We have what I would call "a beautiful relationship". Not only do we know our team at Foundant, we like them and enjoy hanging out with them. They are constantly seeking ways to improve their product and provide the best customer experience possible. They do that by seeking to better understand the way we function and anticipating industry trends. Additionally, they have made allowances for direct buy-in/investment from a number of community foundations, thus insuring that the company and the company's interests will remain true to community foundations for years to come. No other software provider in our field has taken that step so far as I am aware of.

There are three things I like most about this software: 1) It is designed specifically for use by community foundations - they get "it"! 2) The customer service. Second to none. Responsive. Knowledgeable. Experienced. Resourceful. Caring. Oh, and they are a heckuva a lot of fun, too! 3) Migration. Rarely is the term "easy" used in close quarters with discussions of transitioning from one core software package to another. However, the good folks at Foundant specialize in this process. In fact, it may be the only company out there that has customers who consistently use the term "flawless" when describing their data migration (at least from FIMS to C-Suite). Basically, Foundant has built itself upon the idea that community foundations are their niche market. Make that "only market". Community foundations (CF's) are their only customers. What's more, a large portion of their staff have past personal work experience either with CF's or with the former industry-specific software, FIMS, from which the majority of community foundations have or are in-process of migrating from.

There is no perfect solution (yet) for community foundations. While Foundant comes fairly close by providing a ready-made solution, it is not as customizable as our particular organization would prefer. While it appears to be able to handle all of our required needs, we will be employing a few work-arounds and changes to our processes to make it fit those needs. Ideally, a software solution would allow the client to change the program to suit its workflow. Not exactly so with C-Suite. That said, it is a HUGE improvement in terms of integration and report generation over FIMS. It also increases functionality at least 10 fold. Not looking to purchase an additional CRM solution (cough...Salesforce...Raisers Edge...cough)? C-Suite is still a huge upgrade over FIMS.

SO much functionality in profiles and profile maintenance make it a dream for creating donor and other profile lists, and linking people, organizations, and funds together. Fund profile also has such incredible detail and linking.The ability to drill down on figures is also wonderful.

The only thing I miss from FIMS was the Columnar Fund Balance report. Seems like the auditors like that, and it's very difficult to reproduce in CSuite.

It is cloud-based. Unlimited Users. The accounting system seems to work, though I am not an accountant so who knows.

Donation pages are not customizable or user-friendly. There is no way to track the source of donations (even though the description says donation tracking). If you want to track ROI on your website, ads or communications, you can't. There's no integration with ANY other software(other than Stripe). They do not verify users by email address, so you constantly have to be on top of duplicate accounts from donations. The ticketing system is barebones and difficult to set up. There's no custom reporting.

Our overall experience has been nothing but positive. The employees at CommunitySuite are smart problem solvers and with this software, we have been able to grow over 200%. Our efforts now go into donors and grantees instead of spreadsheets.

Foundant is very flexible. We have several users with different levels of computer knowledge all can navigate in Foundant. The training is great and the programmers are always looking to make the software more user-friendly. The time we save using this software allows us to spend more time in donor and community development.

There is not much that I don't like about Foundant. The only thing is new releases and it's really not a negative. It's just that so many good things get implemented that I don't always keep up.

We needed a fully integrated suite without trying to cobble together multiple packages like QuickBooks and Salesforce. I have worked in ERP/Financial software for over 20 years with Tier 1 firms (BaaN, Infor) as an implementation consultant. NONE of these firms can touch CommunitySuite for responsiveness, rapid development of new features, ease of use and support. I have direct links at the VP Product level and feel that the corporate culture is first-rate. Community Suite (and the GLM module we also license) are growing with us and we look to adding SLM as well. Cannot imagine how we would have handled hundreds of business, nonprofit and individual grants during COVID-19 without this product and their team.

CommunitySuite combines solid financials with good CRM/donor management and tightly integrated grant and scholarship management modules, if needed (extra cost). Extremely easy to implement and use. With excellent support from Customer Success Manager team, we were trained on key functionality and brought foundation from spreadsheets to state of the art systems in less than two months. That support has never waivered and after 2 years of use , they only keep getting better, with more features .

Donor management and integration with third party payers (Stripe) may not be quite as robust as a standalone boutique module, but it is steadily getting more robust. Newly enhanced custom reporting tools are also filling a gap that existed two years ago.