues get resolved.) In the meantime, there is almost always a work-around for the problem I am experiencing.

LGL is user friendly. I use this software daily and I like the ease of entering gifts and keeping track of our constituents.

I wish there was such a thing as a "sticky note" that could be applied to the opening page of a constituent record. Often we have very important information that needs to be seen every time someone accesses a particular record. Right now, there is no way for this type of information to "jump" out at you. I would like to see some sort of a feature that immediately calls your attention to the record.

We needed a cloud-based solution that would facilitate the virtual team we were building, we also needed a solution that could import, as easily as possible, records from seven regional offices that we were combining. LGL delivered on all fronts.

Little Green Light (LGL) looks great, which makes it enjoyable to use. It is stable and fast. It is also flexible so that you can easily customize it to work for your own context. Their customer support is amazing; it is personal and responsive. I normally do not take the time to write a review, but LGL is worth it. It delivers much more than what you pay each month.

When we first started with LGL (about 7 years ago) they did not support Canadian tax receipts to the same degree they do now, but they did at the time help us with a work-around. They now do support our requirements so that is no longer an issue.

We highly recommend LGL for other small non-profits like us! It has made communication, volunteer tracking, and fundraising easier for us.

LGL is easy to use and customizable. It makes communication with constituents easy. Information about giving, volunteering, and communications are at your fingertips.

It has limited ability to add graphics or attachments to emails. While this diminishes the flash, it also makes the email seem more personal.

The customer service is phenomenal and makes ease of use incredibly high. The training videos are plentiful and very useful. Personalized options are available and the system can be built to serve the needs of each individual organization.

LGL is very easy to self-train on, as its features are simple to learn and manage. The system can be set up with personalized features or can be used in its simplest form. Also, because it is all managed online, that makes it easy to manage a virtual office.

There is not anything about LGL that I think makes the software less appealing.

I love the feature where you can track all donor correspondence with a bcc dropbox code.It works really well to call up different subsets of donors once you know the categories

I'd like to be able to delete some of the standard fields that are designed more for schools and have it be a bit easier to add fields. But the latter is pretty easy once you know how.

I LOVE Little Green Light and would highly recommend it to any non-profit organization. I have already referred another organization who is using it

The ability to customize and add fields; tech support can add more complex fields that you need Multiple users can access it Easy to generate customized acknowledgements and mailings Great to have all our data in our place Can attach documents and keep track of contact with constituents Tech support is amazing! I've gotten answers on a Sunday morning 10 minutes after I asked the question I research other options and all others were too complicated, cost a lot more, and didn't offer a 30-day free trial First year subscription through Techsoup makes it even more affordable for small organizations

I would like more intuitive handling of ticket sales for concerts, but that is all. I can't think of anything else.