DonorView Reviews

Pros

DonorView is the fundraiser's fundraising platform. 1 spot for events, donations, pledges, etc. It's great!

Cons

The hardest thing is the training. It's not difficult, but you need to be able to do some self-directed learning or get help 1 on 1. It's intuitive, but takes a minute to understand the terms and vocabulary.

Pros

Everything is in one place. Setting up the events pages are fairly intuitive and easy to figure out. CRM is easy to use and has a lot of fields for information. Auction forms look nice.

Cons

Using the event check in and getting peoples cards swiped when they check in. Takes too long, had to do a lot of manual entries. Cannot get a total for each attendee on what they purchased during the event and we cannot see an itemized invoice. Very difficult to issue a refund because you cannot find where to do it. Too many options.

Pros

The program has many options. It's intriguing to have an all-in-one program for the price.

Cons

This program is not at all intuitive. Support is awful. We pay for a service plan, call support, and receive an email. It's much more efficient to email, but then the level of support depends on who is answering.

We have a three year contract. For two years, we've used the program for our annual fundraiser and auction. For two years, we've had multiple complaints from users, which I've outlined below. When I address them via email to support, I'm told that they will work on providing support but there is nothing they can do to remedy the problem.

Overall, the program requires MULTIPLE clicks to complete a task. At least 3, most often 6.

Here is the issue from our fundraiser this year, which is similar to last year's event:

We needed something to trigger that a recurring payment was entered incorrectly from a donor so we could stop that from happening. We also needed something that would tell the donor that they had set up a recurring payment and it was about to be taken out, so they could fix this before it even happened. Because neither happened, the donation was taken, and the donor was unhappy while we had to refund the donation, which took several days.

Related to our event and auction on Sept. 27:

Multiple issues logging in to the event module and the auction module. The program would just spin, and then not let donors in. Donors would try to go back into the program once they were in it, only for the program to tell them they didn’t have an account or their account wasn’t verified, but I sat with them to do the verification. This happened to our Treasurer; she’s familiar with how to use technology. She was so frustrated, she decided not to bid on anything. We had 5G internet; this was not an onsite wifi or local Internet problem.

Nothing to trigger a donor that they already had an account. People didn’t look at “Constituent.” That’s not language they use. We’ve now spent countless hours to clean up the database because people created up to 7 accounts trying to bid for the auction. I’ll relate this to the above problem that people would reenter information in order to bid.

There were no emails to participants and no texting to share that they had been outbid, so people didn’t up their bids. We needed that to happen.

People couldn’t complete bids or purchases once begun; the program would kick them out and they would need to sign in again, even if they had been signed in minutes before. Donors would come to us to ask for help, and we couldn’t see any notes or faults on our end as administrators.

Some participants received emails that they won when they were outbid in the last minute – there was a lag in the processing time in the program and the email went out. I closed the auction at 8:35 and sent out emails a minute or so later.

When donors would choose to Buy It Now, they would try to complete the payment, and it would not show sold until minutes later, or would show as remaining open. We would refresh screens and must complete the transaction for them. There were times where I would try to complete the transaction for them, and it would not complete. The Internet was active and on; this was not a case of poor Internet, once again.

Because our donors see Donorview as us, this reflects incredibly poorly on us and the quality of the event, in addition to discouraging bidders from participating. We’ve had multiple complaints about the use of the program, and some saying that we needed to change it if they would participate with us again.

Pros

Our team was quite impressed with multiple features DonorView has to offer when we first saw the Demo. Prior to switching over to DonorView, our organization used four software vendors to accomplish our goals.

Cons

So far nothing specific to report! The software has so many features that our team hasn't had any need to explore other features that may be relevant to other nonprofit organizations.

Pros

DonorView makes contacting and keeping our donors, sponsor and community members apprised of what our organization is doing easy. To have one system to handle donations, fundraising, volunteer times, sponsorships, grants, and marketing has cut down on the time we spend on just data entry alone. The ability to have a system in place where any staff member or board member can access all the information about what keeps the organization going no matter where they are at has proven to be beneficial time and time again. I am amazed at everything this system has allowed us to do and highly recommend it.

Cons

No system is perfect but DonorView is always looking for ways to improve the system based on recommendations from it's clients. The initial set up of the system was rather time consuming but well worth it in the end.

Pros

The IDEA that it could do so much for such a great price.

Cons

That it was like working with a program from the 1990's.

Pros

It has a lot of potential that our organization has not tapped. There is room for us to grow within the product.

Cons

I would like more flexibility in designing an event/webpage.

Pros

Onboarding process was very well supported and integration was pretty smooth. This is a pretty intuitive CRM platform with more features than I got to use in the year I subscribed.

Cons

Even though it has a quickbooks integration feature, that process on a daily basis with Quickbooks desktop is cumbersome and could generate some issues. If using Quickbooks on-line, this process looks a lot simpler, but did not try it.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to DonorView

Pros

One of the most amazing things about DonorView is the level of prompt, useful support that is available. The team is always there to answer questions and help with issues - and that is greatly appreciated, especially when first getting started with the program!

Cons

The one issue that sometimes comes up is that the pages will take a while to load and sometimes hang altogether. Most of the time the page response is really swift - but occasionally it will get really slow and that can be frustrating.

Pros

The overview of all events summaries and how easy it is to export reporting

Cons

It doesn't have all of the event planning abilities that I need.

Pros

Fairly easy to use. Onboarding was great as well as their website builder.

Cons

I couldn’t afford the full support package and getting help is hard through emails only. I prefer to talk to customer support.

Pros

DonorView makes things pretty easy when it comes to sending out tax letters and thank you notes for tax season. It's also a good price I'd say, especially one that is accessible to a small nonprofit. Helpful videos as well!

Cons

They know this, but the reporting feature isn't great. Sounds like improvements are on the way, and the staff will always help with more complicated situations.

Pros

The software is intuitive for most functions and written and video instructions are available if not.

Cons

We have not had good success using the peer to peer fundraising function

Pros

I like the ease of use. We used to have a different software that you almost needed to be a programmer to understand how to run simple reports. Donorview makes reports very easy and is easy to train new users on how to use the software as well.

Cons

The mailmerge feature for thank you letters ....

Pros

We moved our database from a FileMaker system which was customized for us but was OLD and was housed on a harddrive instead of the cloud. Additionally, we used an email software, event software, an application/forms software and paypal and NONE of the programs talked to one another. All updates to the database were manual and time consuming. When we moved to Donorview it was such a breath of fresh air to have access to our database anytime/anywhere. Additionally, its exceptionally helpful to have purchases, events and donations associated with client records. We do a lot of events and the event software works flawlessly almost every single time. We also have been able to get creative with the forms/surveys function and recreate documents like waivers and applications in that system. Again, extremely helpful to have applications associated with records instead of having to manually update. Overall, we are so grateful to have a software that does pretty much everything we need it to do. We also appreciate the pricepoint for the amount of functionality that we have. We are a small non-profit so it was a good mid-range product that was accessible to us.

Cons

Donorview has an incredible breadth of functionality that is hard to find all in one software. If you analyze any one of these features by itself (event ticketing, email marketing, surveys etc) there is a bit less functionality and is less user-friendly than if you paid for any of those items individuallyl on their own. (For example, our old ticketing software gave us a few more options and was a bit easier to set up) However, having all that functionality ALL in one place at an affordable price really makes up for those minor inconveniences. (Ex. Our old ticketing system did NOT talk to our database so we had to do waivers/tracking manually which was a real pain in the butt). Overall, it has been totally worth the switch. Also, Donorview seems to be very responsive to suggestions and ideas and as a young company seems to be trying to make constant improvements in their system based on feedback. I imagine that as feedback comes in user-friendlyness will just continue to improve!,

Pros

I primarily work with the financial options available in DonorView. Before using this software, we were using more than one software system to accomplish our needs, and by switching to DonorView, we were able to consolidate into one system instead. They have a text feature that allows your constituents to easily give via their phone. It is very user friendly as an administrator to process one-time gifts and/or set up monthly giving for your constituents. We also have a giving page on our website that links directly to our account with DonorView via their portal. On the giving page you have the option to set quick give buttons ($25, $50, $100, $500, etc.) or there is an "Other" button where the user can choose the amount they would like to give. You can also set up giving for a one-time gift or recurring gifts (with options of weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) Donors can create logins and save credit/debit cards to their profiles so that they don't have to enter that information for each gift. In closing, you have the option to email giving statements at the end of the year which makes it easy to send and quick for your constituents to receive. You can also send a personal letter with the giving statements if you wish.

Cons

The text-to-give feature brings up a form for the user to fill out in order to give. I know some text-to-give platforms offer the ability to just text the amount you want to give to the number instead of filling out a form every time. I think this is more of a personal preference for the user, but I can see how texting the number is quick and easy, where filling out a form takes a little extra time.

Pros

DonorView empowers us to communicate effectively and efficiently with our donor base.

Cons

What I like least about DonorView is that I don't have the time to take advantage of tools that we aren't using.

Pros

I really like DonorView. There was a bit of a learning curve but you will have that with any new software. Any time I have questions or problems, they have been very quick to answer or to figure out what is causing the problem (and sometimes even letting me know that the problem is me). My biggest problem was figuring out the report function (I still have some problems but again I just send an email and they walk me through it). We looked at a few different options and by far this was the best deal around. I am very pleased with DonorView. In fact someone in our organization mentioned about maybe looking into changing software and I flat out told them that I like using donor view, it is very user friendly and if they decided to change it would be without me. That is how much I like using DonorView.

Cons

With our previous software our donors could be listed as a married couple but with DonorView (as with other softwares we looked) at each person is an individual and then put into a relationship. Not only did it significantly increase our donor base but it just didn't work for us so I ended up merging the married couples together to create one donor instead of two. It would have been nice to have that option of keeping them a married couple at the beginning of our conversion so that I wouldn't have had to do all the merging (which took quite a bit of time).

Pros

The events are very thorough and concise.

Cons

Would like in memory to be on every aspect, such as events.

Pros

The best part about DonorView for our organization is that it fills our need of being an all-in-one software that allows us to do donor tracking/processing/management, event registration, email communication, student and volunteer tracking, and much more.

Cons

The thing we like least about DonorView is that it is taking us a little while to get used to a new system and we have found things along the way that needed slight adjustments to make them work for our specific needs. Though this has been a small hurdle for our organization, DonorView has been very helpful in providing continued training and has been very willing to work with us to make the software work for us.

Pros

The ease to see trends in giving. The ability of DonorView to be integrated with QuickBooks. The ease of building reports.

Cons

Lack of being able to customize donation pages.

Pros

I just started using the software within the past year. It has been an easy transition and continues to be as I ask for help with certain areas and suggest improvements. I find the customer service team always timely and knowledgeable. I look forward to increasing my knowledge base with the software as I continue to use it and gain better use of the overall functionality. I appreciate all the time that the team has put into cleaning up our old data to make it work for DV.

Cons

The only suggestion for improvement would be to make the mail merge templating easier to use. I find it difficult to format a letter, especially because I have no experience with HTML. I would prefer to either copy and paste from Word with it working perfectly the first time. I feel as if I always have to do a trial run with a new letter and adjust accordingly.

Pros

So far, myself and my organization has had a great experience with Donorview. The transition period was very simple from our old database since Donorview provided ample support and answered all of our questions and concerns over the transition while also merging our data very quickly. Whenever we have any questions or issues the support team quickly responds and helps resolve any issues. My team and I are always excited to see the new features and updates donorview creates as it is always bigger and better. Thank you to the donorview team for such an amazing diverse software!

Cons

The reporting is the part that we struggle the most with, it is not as robust as our old database so that has been a struggle in terms of acquiring donor retention reports with ease. I know that this will soon be an issue of the past as the software continues to develop.

Pros

I like the great customer service. They are very responsive to our needs. We have been with Donorview for a few years. We are happy that they take our suggestions seriously and are able to add features to the software as we have needed them. It has been very helpful. We like Donorview because we were able to combine multiple softwares we were using and now just have one.

Cons

I wish that we could use our current ACH provider for online donations. This would save us cost and additional paperwork.

Pros

We use the email customer service option. The promptness of reply on our requests is outstanding. They also offer a phone assist option but they do so good with email that the telephone response option is not necessary.

Cons

you could provide our service for FREE, but other than not charging us (insert smiley face here) I do not think there is anything we wish you would do better.