Falling in love with NFG

I just love how I can rely on a system that helps me connect with my donors, making so much of my work easier and giving me time to focus on what I need to.

Pros

the integration of so many features that allows you to connect several services in one place. I'm using less and less other services for contacting donors, events, donations, and using just the Network for Good donation management system. I also like the customer service available. It's great to have a team helping you through all the craziness of fundraising. I also like how NFG is constantly incorporating new technology in their system.

Cons

I wish some features would give me more customization options. Like, donation pages, forms, ​and direct mail, but I can perfectly work with all the available features.

How AWESOME is that!

In my experience, the donor staff often serves dual or multiple roles, breaking in a new system generally requires more time that you already have so little of. This was a huge factor in decision making for me, NFG doesn’t have a steep learning curve and their support to transition is the BEST. I’m well acquainted with the “Blackbaud’s Raiser Edge and e-Tapestry”, as well as others and unless you have unlimited financial resources and a dedicated staff/dept, I would steer clear of long standing desktop based programs such as these -Easy and/or no cost access to customer service, either by phone, text or knowledge base -NFG has been outstanding in all areas -I have called NFG with an urgent need and the response was IMMEDIATE! I try to do the homework on my end and not take advantage of NFG’s tech support to have to respond to “fire” -My experience with BB at my previous organization; I instant messaged tech support with a question they replied…great question, I’m not sure, let me kick it up to our data support and someone will get back to you very soon. That was over a year ago, never got a response. -Often there is an additional cost or step up in pricing for immediate access to tech support -Cutting edge technology that continues to improve itself. From their earliest platform I find that NFG continues to improve and maximize the end user experience • Easier DAMN reporting

Pros

Everything! Set up was a breeze and with NFG I could hit the ground running

Cons

Haven't found a con yet, NFG suits our current needs perfectly

Feel like I've tried them all

I had a problem retaining donors and thanking them. This is automatic and it easliy shows me when and how to re engage.

Pros

Intuitiveness. I'm not a technical person, nor am I a CFRE, but I was able to set this up pretty easily. I was able to figure out the import process with one 50 minute webinar that in and of itself, was easy to understand. And then I was up and running.

Cons

I wish there was a way to automatically move a volunteer that signs up on our site to our donor database. At present, I have to copy and upload them manually every month or so.

To stay with NFG or not to stay... this is the question

No

Pros

I’ve enjoyed the variety of the e-blast templates. I’ve recently had a very good experience w/ Customer Solutions Specialist, Lenny Wrigley who helped me troubleshoot a very urgent request for one of my donors.

Cons

The poor communication between the NFG Team and the customers paying for the services. One example was NFG changing e-mail servers and not warning the good paying customers. We lost a lot of communication with our donors the day before # givingtuesday

Incredible ROI with increased funds generated and time saved

The COVID-19 crisis has created new challenges for our organization financially. NFG had created a step by step task and template for the #GivingTuesdayNow national fundraising event on May 5, 2020. It was too easy to not take advantage of the three simple steps with the templates they had created and a few extra images I grabbed from Canva. With less than one hour of work, we raised $19,400 over 3 days.

Pros

The simplicity and ease of use have had a tremendous impact on our ability to function more effectively as a small development team. We spent two years trying to muddle our way through ETapestry/Blackbaud's tools. The NFG platform is very intuitive, and even our less tech-savvy support has been able to jump in and work in the NFG system. It has also been very useful in helping us to sort out duplicates and update our contacts. We have not tried the Quickbooks integration yet, but it was a factor in our decision to move forward with this product.

Cons

There are fewer integrations with other systems at this time, for example, SurveyMonkey.