All Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager Reviews

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Dustin

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

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.

PROS

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 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.

CONS

Any 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

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Trail Blazer

PROS

The response for queries is fantastic.

CONS

Using 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

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

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.

PROS

I 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.

CONS

There'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

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

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!

PROS

The customer service is what I like best! Someone is always available to help.

CONS

The 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

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

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.

PROS

The set up was straitforward, and the learning curve wasn't too steep. it was easy to integrate with our payment processor.

CONS

The 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

Carla

Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed April 2022

Nonprofit User

Assistance with developing campaign templates.

PROS

Constituent tracking: Donor contact info/gifts/registrations. Revenue/expenses reports.

CONS

Biggest complaint is the automatic overloading of donor records when a person purchases multiply tickets. Example: A parent purchases 5 tickets for their family to attend a program/event. TrailBlazer automatically creates 5 records for which only one person is recognized with an email and mailing address. This also promotes between three and four times the amount of records in the system (for which the organization is billed annually) when truly only one person's record is viable. Unfortunately this was not realized initially. Many hours have been spent and continue to be spent merging family records to have accurate records in the system. Develop of campaign mailings was initially difficult to manage. Media specialist was engaged that integrated a program to allow for the ease of developing campaigns for email distribution. Originally TB automatically marked a new record as allowable to receive emails (donor choice). A change was implemented in TB around two years ago that eliminated that function. We manage registration records daily by checking them as allowable. The donor then has a choice of "unsubscribing" after receiving their first email. TB is probably best as a vote tracking software where adults are registered per household and multiply non-usable records are not created.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Pricing and apparent ability to tracking constituent information.

Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Move to a start up nonprofit with no CRM.

Vendor Response

Hi Carla, thank you for your review and your feedback. We will be in touch to help work through some of the issues you are running into. There are ways to configure events so that you collect more data on each participant, such as their name / email / mailing address / phone number / etc. We also don't know about the change to email subscriptions that you are referencing, so we will need to look into that with you. It sounds like you have your database configured so that any new email signup has to explicitly opt-in a second time, that is a setting that can be turned on or off. Any donor or event attendee should be able to opt-in to future mass emails with ease.

Replied April 2022

Tricia

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed March 2022

A fantastic tool for non-profits

The team are fantastic to work with anytime we have questions, and it’s always easy to troubleshoot or train thanks to their online knowledge database.

PROS

Donor software can often be out of reach for many “grassroots” charities, however Trailblazer is available at a reasonable price and is easy to use.

CONS

I cannot think of anything that I don’t like

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Cost, and I was also familiar with the product having used it in the past

Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

The product wasn’t able to be accessed by multiple users at once

Betsy

Education Management, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed March 2022

Trail Blazer is an essential tool for our organization!

This software is a great solution for our smaller-sized organization. It's easy to set up and learn, and the product support team is exceptional. While we yearn for some of the features of MailChimp or SalesForce, the simplicity of using Trail Blazer wins out. To strengthen our online fundraising we are now licensing Classy Software to develop our online campaigns. We still store the resulting data in Trailblazer.

PROS

As a small post-secondary trade school and non-profit we need the critical functionality that Trailblazer provides to track all our constituents and communicate with them regularly through our electronic newsletter. Trailblazer lets us track financial information accurately, communicate with our friends, donors and alums (either collectively or by segment), to review an individual's history with our organization prior to meeting with them, and to create reports to track our progress against fundraising and engagement goals. My two favorite things about this software is that it is easy to get up and running and the product support team is off-the-charts wonderful with immediate and knowledgeable answers. This product support experience is really unique and is the *key* reason I recommend this software to anybody who asks.

CONS

It's really hard to do drip-marketing campaigns, where we have a sequence of emails to send to particular subsets of individuals. We've found workarounds (thanks to the brilliant support team) but it really is cumbersome.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Simplicity to set up; good feature to price value; recommendations from other users we talked to.

Vendor Response

Betsy, Thank you so much for the review! We love working with your nonprofit and you do great work. Your feedback is very valuable and is critical to the continued development of our tools. Joel

Replied March 2022

Jesse

Think Tanks, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed November 2018

Little-known standout product!

Generally good. It does what we need for a reasonable price, and with great support by the Trailblazer team. The downsides--remote Mac access, ugly interface, manual importing--are a hassle, but we're used to it.

PROS

Fantastic customer support. Pretty intuitive to navigate. The right level of features for my fundraising program--all the functionality I need, but not too much to clutter my dashboard or brain. Easy to train colleagues.

CONS

Quite challenging to use on a Mac platform, which seems to be the predominant OS in educational/university settings and also among many non-profits. You have to use helper "remote connection" software even to reach the Trailblazer server, and then it looks and works like you're on a PC. Which leads to my other con: The interface is unimaginably ugly. Looks count, and most other CRMs are now clean and beautiful. Definitely affects the user experience to use attractive sites and software all day, but then to have to switch to early-'90s Windows land for database work. Also, Trailblazer doesn't work directly with the payment gateway required by the university where we're based. (Cybersource/Secure Acceptance) That means donations aren't entered automatically, but rather we have to import them manually. I see this as more of a limitation by our university than by Trailblazer, but it's still a hassle.

Agnes

Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2020

Trail Blazer Review

Overall experience is good. The Attribute section is very helpful. Also - when I call for support it has always been a very helpful and pleasant experience.

PROS

Trail Blazer functions differently than other databases. Once I was used to how to work with it, I like how much I can do with it. I also like the Attribute feature. It allows me to pull out just what group I want to use.

CONS

I use Trailblazer for people to sign up for workshops and events. I don't like that I can't add items to the registration page. We would love to be able to ask things like what Parish people belong to, a title line, etc.. We also have Deacons, Priests, Bishops and the Archbishop and their titles are always used. When signing up they will sometimes add it to the first names block. Otherwise, I have to go back and add it for any correspondence. Also - some of the columns that I think should always show up are different on all of the queries I use. For instance, it would be helpful if the Title always showed up.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

I was not in this position when the decision was made to purchase this product so I don't have that information.

Gail

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed March 2022

Sometimes Confusing

It is very hard to upload excel list of names . It is hard to sort and work with the data unless you move to excel. it does not give you the opportunity to merge names and addresses without having to look for them...no flags to tell you there might be a possibility.

PROS

Now that I am learning the process it is a bit easier.....very confusing in the beginning

CONS

This software was built on a political platform not a nonprofit. If I had been in my position when it was purchased we would not have purchased......the terminology is not totally based for a nonprofit. Is there a way to change that?

Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

The other software did not do enough in the area of donor management...too difficult to work with is what I was told. They said they purchase this based on price....now we have grown and the price is going up.

Vendor Response

Gail, thank you for your feedback! I'm confident we can get you up to speed on some of the items you mentioned. Please call into our support line when you have some time and we can assist with reporting, data uploading, and customizing fields to better-suite your nonprofit: 1-866-909-8700

Replied March 2022

KATHY

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2020

Lots of Search & Record set up options and very good support.

It has been a major upgrade from our one staff only having access on Access on her computer. All kinds of reports can now be pulled for mailing lists, donor specific info for a board member communication, and more. The Support team is very quick to respond and always pleasant to work with. Earlier this year, they even agreed and implemented my suggestion that would benefit all non-profits.

PROS

Being able to access by multiple staff/volunteers from different locations. And the ability to pull information Searches by a variety of Attributes, which can be added to. Use of mass email communications is great and easy to use once templates are set up.

CONS

The cons list has shortened over the last 4 years as the company has upgraded and added to the system.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Our board president narrowed the list to 2 or 3 product options. I helped review demos on those and helped pick TB for cost and ease of use. TB contracted particular pricing for our national office with discounted rate for all the affiliates.

John

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2018

Trail Blazer for Member based Nonprofits

Outstanding. I wish the vendors in other areas that I deal with were this committed to customer support and satisfaction.

PROS

The software has many features that have worked well for our group which is a membership based nonprofit. Over the few years that we have had it, the company has made substantial improvements on a continuing basis. However, the assumptions underlying the software's design and features must be a close match to your real world operations or you will likely need to adjust how you do some things to make the software work for you. However, the software is very adaptive, it has many features we need and quite a few we have not implemented. Also, and this is critical for us, the software support, training and consulting is worth every penny you pay for the annual license and more!

CONS

There are some issues but these are the nature of the beast with a product with so many features. One is the learning curve (although you can restrict access to certain features on a user by use basis to let them "grow" into the system). Another is that for a membership based system there are design assumptions that we have had to "work around" - but the programmers and tech support have been wonderful to make changes, tweaks and suggest alternative ways to get things done.

Shayna

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed December 2020

Just letting you know...

I like the fact I can pick up the phone and call support and have a live person answer - I'm not sure I'll get the same customer service with other products.

PROS

I think in some cases it can be user-friendly and in other instances because we don't use it for what it was made to do it is hard to navigate.

CONS

As a non-profit person, there are a lot of things I don't like about it. I think to sum everything up it's bulky and not made to do what I need in the field I'm in.

Vendor Response

Thank you Shayna for the review! We would love to learn more about your specific pain points in the system and to make sure you are comfortable with the different tools you need. Often times we will perform a couple of recorded training sessions with a user that is running into an issue and by the end, they are able to easily perform said task. If the system can't do something, we relay that request to development. You may also find our new mobile apps and web app (Trail Blazer IQ) to have a more simplistic interface for certain tasks. Joel

Replied December 2020

Angela

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Support From Trailblazer Team

I've had a positive experience with Trail Blazer. At first, it was a little difficult to understand, but I also didn't have any other experience with another software to compare it to. I have been able to use it for a variety of purposes including creating event sign ups, sending mass emails, and tracking donations.

PROS

I like the fact that anytime I have questions about the software, I can easily talk to the team at Trail Blazer. They have helped walk me through any issues I've encountered. Their team has very promptly answered the phone or email questions, and I appreciate that kind of support.

CONS

I had not filled this section out, but it looks like I must answer this section. I'm very pleased, but my only suggestion would be to make it even more intuitive and update the look so it's more modern and inviting.

Vendor Response

Thanks, Angela! We love working with you. We are in the process of creating a new version of our software called Trail Blazer IQ. This is in the works and we can show you how to login and begin testing it. You can also download our free iOS and Android app on your mobile devices. These versions have a more modern look-and-feel, where the flagship CRM is much more of a "functional workhorse" type of application. Thanks again!

Replied April 2022

Mary Carol

Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2022

Trail Blazer Donor Database Review

This donor database has saved us a lot of time. The donation information comes in directly from our website and automatically sends the donor a thank you letter. We are also given the opportunity to send a printed thank you as well. The Trail Blazer support team is great! They are always available to help me when I need to learn a new feature.

PROS

1) ease of entering donations and printing thank you letters with various templates. 2) ability to search for specific donors and send merge letters to them. 3) ability to send year-end donation letters to parishioners.

CONS

The only con is that I thought the IT team would set up my database with the funds and popup fields I gave them so it was up and ready to go when we installed it. The last database we purchased was all set up and ready to go when we installed it. So I had to have several online training sessions to be able to get to a starting place to enter donations.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

I liked the way the Trail Blazer database worked.

Reasons for switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Our database was 22 years old and could not do the functions we wanted it to.

Michele

Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2018

Trailblazer for Our Pro Life Nonprofit

Now that I've been using it for a while, I'm able to get things done very quickly and efficiently. I greatly appreciate the ability to sort donors into super specific groupings. Trailblazer has allowed me to segment my donor base with amazing flexibility, with just a few clicks.

PROS

The best thing about Trailblazer is the customer service. The guys are extremely accessible and helpful. They are willing to walk me through a process, or just do it for me - whichever I request. After trying two other donor management softwares that offered little or no help, Trailblazer's amazing service is a welcomed benefit.

CONS

The learning curve for Trailblazer is long. Therefore, whenever I wanted to do something new, I'd run into a wall. It seems like the first six months - at least - were pretty frustrating because there was always a glitch and I could never just get something done quickly. The glitch was in the training, not the software. I'd like to see a series of training videos that we could have our staff watch, in order, so that a general level of proficiency could be attained up front.

Seth

Environmental Services, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed March 2022

Works great for a smaller Non-Profit

Overall, I am very pleased with the program

PROS

I love how easy it is to organize your donors, so you don't miss a beat when thanking them

CONS

I find it very difficult at time to pull the correct reports and get the information that I actually need.

Vendor Response

Thanks, Seth. Definitely lean on our support team if you have questions on pulling accurate reports, or anything else. We are readily available by phone and email, and we are confident we can get you the reports you need: 1-866-909-8700 & support@trailblz.com.

Replied March 2022

Melissa

Used free trial

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed December 2011

We use Trail Blazer much different than the intent for the software just because we think it works better the way we have it set up. We have adapted how the software currently functions to our needs. Therefore, we cannot go to Trail Blazer staff to do training on everything. When there are updates, our staff that aren't very tech-savvy sometimes have a tough time. When we do not have a lot of time for database maintenance in the first place due to budget constraints, it can be quite frustrating. Customer support is great, but we kind of have to bend a database to our needs and there is also a learning curve, mostly because nonprofits have to train not only staff who struggle with technology but also volunteers and interns. We appreciate that Trail Blazer is constantly striving to improve, but I would love to see a personalized email or call go out with big updates.

Vendor Response

At Trail Blazer, we are committed to the long-term development and refinement of our product. Our goal is to be nothing less than the software product of choice in the non-profit arena. Yes, the ongoing changes can at times be frustrating, but after the adjustments are made, the net result is a tool that allows you to be even more productive. The particular issue that presented a problem for NCPTC was the change in our attribute (aka groups or flags) facility. The original design allowed for any number of attributes within nine (9) folders. For many organizations, as their list of attributes within a specific folder grew longer, this eventually grew cumbersome. We enhanced this system so that now the data is stored and presented hierarchically where a folder can contain any number of folders or attributes, and those folders can contain any number of folders or attributes, ad infinitum. It's a far more flexible, logical, and powerful structure.

Replied January 2013

Tracey

Education Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2018

Wonderful Product

Very positive. Customer Service has been EXCELLENT. You won't find a better team anywhere. I am a raving fan and I have used Blackbaud, DonorPerfect and many other fundraising or donor tracking software.

PROS

Trailblazer is used for our non-profit. It is easy peasy to export the data you need. You don't need complicated codes or reports, you can access what you need quickly including event information & ticket sales. It does all we need and then some.

CONS

That it won't allow you to sell tables or golf foursomes and include the names of the guests. This needs to be revised and I submitted this request in October of 2018. You need to be willing to learn some coding to make the features work really well. The mobile piece needs to allow you to open a record and read notes etc. It isn't just for canvassing any more.

Barbara

Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2018

Good Starter program

We are able to track donations by events and have a great database for marking!

PROS

the program is very easy to use for donation tracking and works well with Vanco for online donations and events

CONS

Needs some software improvements. Templates don't save the margins for envelopes and do not allow you to have a left sided letterhead. Extracting information for year end letters can be cumbersome but customer service is very good at helping out to get what you need.

Lynn

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Review

PROS

Data management. Ease in finding contact and contact information.

CONS

Unable to query contacts with events. Software designed more for campaigns than our nonprofit needs.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

price

Vendor Response

Hi Lynn, thank you for your review. We would love to help with your event search queries. Many of our nonprofit customers use the event system heavily, so I'm confident that our support team can walk you through the reports you are going after. We'll be in touch!

Replied April 2022

Felecia

Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2018

A solution for nonprofits

We have zero regrets working with Trail Blazer.

PROS

As a nonprofits that tracks donations, volunteer hours, programs, events, and outcomes, Trail Blazer is easy to use for all individuals in our organization, and if affordable compared to most CRMs. We no longer use numerous excel spreadsheets to track information - rather we can look at the comprehensive pictures of people who are involved with our organizations. (IE Do they attend events, volunteer, and donate?) We also use Trail Blazer to house detailed and complex data to pull for reports. The support team is also very responsive, nice to speak with, and always willing to help immediately.

CONS

Because Trail Blazer was originally created for elections, you have to be creative on how you categorize and define certain data points. IE All individuals are called donors even if they don't donate. But if you can be flexible in how you define certain elements, it works great!

Roxanne

Education Management, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed December 2020

Data collection

We have better communication with our partners, volunteers, and customers.

PROS

Our office does not use the software for donor management. We use it for volunteer and educational workshop attendees data collection. Each employee had their own mail list and you had ask if anyone had the person you were looking for. How inefficient! Trail Blazer is quick and easy for all staff to use.

CONS

I would like to see an easier faster way to download a list. Maybe download it as an Excel file.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Ease of use and the customer service we received.

Vendor Response

Roxanne, thank you for the review! Regarding the download of data - from every list in the database you can download it by clicking [Export]. This allows the file to be opened in Excel. I will follow up with you directly to walk through that process. Joel

Replied December 2020

Dennis

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2020

TrailBlazer for non-profit

Our donation tracking is much improved. Previously it took two people with multiple emails and data entry to book a donation and send thank-you letters. Now one person can complete the entire process and in much less time. Reports are very helpful to the Board and finance. Email campaigns are much improved.

PROS

For basic functions of entering and tracking donations it is very easy to learn and increases productivity. Standard reporting is simple...have not used query reporting yet. Thank you letters and email campaigns took some extra time to learn, but the strength of TrailBlazer is their support staff. They walked us through the steps needed and even performed individual training sessions.

CONS

One challenge is that certain functions are not intuitive. For instance, just changing a donor address took a bit of searching and fumbling, but the knowledge base and support staff get us over these hurtles quickly. We are still struggling with the website connection with PayPal.

Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Price, Donation Management tools, reports of excellent support

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