Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
About Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Awards and Recognition
Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager Pricing
Our base level pricing for under 500 contacts starts at $60 per month or $500 per year. This includes every tool that we've built since 2002, future upgrades, unlimited user accounts, and top-notch live tech support and training.
Starting price:
$50.00 per month
Free trial:
Available
Free version:
Not Available
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Most Helpful Reviews for Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
1 - 5 of 70 Reviews
Dustin
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
We love TrailBlazer
We have been using Trailblazer since 2014. It tracks all of our income, relationships, churches/volunteers… everything. It has literally been the best single expense that we have spent over the past 10 years! Especially considering that we were using Excel sheets beforehand. It saves us SO much time, the cost is inexpensive, and the amount of time it has saved is well worth the cost which is much better than the other alternatives and at a reasonable cost. It easily pays for itself in time saved alone. Easy to use, and great customer service.
PROSIt tracks all of our income, relationships, churches/volunteers… everything. It has literally been the best single expense that we have spent over the past 10 years! Especially considering that we were using Excel sheets beforehand. It saves us SO much time, the cost is inexpensive, and the amount of time it has saved is well worth the cost which is much lower than the other alternatives we've looked at. It's been worth every penny. It easily pays for itself in time saved alone. Easy to use, and great customer service. If I could wave a wand and make one move to help the state, it would be to provide this to every chapter. It provides accountability with QuickBooks and has many huge capabilities. Unlike other systems that we've looked into, they have excellent customer support included without extra cost. The web app is also wonderful. I can pull up information on the fly. If I meet a volunteer and they are curious on how much their church is giving, I can get an answer within a minute through the app. It also tracks relationships I have, like: which volunteer serves at which club, when they were processed, what training they have, what church they go to, etc all connected. So, I can pull lists of everyone involved from a church, or all the volunteers from a club, etc. I can also see who has made a pledge, find who my top givers are, see how long it's been since people have given, find which events certain people have attended and given at and which ones haven't.
CONSAny system you go with has a learning curve. There is a learning curve here too. It requires some logical thinking to use well. You tell it what you want and it pulls the information. You can immediately get to work once you know the basics but as you learn new ways to us it, soon you'll become much more efficient. Email is also a con. It uses html formating. Other services have an easier drop and type interface, templates, and pictures ready to speed up the process. This one requires a little more work. But once you have templates built, it works fine... AND the trailblazer staff will help you build a template if desired. Plus there are great help article and videos to walk you through everything you may want. They have also made some great improvements recently in this area too.
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Being a small non-profit, price was a main factor that had us consider them. The experience we had with their representatives was the best of all of the demos that we took from the various companies. We trusted that Trailblazer would be there for us and help us out. They remembered us and we felt as though we were valued rather than just another customer.
Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Customer service was terrible - especially for us as new costumers. If it was that bad while we were coming on board, it was a poor testament of how it could be once we were long time patrons. Plus, they wanted to bill us for customer service. Our information being imported was a mess in their system and we were not given any help or guidance on how to fix it. We also ran into issues trying to get reports and information out of their system.
Frank
Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed April 2022
Trail Blazer
The response for queries is fantastic.
CONSUsing a MAC makes things a little frustrating.
Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Ease of queries and common sense nomenclature.
Vendor Response
Thanks, Frank! We always enjoy working with you and your team. If you run into any issues while working on a Mac, please give us a call. There are a handful of useful tips and tricks we can show you to help improve your workflow.
Replied April 2022
Ykatirina
Performing Arts, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
2
Reviewed December 2020
Lacking on Donor Mailing Capabilities
I have learned a lot about how to use this database, however, I am often frustrated at how clunky it is. Yes, it's customizable, but it's very difficult to do some of the most straightforward and necessary functions for our organization.
PROSI like that you can customize and edit your own attributes and query views for columns. I love how in columns, you can make attributes updatable, and edit them. I like that you can save queries, though I rarely use the function.
CONSThere's a lot that I dislike about the user experience of this database: -When you run a query, I wish you could create an attribute and assign it to all donors in the query -I wish I could update attributes for donors from other search space (e.g. contributions, events, etc) -I don't like that it's only available on PC, and I have to use remote desktop on my Mac laptop. -Mailings are really difficult - households aren't very use-friendly. For example, when I want to mail all of our donors, I have to search the donors in contributions, export them, import them to tag with an attribute as donors, then I honestly can't remember the next steps, if very complicated, and if I am creating multiple lists (e.g. donors, Lybunts, non-donors) I have to deduplicate the lists because there is so much overlap, when I just want the system to reflect who is on what list--it's very complicated and time consuming. -WIth Contributions, the button to "exclude events marked 'non-tax deductible'"to distinguish between sales and donations, is not available in other queries outside the contribution tab. -Reports are not helpful - unclear if it's including all income, vs. just contributions -I need to use summaries and pivot tables for most basic tasks, which is very challenging -Searching and exporting a List of our donors, separated by giving level is very complicated -Importing - duplicate contacts happen often when names & emails don't merge -Matching funds & Events is weird & clunky
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
I believe it was recommended to us by a fundraising consultant we were working with, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], who's partner, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], has worked at Trailblazer for years but is now partially retired, as I understand.
Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Not sure, I was not on staff when that switch was made
Vendor Response
Thank you for the review and the detailed feedback. As we continue to develop our product we are always interested in which items a customer struggles with, and making every effort to improve it. A few items worth mentioning: they system has the ability to mass update both a list of individual contacts as well as household records with an attribute item en masse. - Article 1: https://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=276&cat=0&qq=attribute - Article 2: https://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=234&cat=0&qq=attribute Regarding the upkeep of household records, running and saving custom queries and reports for mailings and other purposes, we HIGHLY recommend a live interactive training with one of our experts on the same: support@trailblz.com We see that a customer that is struggling with something can usually rectify it with a training, and often a second or third on more complex issues.
Replied December 2020
Kelly
Fund-Raising, 1 employee
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed March 2022
Customer service wins
Trail Blazer has been great for moving our small non-profit organization into a larger one at a reasonable price. We started using Trail Blazer when we had under 1,000 donor records and now we have over 5,000 donor records. The software has helped us organize donor information with tools to help us create more in-depth donor details that are easily searchable. Although, this software may not have the prettiest interface, the customer service is what makes this company special. They were extremely helpful during the initial set up. I love that whenever I call or email for help, I always get one of the same three helpful employees and they always respond!
PROSThe customer service is what I like best! Someone is always available to help.
CONSThe interface is pretty old-school. There are major improvements needed for creating newsletters that allow the user to be more creative.
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
It was less expensive and the employees were good at answering my initial questions.
Vendor Response
Thanks for the feedback, Kelly! We are in the process of developing a newer version of the software. We would be happy to get you logged into it so that you can begin testing. Your feedback is valuable and we are always here to help if you need anything.
Replied March 2022
Carl
Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed April 2022
Excellant CRM
Trail Blazer was excellant at tracking donors and donations and other income. The biggest plus was their always ready customer support. You get a live staff person who patiently walks you through whatever issue. They also respond to suggested program tweaks.
PROSThe set up was straitforward, and the learning curve wasn't too steep. it was easy to integrate with our payment processor.
CONSThe missing piece was bookkeeping integration and their event registration didn't have an integrated calendar.
Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
QB is not very functional as a CRM, we kept QB as bookkeeping software.
Vendor Response
Thanks, Carl! We enjoy working with you and your team. Your feedback has been very valuable, and we will continue to make improvements to our tools.
Replied April 2022