All Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager Reviews
1-22 of 22 Reviews
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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
Carla
Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
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.
PROSConstituent tracking: Donor contact info/gifts/registrations. Revenue/expenses reports.
CONSBiggest 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
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
Tricia
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
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.
PROSDonor software can often be out of reach for many “grassroots” charities, however Trailblazer is available at a reasonable price and is easy to use.
CONSI 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
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.
PROSAs 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.
CONSIt'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
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.
PROSFantastic 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.
CONSQuite 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
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.
PROSTrail 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.
CONSI 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.
KATHY
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
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.
PROSBeing 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.
CONSThe 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.
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
Mary Carol
Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
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.
PROS1) 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.
CONSThe 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.
Seth
Environmental Services, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
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
PROSI love how easy it is to organize your donors, so you don't miss a beat when thanking them
CONSI 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
Lynn
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed April 2022
Review
Data management. Ease in finding contact and contact information.
CONSUnable 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
Katlyn
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
User friendly and great customer service
Great experience overall. Customer service is always so helpful and willing to walk you through any problems.
PROSTrailblazer is extremely user friendly and when you know how to work it, it makes the job so much easier. I love how I can write all the thank you letters in one place and takes out room for error.
CONSThe one thing that I don't like is how when you choose the cycle or year for a donation, it has previous years in it. I can understand going back a couple of years for a choice but not 10. But I guess it can be helpful for those who are trying to put previous records in
Vendor Response
Thank you for your review, Katlyn! I'll relay your feedback to our development team.
Replied March 2022
Teresa
Religious Institutions, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
my review
The help that their staff gives is above all other systems!
PROSHelps with keeping my data base every day.
CONSHard to use in some ways. Could be easier to use, if I could teach myself.
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
No customer service and did not do what they said they would do.
Cindy
Non-Profit Organization Management, 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
5
Reviewed March 2022
ISKCON of Alachua
The data entry is easy, and looking things up is easy.
CONSIf just took some time to get used to it when it was new, but the support team was great
Vendor Response
Thanks, Cindy! Please don't hesitate to reach out if questions come up with anything. We are here to help.
Replied March 2022
Bekka
Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2022
Love Trailblazer
Fantastic
PROSThe support team is responsive, always friendly
CONSThere are a few features that the team has already incorporated after my suggestion. I expect that will continue as we discover desired features.
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Price, support team
Mara
Research, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
Small office, Big functionality
I use Trail Blazer for tracking and updating donor contact and contribution information, and for logging correspondence. It is user friendly and fairly intuitive.
CONSI wish I could copy/paste donor address data to use in MSWord document correspondence. It would also be helpful if I could navigate between donors without backing all the way out to the dashboard.
Vendor Response
Thanks, Mara! We recently put out an integration with MS Word for mail-merge purposes. Here are some resources: - Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxj0ztvUAc - Article: https://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=1389&cat=0&qq=word Please don't hesitate to call or email our support team for help with any part of the system. I'm confident we can get you comfortable with areas that may require a bit of training.
Replied March 2022
Laurel
Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
Trail Blazer for a small non-profit
Trail Blazer is easy to use and easy to learn with a tutorial and lots of instructional videos, but what I like most is the live customer support. They are a small company, but always available with a quick phone call to answer any questions.
CONSThis is pretty minor, but I would like the online payment page on our website to be more customizable. I asked and they are working on improvements to the design.
Sherri
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2022
Great customer service
Good way to keep track of donors and generate reports on donations. Very helpful on support issues.
PROSEasy to keep track of donors-works with Vanco on collecting funds. Great support on all levels. Use for newsletters also. Very easy to add input.
CONSSometimes it's tricky on formatting newsletters.
Lyn
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed March 2022
Good value though limited features
The customer support! Always there and usually quick response, at no add'l cost.
CONSLetter generation, must export to use this
Reason for choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager
Easy to work with staff; reasonable cost; free support and data transfer