For Non-Profits, Common Ground vs. Raiser's Edge? 97
lanimreT writes "I work at a medium-sized non-profit organization. We've been considering a switch from our current constituent relationship manager (CRM) The Raiser's Edge to Common Ground, a non-profit-focused CRM built on SalesForce. I would like to hear from other organizations that have already done this. What features are present in Raiser's Edge but missing in Common Ground? Is your workflow improved by the new software? If you had it to do over again, would you make the switch?"
heh (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a large non-profit. We use Peoplesoft with Goldmine and we are moving to Siebel for the donations/fund development systems I think. I'm out of that side now. Outside the US for our smaller offices we use home grown stuff.
I'm curious if there are too many people here with hands on with both these packages, it seems a pretty niche type thing to have worked with either. But maybe I'm wrong.
There's a desktop CRM solution - TntMPD [tntware.com] that has been extended out to support larger endeavors. It's Free as in Beer - not FOSS though. I use it, (I raise the funds that cover the cost of my employment myself) and I couldn't imagine life without it. So I thought I'd throw that out there for anyone that might be interested in the general topic. I wouldn't use if it for an organization system, but it works very nicely to extend data out to the people doing the actual fund development. We don't do central fund raising so we've got thousands of people doing that.
I wonder what it would take to tweak a FOSS solution to fit this need. It would be fun and just looking at the pricing on the two options you've linked, I would think it could be profitable to build and support it.
Similar position here (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm a 11+ year admin of RE, and yes, while the system does have serious issues, and some areas can be downright frustrating to deal with, it is the best out there.
CivicCRM, an open source db solution is one thing that I've been looking at as an alternative, however just for the query building system in RE, there's nothing out there that I've seen that even comes close, excluding large Oracle systems.
Re:heh (Score:5, Interesting)
> I wonder what it would take to tweak a FOSS solution to fit this need.
Uh, yeah. Done. The FOSS answer to this is called CiviCRM. Works pretty well, but it's always a question of meeting organization needs to the tech solution -- YMMV. http://civicrm.org/aboutcivicrm [civicrm.org]
My org (nonprofit, ~1.5M annual budget, data creators) uses Salesforce.com, which is donated to us gratis by the Salesforce Foundation. Saelsforce.com is the shit. Common Ground is just a rebranded version of Salesforce.com, presumably because people in the social sector are opposed to both sales and force.
one NPO CTO's experience w/RE and CIviCRM... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://yergler.net/blog/2010/04/22/civicon-plenary-what-are-we-paying-for/ [yergler.net]
As a donor, what I would like from non-profits... (Score:5, Interesting)
b) Please don't send me unsolicited materials, you are wasting your (our) money and I resent that a portion of my donation is being churned back into solicitations and not the original purpose.
c) Don't sell my name to other charities. I know, it is a fund raiser (maybe?) but I will NOT respond to their solicitations. They are wasting their money sending me pleas...
d) Please remove my name from your list when I ask, (usually the "c" listers, but sometimes the "a" lister too!). If I go thru the trouble of asking to be removed, I will REALLY not EVER donate to that organization.
e) Just because the return address on my envelope doesn't match the address on the check I am still just one person. Please don't harvest this extra info into your database and SEND ME TWO of everything! What a double waste of money.
f) It would be nice if you sent the tax-deduction acknowledgment letter, but just once at the end of the year is fine.
BTW - I do check the efficacy [charitynavigator.org] of your charity before I give.
I don't mean to be dickish about this, but there are more good causes than I can support, so this is just part of how I chose which to give to.
In short, your CRM software should allow you to check the "hey this guy will give us money if we DON'T bug him" box.
Re:heh (Score:3, Interesting)
Just curious, but:
Have you looked at CiviCRM [civicrm.org]?
If so, in what areas did you find to be lacking? What are your criteria for a "great" CRM solution?
Your needs may vary, but for our organization, Civi turned out to be superior to the commercial solutions available.
Re:heh (Score:4, Interesting)
As a volunteer, what I would like from donors. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your complaint (e) is right on the mark. There were some supporters who had no less than 5 separate entries in the database. Every time they sent a check or came to event, apparently they were re-entered. Being a Senate campaign, apparently they didn't think it was worth the trouble of eliminating duplicates, and besides, it made it look like there were more supporters than there really were.
As far as (b), we tended to add everyone who gave an email address to the email list unless they specifically opted out. If we've got your email address, it is much cheaper for us to email you rather than pay postage.
I also sympathize with (a). My fraternity volunteered to help out with a telethon. Came to find out the job they gave us was to punish all the people who had donated the previous year by calling them up and asking them to donate again this year! I called a few people, but felt like too much of a dick, so I sandbagged it for the rest of the evening.
Re:Expense for small non-profit (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think very small non-profits need much of a CRM to store their contacts. You can get a lot of mileage out of a cheap web host, Gmail and a spreadsheet.
The thing with non-profits, at least from what I've observed, is they eventually reach a tipping point where the management overhead starts growing out of proportion. You find yourself needing to hire more people, these ones are untrained and certainly not as devoted as the founders, they whine and moan about any repetitive work, so you compensate by upgrading your tech. That's where something like these commercial CRMs might start making sense; your options are :
1. pay a contractor to build it = expensive and poor support
2. hire a junior to build it = crap code and NO support when the kid leaves you for a better job halfway through the project
3. buy an off-the-shelf product that already satisfies a large portion of your needs, comes with documentation and even in-person training, and has has a support hotline for when you need it
People tend to think of non-profits as these angelic organisations that don't make money. Non-profit is just a different business model: same game, alternate rules. Just because you don't turn a profit doesn't mean everyone involved is broke. With all the tax breaks, subsidies and sponsors, even though the company itself doesn't make a profit, you can create a bunch of cushy jobs for everyone. I found a tiny bit of information at http://www.nonprofitstaffing.com/Salary-Surveys-(1).aspx [nonprofitstaffing.com] . Obviously the laws vary widely, but for the most part, non-profits are just business with no real stakeholders.
Re:As a donor, what I would like from non-profits. (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it true, as in backed by data taken from many non-profits and shown to be statistically valid, or is it one of those taken-for-granted truths that everyone THINKS is true, with just enough sporadic validation to make everyone believe it?
I get the odds when it comes to fund raising via mass-mailing -- blather about a good cause and mail enough envelopes and you might make a profit, get half-assed careful about your target audience (ie, no pro-gay mailings to rural Oklahoma, etc) and you are kind of guaranteed a profit.
But I wonder about one-time giving. We've given money to a few charities on a one-time basis before and its amazing the volume of crap you get, over time, without ever re-donating. Years later. I know the per-piece costs are lower than it might seem, but for a $25 donation I'd swear they've wrung a lot of the profit out two years later.
different approach (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been in IT for quite some time now and work for a large nonprofit in the upper midwest that recently moved to common ground/salesforce from a traditional client server solution. In addition to Common Ground I also have access to and work with Raiser's Edge.
The fact of the matter is that people, not software per se, generally determines the effectiveness of whatever solution is applied to the challenge of tracking people, transactions, and the many types of relationships nonprofits need to mange.
Consequently, instead of tossing the proverbial note in a bottle on slashdot and seeing what comes back you should be polling your users, your IT staff, and those that do or can understand what your organization is both capable and incapable of using, supporting, and growing.
Next, organize it, prioritize it, and cost it.
You will find that what you need from a nonprofit-centric crm is unexpected, hard to document, and not easily matched with any one tool on the market. But at least by taking the above approach it is your requirements, and not vendor brochures or the emotive proclamations in this thread (present company included), that will drive your selection process.
For my organization with IN PARTICULAR the common ground/salesforce platform works well. You have different needs, most certainly, and what works for us may not work for you.
Good luck!
Re:heh (Score:3, Interesting)
We're in the process of moving to CiviCRM. Setup was somewhat harder than it should have been, mainly because it wants PHP 5.2, not 5.3, which most of the repos have already switched to. But after installation, it has been smooth sailing. And it's clearly capable of doing the job for us. It is REALLY well thought out for non-profit CRM or "partnership management". All the rough edges are smoothed away, too.
$6M budget, 250 personnel all over the world.
Re:Similar position here (Score:2, Interesting)
Civi's query builder is pretty smooth, as long as you are trying to do ANDs. It will only do relatively simple ORs. But it's got a simple, a complex, and a "Hey, I want to write the SQL myself" mode.
CiviCRM's the answer. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm IT Director for a nonprofit 501(c)3 with $6M budget and 250 people scattered around the world, plus probably that many more heavily involved volunteers.
We tried SugarCRM and it works well for CRM, but isn't non-profit specific, so it doesn't "speak the language". That made it very complicated for non-techies and non-sales people to use.
GoldMine was a small disaster that I pulled the plug on before it became a large disaster.
Raiser's Edge does everything, but is way out of our price range. It is also a pure Microsoft solution, which would be a bummer for our Mac & Linux folks.
We currently are using eTapestry. It does a fine job and is web-based, but it was bought by BlackBaud (Raiser's Edge) who have a long history of buying competitors and killing them off. And while far cheaper than Raiser's Edge, it isn't exactly cheap.
So we're currently in beta for rolling out CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a LAMP/Drupal web-based application. Installation is a little bit of a pain, mainly because the repos have all upgraded to PHP 5.3, but it still wants PHP 5.2. If you have LAMP skills, do it yourself, or if not then just pay one of the plethora of CiviCRM consultants to do it for you; it'll still be loads cheaper than Raiser's Edge.
Once it's installed, it's a dream. Easy to customize. Easy to do data entry, either onesie-twosie, or mass entry. I was able to import a CDF from eTap quickly and easily. Great searching, great duplicate checking. It supports every payment gateway imaginable. And all the little rough edges are smoothed away. This is a product which clearly is well-designed and well-built.
Stop throwing away your money, and just try it. But don't short-change yourself with a cheap little shared hosting job. Colo a box in a datacenter someplace to run this.
Re:check out CiviCRM (Score:3, Interesting)
This is critical. Inevitably, once your operation grows bigger than the "tiny" size, you will need the software to do something it does do (or does very poorly)... Having online support forums is very important, as is the source code.