What’s the Best Fundraising Software Out There? Our Top Pick
Whether you’re investing in fundraising software for the first time or looking to switch providers, it can be overwhelming to wade through all of the options on the market. At some point in your research, they all start to blend together, making it nearly impossible to decide on a particular platform.
That’s why we’ve created this guide to choosing fundraising software. We’ve taken the time to compare three popular platforms and determine which is the best to guide your software buying process. Follow along to learn which provider we recommend and why they stand out against the competition.
What’s the best fundraising software on the market?
According to our research, the best fundraising software on the market is Bloomerang. Bloomerang is a donor management system used by over 23,000 nonprofits. The platform consistently receives awards from software review sites like G2, Capterra, and GetApp for being a leader in the nonprofit space and offering an excellent user experience.
Bloomerang is known for creating a seamless giving experience and helping nonprofits build deeper relationships with their supporters. Through the platform, you can access a variety of donor, volunteer, and membership management tools to create and maintain a thriving community for your organization.
Through the data you can store and insights you can generate using Bloomerang, your nonprofit’s leaders can make well-informed decisions that set your organization up for long-term success.
What are the other fundraising software options?
While Bloomerang is our top choice for fundraising software, there are other providers out there. Check out two of the other main players in the fundraising software space.
DonorPerfect
DonorPerfect is primarily a nonprofit constituent relationship management platform (CRM) with fundraising features. Through DonorPerfect, nonprofit professionals can communicate with donors, collect online contributions, process donations, host fundraising events, and create custom reports. Although I used this software before and found it less intuitive.
Neon CRM
Neon CRM offers separate solutions for supporter management, website management, peer-to-peer fundraising, and events and ticketing. Nonprofits can scale the CRM up or down based on their total revenue. I have clients who like Neon CRM, but others who have reported serious challenges. I have never heard a complaint from my clients about Bloomerang.
How comprehensive is each fundraising software?
When exploring Bloomerang, we found a wide array of features, including:
Donor database that allows you to store and leverage supporter data
Donor profiles where you can dig deeper into your relationship with each individual supporter
Data management tools with automatic daily updates to supporter addresses, birth years, and wealth information
Volunteer management tools to streamline volunteer recruitment, scheduling, and communication
Membership management tools to grow and retain your member base
Built-in email and direct mail tools to create personalized communications and marketing campaigns
Reporting and analytics to quantify impact and fundraising goal progress
Fundraising tools, such as mobile-friendly donation forms, recurring giving options, flexible payment processing, event management, peer-to-peer fundraising, and auction support
Mobile app so you can boost donations from anywhere
No matter your organization’s goals, Bloomerang’s all-in-one platform can launch you to success with nonprofit-tested and approved features.
DonorPerfect also offers a variety of features, such as a donor database, donor profiles, donation forms, marketing tools, fundraising events, payment processing, reporting and analytics, and a mobile app. Additionally, Neon CRM has features that include a donor database, donation forms, marketing tools, event management, volunteer management, membership management, and fundraising tools that focus on peer-to-peer fundraising.
Although all three of these solutions are fairly comprehensive, Bloomerang takes the cake as the most comprehensive fundraising software. While DonorPerfect and Neon CRM have some of the unique features of Bloomerang—such as a mobile app and volunteer/membership management, respectively—Bloomerang has all of these features and more, combining the best of what fundraising software has to offer in one platform.
Bloomerang also offers specialized features that help nonprofits get a fuller picture of each individual donor. From wealth insights at no extra cost to the Generosity Score™, an exclusive donor metric, Bloomerang customers can easily identify top major gift candidates and steward these supporters accordingly.
Additionally, Bloomerang’s partnership with Qgiv has truly changed the game when it comes to nonprofit software. Bloomerang’s powerful donor database combined with Qgiv’s supreme fundraising tools allows you to deepen your donor relationships and unlock truly dynamic fundraising opportunities.
How user-friendly is each fundraising software?
Bloomerang is a lightweight donor management system designed with users in mind. This fundraising software scores an impressive 9.3 in Ease of Use on G2, whereas DonorPerfect scores an 8.3 and Neon CRM scores a 7.9.
Bloomerang is built for nonprofits to immediately start using it with little to no training required, receiving an 8.7 in the Ease of Setup category (DonorPerfect scores an 8.3, and Neon CRN scores a 7.7). However, if you do need extra help, Bloomerang has award-winning customer support that responds to all tickets within 24 business hours, free guides and templates, webinars, and the Bloomerang Academy that can help you get the most out of the platform.
Don’t take it from just us that Bloomerang’s the most user-friendly fundraising software out there. Check out these customer reviews that highlight the platform’s usability:
“I've used a lot of CRMs including RE, DonorPerfect, and others. Compared to those, Bloomerang is by far the best, easiest to use, and comes with some great resources and support. They frequently add or update features that are helpful.” - Chelsea P. (G2 Review)
“Our previous database, [Neon One], was very cumbersome and difficult to train new people to use…I find Bloomerang to be very intuitive and powerful, and much more user-friendly than any of the other three other databases I’ve used in my development career.” - Troy Salsbury, Director of Operations & Development, Humane Society of South Coastal Georgia (Bloomerang Success Story)
What integrations does each fundraising software offer?
Integrations are an important consideration when choosing fundraising software because they can dramatically expand a platform’s functionality. Bloomerang offers three types of integrations to help users get the most out of their software:
Built-in. Bloomerang’s built-in integrations grant access to additional insights at no extra cost. With the built-in DonorSearch integration, users get unparalleled access to donor giving potential data to power their fundraising plans. Additionally, the built-in TrueGivers integration provides nightly data stewardship updates to ensure your constituent data is always up-to-date.
Premier. This category refers to Bloomerang’s direct integrations with popular apps, most notably Qgiv. Bloomerang also has direct integrations with QuickBooks, Constant Contact, FundraiseUp, Mailchimp, Handbid, and Gratavid.
Zapier. Via Zapier, Bloomerang users unlock access to over 5,000 additional integrations, including Slack, Google Analytics, Salesforce, PayPal, Canva, Zoom, Stripe, Shopify, Instagram, and Facebook.
DonorPerfect integrates with many of the same platforms that Bloomerang does, including Constant Contact, DonorSearch, Qgiv, and QuickBooks. However, Bloomerang’s integrations are still more robust.
While DonorPerfect relies on its Constant Contact integration for email marketing, Bloomerang has its own built-in email marketing tools, integration with Constant Contact, and integrations with other email marketing providers like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and Klaviyo to give users more choice and control over their email marketing efforts. Additionally, since Qgiv is now a part of Bloomerang, it works seamlessly with the donor management system and is easy to add to your existing Bloomerang CRM.
Lastly, DonorPerfect doesn’t offer Zapier integrations, preventing users from accessing over 5,000 helpful integrations that Bloomerang users can easily take advantage of.
In terms of Neon CRM, the platform has similar integrations to Bloomerang, including FundraiseUp, DonorSearch, TrueGivers, QuickBooks, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Zapier. However, they don’t currently integrate with Qgiv, which grants Bloomerang users access to peer-to-peer fundraising, event management, auction, and text-to-give tools.
Although Neon CRM integrates with both of Bloomerang’s built-in integrations, Bloomerang’s unique relationship with DonorSearch and TrueGivers provides prospect insights and data updates with no extra setup or costs needed.
My Final Verdict
After researching multiple fundraising software options on the market, Bloomerang is the clear choice. Whether you’re looking for a traditional nonprofit CRM, volunteer management features, membership management capabilities, fundraising tools, donation forms, email and direct mail marketing, or any combination of these elements, Bloomerang has you covered. If I were on the market for software this would be my first pick for my own nonprofit.
To get started with Bloomerang and take your nonprofit’s giving experience to the next level, book a demo today.
