Joined on 05-12-2008
TechSoup Member
Hi! I'm Buntport Theater in Denver and I am trying to set up a Donor mangagement system that is.... I guess... no longer in Business? It's Nonprofit Books from QB or from Microsoft... not sure... but I keep getting an error and they have no support to offer becasue I believe they are out of business. If you can help me or know anything about this, let me know.
Thanks
Hi, Buntport Theater,
Yes, you are right, Nonprofit Books is out of business. Other people have posted here in the forum about not being able to connect with anyone. See the last few posts in
this thread.
Hope that helps,
Joined on 05-12-2008
TechSoup Member
Thanks for the reply! Now I don't know what to do. I have a really small nonprofit, so a friend of mine told me to try ebase.org... but now it looks as though they are gone as well. I can't get their page to come up. Any sugestions for some really cheap donor management... or free donor mangagement? I don't need accounting... just the donor stuff. Let me know.
Dear Buntport Theater,
Looks like you've had two strikes in a row. But there's hope. Yes, NonprofitBooks is gone, and eBase is no longer supported. But there are lots of other choices. Idealware published
A Few Good Tools: Low-Cost Constituent Databases and
Comparing Lower-Cost Online Integrated Applications. I wrote up a summary of an extensive TechSoup discussion of
Inexpensive Donor Databases a few years ago. Some products and prices have changed (eBase was listed) but it will get you in the ballpark. And there are lots of other articles in
the Databases section of TechSoup's Learning Center, including a vendor comparison. I've also compiled links to lots of
donor database resources on my website.
Before you start looking at vendors, though, you need to do some warm-up exercises (to continue the baseball metaphor). Otherwise, you'll just be swinging wildly. You need to think about what you need to track and what kinds of reports you need. Does the database need to talk to other systems, like your Accounting database or a web site? Does it need to have other features like the ability to send mass emails, accept donations online, track volunteers, or manage events? Once you have a list of your requirements, you'll need to prioritize them, since you probably can't afford (or find) everything you've thought of. Then you can look at databases and make sure they can meet your top needs.
The articles mentioned above will help you go through this process. Write back if you have more questions.
Robert
Joined on 05-12-2008
TechSoup Member
Thank you so much for taking the time and giving me some true sound advise. I am in no way computer savy or know where to start and I really thank you for you help. Thanks a bunch. I will start my list making and see what I can come up with. What are your opinions on etapestry?
The two Idealware articles talk about eTapestry, so be sure to look there. You can also search TechSoup for eTapestry (and any other systems that interest you) and find comments from users.
However, I urge you to do your own research. You can find nonprofits that love or hate any database. While there are certainly flaky vendors and bad software out there, most of the problems I see are due to a bad fit between the software and the client.
Robert
Joined on 06-20-2005
TechSoup Member
There's a lot of good information in those articles. And I have a differing view on the vendor/client fit. Certainly that can be the case, and I've found that once I've done the research to match my needs with a client's offerings, talking to users is really helpful. All software fails at some point, and it's good to know at what point it fails and how the vendor responds once it does.
We have used eTapestry for 4 years or so and are available for questions (bob@livingcompassion.org)
Bob
Joined on 05-12-2008
TechSoup Member
It just seems like so much research... which is hard if you really don't know what you want or need. I am kind of excited about etapestry because it is free... at least it would be for us becuase we don't have more than 500 donors... however, we would'nt be using most of what they offer. We really just need the donor management part. Not the email or whatever the other stuff was. Then I was thinking maybe we could just use our filemaker pro to do this. What do you know about filemaker pro working in this capacity and how?
Hi, Buntport
Yes, it is a lot of research, and hard to do when you don't have experience using donor management software.
My feeling is that you would do best to start with a simple inexpensive database that has been designed for donor management. A simple donor management program can actually teach you a lot about what you do need. It will give you ideas, by having the features that allow you to do things, which you may or may not have thought about.
You will learn as you go. Maybe that simple one will be all you will ever need. If you need more sooner or later, you will then have more experience to choose with and won't have invested a large amount of money.
Hope that helps,
Dear Buntport,
Yes, it is a lot of research. Sorry.
Sasha's suggestion is sound -- you can start with an inexpensive system and learn as you go. But keep in mind that you'll be investing staff time in addition to whatever the database costs. After spending that time, there's a risk that you'll be so invested in your starter system that you'll be reluctant to change when you need to. But you'll be learning a lot, and at least you won't be throwing out an expensive piece of software.
You mentioned eTapestry earlier. They offer it for free for one user and up to 500 records, so you can easily try it out. Many other vendors will let you try a demo version for 30 days.
You also asked about FileMaker Pro. Do you mean their
FileMaker Donations product, or building your own database using FileMaker? I urge caution about the latter course. Doing it right will require a programmer's help and a lot of staff time. Your staff will need to help design and test the system, and it will only do what you make it do. I think you have a higher chance of success, and in less time, if you find a commercial database that already does what you need. But yes, that requires research.
Robert
Joined on 05-12-2008
TechSoup Member
I was thinking I could build it myself but after looking at it, it does seem like a bit of an undertaking. I am going to go with etapestry for now and just see. Thanks a bunch.
Joined on 06-05-2007
TechSoup Member
we used filemaker pro with the filemaker donations 2.0 database, and it was ok. it didn't meet our needs because with our 5000 donors is was too slow, and i found it impossible to customize and the tech support was mediocre at best; there's no "donations 2.0 tech team," just the general filemaker inc tech support crew. not a lot of help.
you can have my copy of donations 2.0 if you want it. it requires filemaker 7 or newer.
i spent a week to convert our data to ebase before finding out that 1. ebase does not work correctly in mac 10.5 or windows vista and 2. there's currently no development or schedule for an updated version.
i am not looking at other filemaker pro based donor tracking packages, and one is from one of the ex-ebase developers. there's a few out there but i have not found one i think is great yet.
Joined on 05-09-2008
TechSoup Member
I've used eTapestry for our small nonprofit. It took a bit of time, but it is fairly flexible, and the cost can't be beat!
Currently , we use it for tracking donors - individual, corporations & foundations - and not yet for prospect management and communications.
I do wish they'd create some better ability for managing foundation grant requests - we have jury-rigged that by using calendar due dates, but requires extra data entry.
The hard part is getting our E.D. to update her conversations and meetings into eTapestry. She's not very computer literate and she defaults to her long-used "daily to-do list" to track actions. She has begun to see that eTapestry can help by getting data in a shared environment, so hopefully we'll improve our fundraising in the coming year.
Joined on 10-30-2007
TechSoup Member
Greetings from Point Reyes Station in California. We too are looking to improve our donor db and contact management resources. Has anyone had any experience with civiCRM?
Hi,
There's an active discussion going on about
CiviCRM in the Open Source forum here at TechSoup. You might want to jump in there and ask any questions you have~!
Best wishes,