CharityEngine

For a multi-tenant system, I'm really surprised at the extensibility of the system. Without "customizing" everything, it's really flexible and configurable to meet a lot of different business rules that are unique to my customers. Their data model and ability to query and layer queries is really impressive compared to similar systems in the market.

Hard to say, I think it may be somewhat difficult to set up if you aren't trained on it like my team is as an integration and implementation firm. We work with many similar systems in the market though and I'd say comparatively, it's easier to set up than most other member and donor management systems. I wish it had some additional functionality like the Association Management Systems (AMS) market has around testing, certification and things like that, we could have consolidated down to fewer systems in the stack for our customers who we implemented it for, but that's not what we bought it for. I'm super pleased with what's there.

Query capability. Online forms. Payment processing.

We can't use for generating acknowledgement letters because they won't format correctly. We didn't use initially for email communication, but they have improved that feature. It is very clunky to add or update individual records, requiring user to go in and out of many screens and remember to flag things, such as address is preferred, and remember to click a save button. Far too many steps. It doesn't help with grant management. Event management also is not good. It is difficult and time consuming to record activities (meetings, phone calls) that you have had with your donors, and then they are not exportable on reports.

The convenience, and ease of all fundraising streamlines comes within CharityEngine. From simple donation processing, to online forms, event registrations and individualize marketing tools, CharityEngine is the powerhouse software. CharityEngine continues to improve with each and every release bringing more and more improvements for continued growth in the fundraising segments. Managing our major gifts program through CharityEngine has allowed our gift officers to track opportunities, pledges and payments, reporting and all, in real-time.

Although we integrated CharityEngine just shy of a little over two years ago, it seems like just yesterday! We continue to grow as an organization, and within that growth we continue to grow within CharityEngine. That being said, each and every day I continue to learn more and more that CharityEngine can do. Of course, we run into a hurdle here and there, but fortunately, we have a great support team behind us, and for that fact we really haven’t run into anything we find as a dislike.