Kindful

Vorteile: It is better than the system we were using before, which was not a CRM platform. We have the capability to add notes and upload documents to a constituent's record. That's about it.

Nachteile: Our problems with Kindful began with the data upload. Some of our batches were uploaded twice and the support team at Kindful could do nothing to rectify it. Once your data is into the system, it's a complete mess to view. It's organized in abstract boxes across the screen and difficult to filter for the info you need. We were excited that the platform integrated with MailChimp- but this has proven to be an awful integration. Kindful makes note of every time someone clicks on the email, so some records show as many as 20-30 actions for one sent email (apparently when users delete their emails in batches, this heightens the problem). Creating reports in Kindful is essentially impossible. Selecting your filters for output and view fields is difficult (a selection of check boxes organized alphabetically, not categorically). And once you finally create the awful report- you can save it, but can't go back and make any changes to the criteria you've set. So basically, start over. Then you might want to acknowledge your donors- good luck, because the merge fields are basic and dysfunctional, and the letters are ONLY generated as a PDF- so you can't edit them. Even the best of CRM systems doesn't get this perfect, and needs to offer editing capability. I also only learned the hard way that if you upload a gift manually, the system is going to automatically send an acknowledgement to that recipient unless you tell it otherwise. Overall- pay more for a slightly better system. Kindful is one of the cheapest on the market, and I can 100% see why.

Vorteile: Kindful is designed to be part of - not the whole of - a CRM/fund accounting strategy. The upside of this is that you are not pigeonholed into one system forever - it is designed to play nicely with other programs/systems. Once you go through the learning curve, the program is straightforward and easy to use. Customer support is fantastic for questions. I have to manually enter quite a few transactions, and it is much easier to do with Kindful than with Quickbooks. Automatic reports to my board of directors are fantastic. Also, for fund based accounting, this is much simpler to use than quickbooks - I do the math through kindful and my accountant does it through quickbooks - the information is automatically shared through the quickbooks integration. Zapier integration means you can get information in and out of kindful easily. Different price points for different organization sizes is key - a low cost entry point was a big deal for me.

Nachteile: Not the most intuitive layout, so takes some time getting used to, but once you do it is a very powerful tool. Looks good on a desktop, but not on iphone display. Integration with quickbooks is my main goal and is not perfect - numbers sync fine but sometimes followup is necessary to make sure the accounts/funds are credited properly. Would love to see an integration with campaign monitor for emails and a better to-do/task sharing interface (like basecamp).