Network For Good

Vorteile: For three years, I worked at grassroots nonprofit that has been around for more than 2 decades. Network for Good was the donation service we used to accept all online donations. Trusted among lifetime donor/philanthropist types
It seems like many boomer-aged donors who have been engaged in long-term philanthropy are familiar with and trust the website. Donation Pages:
Donors can indicate whether they want to make a one-time donation or a recurring monthly donation. As an admin you can pre-set donation amounts and/or let donor indicate any amount that they would like to donate (although there is a minimum donation amount). Network for Good also allows you to customize a set number of campaign pages for no additional charge to their standard subscription fee. As a legacy customer, our non-profit enjoyed the benefit of a grandfathered-in lower monthly rate in addition to access to ConstantContact, which was great. Reports:
You could pull donor reports (download as excel) by dates and campaign type and then sort by criteria. Customer service was very good. Wait times were always short and phone reps were very knowledgeable and able to help.

Nachteile: The interface for customizing donation pages was truly terrible. Even though Network for Good provided design template options, it was very challenging to make the text appear on the page as it was supposed to. You had to go through like 10 different screen categories, in order, and fill out little forms containing the information that you would want to be displayed. When you specify donation amounts, you need to enter them in the order that is to appear lest you want to spend thirty minutes toggling arrows only to have the site freeze. If the nonprofit I was at didn't have the legacy version that included ConstantContact, I would have recommended getting rid of the subscription. The donation processing fee is no less than that of any other payment processing service. In fact, other sites that do not charge a monthly usage fee (gofundme, eventbrite, etc.) provide much better functionality and even other bonus services. I get that the site wants to be super secure and that as nonprofit you want to collect as much donor info as possible, but it would be great if people could make a donation without having to fill out ALL of their personal information: name, address + payment address (if different), phone and email. I think that this deters younger donors or anyone who wants to donate quickly/impulse donations.

Kommentare: Our small nonprofit struggled with finding a way to manage our donors and Network For Good (NFG) provided a perfect solution. The amount of time I save with the software automating many of the data entry I used to do manually is incredible. That it is cloud based and multiple users can access means that I am no longer the only person who can access our financial numbers and donor contacts, so the bookkeeper and key stakeholders can access the information they need without having to go through me.

Vorteile: -Time saving through data automation
-Ease of use, both for understanding the system and navigation through the pages
-Quick response from customer support << so important!
-Willingness of customer support to take suggestions to improve the database
-The increase in donors selecting options that directly increase giving, specifically paying processing fees and opting for recurring donations, is making a big difference to our organization's bottom line
-Clear visual represenations of the data to quickly understand recent activity and to see the financial progress
-Integrated emailing through Constant Contact--a system we already use--helps to communicate easier with small segments of our donors, making them feel more into the organization
-Customizable event registration integrated into the database is HUGE for us since a large portion of our donations are collected in relation to trips and dinners.

Nachteile: -The emails sent through the database using Constant Contact aren't completely customizable, I would like to have the link color be controllable so our visual branding is consistent across platforms.
-The two portals to access the NFG websites (donor database and the dashboard for our the account) were difficult to differentiate at first since they both open to a dashboard--it took weeks for my people to understand the difference (my people tend to be over 65 and less computer savvy)
-Custom questions asked during checkout still have to be entered manually--this should be automated
-I am still new to the system and discovering things that are a little off from what I am used to with the previous way we dealt with our donors, however, NFG is very responsive to helping me find work arounds that utilize the features of the software