Technology is becoming more and more accessible to nonprofit organizations. In the, shall we say, olden days, there were only 2-3 fundraising software options for the space. In recent years the nonprofits fundraising software industry and proliferated and democratized. The end result is that nonprofits have more choices. They aren’t forced to go with the overwhelming behemoth (Blackbaud) that plagues them with cold calls or the seemingly free and popular, yet not usable software (Salesforce). There are myriad options available that offer everything from wealth screening and predictive analytics to more modest products that offer ease of use and beautiful user interface.
For this article we reviewed and saw demos of 10 products that target nonprofits. These companies were founded within the last 8 years. Here are our top 3 choices:
- LiveImpact (www.liveimpact.org)– The concept here is that instead of using a database tool, an email marketing software, event ticketing apps, volunteer software, and online giving tools, they offer a single platform that have their own native applications that are integrated in the back end. The value proposition was certainly interesting. Imagine not having 5-7 different products to manage. LiveImpact showed us a great demo and it feels like they know where nonprofits are coming from. Their whole team practically worked in nonprofits prior to launching the company 5 years ago. The icing on the cake was that they offer unlimited logins, unlimited constituent records, no credit card fees, and I saw how easy it is to customize. The user interface was one of the best we’ve seen, ever. It blew Raiser’s Edge and Salesforce out of the water. LiveImpact also integrates with G Suite and Quickbooks which can be huge wins for nonprofits using those tools.
- Donor Box (donorbox.com) – This is one of the cleanest looking online donation button tools we’ve seen recently. If you are looking just for an online donation button to plug into your website, Donor Box does it well. They also accept international donations which we’ve heard can be troublesome for the other donation button tools. Donor Box is a good solution for school groups, youth sports teams, and local 4H clubs.
- com (generosity.com) – this is a service of Indigogo. What’s nice about Generosity is that they offer free crowdfunding pages for causes and for individuals (think Go Fund Me) and there are no mandatory fees. Donors can choose to ‘tip’ Generosity for the service but it’s completely optional. There isn’t any customization beyond the bare minimum of being able to add a picture, a bio, goal, and notes about the cause.