Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager Reviews

Pros

The Trail Blazer team is so helpful and getting started is so easy. It is easy to search for the information I need.

Cons

There have been a few things that have been hard to do find to edit.

Pros

Excellent customer support - from a timeliness and issue resolution standpoint. They also offer excellent training and online tutorials.

Cons

I don't really have any complaints. Customizing reports for repetitive use can be challenging but that's mitigated by the excellent customer service

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

We needed a real donor management system

Switched From

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Primarily cost and the ability to migrate our existing data cheaply.

Pros

Constituent tracking: Donor contact info/gifts/registrations. Revenue/expenses reports.

Cons

Biggest complaint is the automatic overloading of donor records when a person purchases multiply tickets. Example: A parent purchases 5 tickets for their family to attend a program/event. TrailBlazer automatically creates 5 records for which only one person is recognized with an email and mailing address. This also promotes between three and four times the amount of records in the system (for which the organization is billed annually) when truly only one person's record is viable. Unfortunately this was not realized initially. Many hours have been spent and continue to be spent merging family records to have accurate records in the system.

Develop of campaign mailings was initially difficult to manage. Media specialist was engaged that integrated a program to allow for the ease of developing campaigns for email distribution.

Originally TB automatically marked a new record as allowable to receive emails (donor choice). A change was implemented in TB around two years ago that eliminated that function. We manage registration records daily by checking them as allowable. The donor then has a choice of "unsubscribing" after receiving their first email.

TB is probably best as a vote tracking software where adults are registered per household and multiply non-usable records are not created.

Alternatives Considered

DonorPerfect

Reasons for Choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Move to a start up nonprofit with no CRM.

Reasons for Switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Pricing and apparent ability to tracking constituent information.

Pros

It tracks all of our income, relationships, churches/volunteers… everything. It has literally been the best single expense that we have spent over the past 10 years! Especially considering that we were using Excel sheets beforehand. It saves us SO much time, the cost is inexpensive, and the amount of time it has saved is well worth the cost which is much lower than the other alternatives we've looked at. It's been worth every penny. It easily pays for itself in time saved alone. Easy to use, and great customer service. If I could wave a wand and make one move to help the state, it would be to provide this to every chapter.

It provides accountability with QuickBooks and has many huge capabilities. Unlike other systems that we've looked into, they have excellent customer support included without extra cost.

The web app is also wonderful. I can pull up information on the fly. If I meet a volunteer and they are curious on how much their church is giving, I can get an answer within a minute through the app.

It also tracks relationships I have, like: which volunteer serves at which club, when they were processed, what training they have, what church they go to, etc all connected. So, I can pull lists of everyone involved from a church, or all the volunteers from a club, etc. I can also see who has made a pledge, find who my top givers are, see how long it's been since people have given, find which events certain people have attended and given at and which ones haven't.

Cons

Any system you go with has a learning curve. There is a learning curve here too. It requires some logical thinking to use well. You tell it what you want and it pulls the information. You can immediately get to work once you know the basics but as you learn new ways to us it, soon you'll become much more efficient.

Email is also a con. It uses html formating. Other services have an easier drop and type interface, templates, and pictures ready to speed up the process. This one requires a little more work. But once you have templates built, it works fine... AND the trailblazer staff will help you build a template if desired. Plus there are great help article and videos to walk you through everything you may want. They have also made some great improvements recently in this area too.

Alternatives Considered

Bloomerang, Blackbaud eTapestry and Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Customer service was terrible - especially for us as new costumers. If it was that bad while we were coming on board, it was a poor testament of how it could be once we were long time patrons. Plus, they wanted to bill us for customer service. Our information being imported was a mess in their system and we were not given any help or guidance on how to fix it. We also ran into issues trying to get reports and information out of their system.

Switched From

Bloomerang

Reasons for Switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Being a small non-profit, price was a main factor that had us consider them. The experience we had with their representatives was the best of all of the demos that we took from the various companies. We trusted that Trailblazer would be there for us and help us out. They remembered us and we felt as though we were valued rather than just another customer.

Pros

The set up was straitforward, and the learning curve wasn't too steep. it was easy to integrate with our payment processor.

Cons

The missing piece was bookkeeping integration and their event registration didn't have an integrated calendar.

Pros

The customer service is what I like best! Someone is always available to help.

Cons

The interface is pretty old-school. There are major improvements needed for creating newsletters that allow the user to be more creative.

Alternatives Considered

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT and Blackbaud eTapestry

Reasons for Switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

It was less expensive and the employees were good at answering my initial questions.

Pros

The response for queries is fantastic.

Cons

Using a MAC makes things a little frustrating.

Alternatives Considered

DonorPerfect and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Ease of queries and common sense nomenclature.

Switched From

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Pros

Donor software can often be out of reach for many “grassroots” charities, however Trailblazer is available at a reasonable price and is easy to use.

Cons

I cannot think of anything that I don’t like

Alternatives Considered

CanadaHelps and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Reasons for Choosing Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

The product wasn’t able to be accessed by multiple users at once

Switched From

CenterPoint Fund Accounting for Nonprofits

Reasons for Switching to Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Cost, and I was also familiar with the product having used it in the past

Pros

As a small post-secondary trade school and non-profit we need the critical functionality that Trailblazer provides to track all our constituents and communicate with them regularly through our electronic newsletter. Trailblazer lets us track financial information accurately, communicate with our friends, donors and alums (either collectively or by segment), to review an individual's history with our organization prior to meeting with them, and to create reports to track our progress against fundraising and engagement goals. My two favorite things about this software is that it is easy to get up and running and the product support team is off-the-charts wonderful with immediate and knowledgeable answers. This product support experience is really unique and is the *key* reason I recommend this software to anybody who asks.

Cons

It's really hard to do drip-marketing campaigns, where we have a sequence of emails to send to particular subsets of individuals. We've found workarounds (thanks to the brilliant support team) but it really is cumbersome.

Pros

Fantastic customer support. Pretty intuitive to navigate. The right level of features for my fundraising program--all the functionality I need, but not too much to clutter my dashboard or brain. Easy to train colleagues.

Cons

Quite challenging to use on a Mac platform, which seems to be the predominant OS in educational/university settings and also among many non-profits. You have to use helper "remote connection" software even to reach the Trailblazer server, and then it looks and works like you're on a PC.

Which leads to my other con: The interface is unimaginably ugly. Looks count, and most other CRMs are now clean and beautiful. Definitely affects the user experience to use attractive sites and software all day, but then to have to switch to early-'90s Windows land for database work.

Also, Trailblazer doesn't work directly with the payment gateway required by the university where we're based. (Cybersource/Secure Acceptance) That means donations aren't entered automatically, but rather we have to import them manually. I see this as more of a limitation by our university than by Trailblazer, but it's still a hassle.

Pros

I like that you can customize and edit your own attributes and query views for columns.
I love how in columns, you can make attributes updatable, and edit them.
I like that you can save queries, though I rarely use the function.

Cons

There's a lot that I dislike about the user experience of this database:
-When you run a query, I wish you could create an attribute and assign it to all donors in the query
-I wish I could update attributes for donors from other search space (e.g. contributions, events, etc)
-I don't like that it's only available on PC, and I have to use remote desktop on my Mac laptop.
-Mailings are really difficult - households aren't very use-friendly. For example, when I want to mail all of our donors, I have to search the donors in contributions, export them, import them to tag with an attribute as donors, then I honestly can't remember the next steps, if very complicated, and if I am creating multiple lists (e.g. donors, Lybunts, non-donors) I have to deduplicate the lists because there is so much overlap, when I just want the system to reflect who is on what list--it's very complicated and time consuming.
-WIth Contributions, the button to "exclude events marked 'non-tax deductible'"to distinguish between sales and donations, is not available in other queries outside the contribution tab.
-Reports are not helpful - unclear if it's including all income, vs. just contributions
-I need to use summaries and pivot tables for most basic tasks, which is very challenging
-Searching and exporting a List of our donors, separated by giving level is very complicated
-Importing - duplicate contacts happen often when names & emails don't merge
-Matching funds & Events is weird & clunky

Pros

Now that I am learning the process it is a bit easier.....very confusing in the beginning

Cons

This software was built on a political platform not a nonprofit. If I had been in my position when it was purchased we would not have purchased......the terminology is not totally based for a nonprofit. Is there a way to change that?

Pros

Trail Blazer functions differently than other databases. Once I was used to how to work with it, I like how much I can do with it. I also like the Attribute feature. It allows me to pull out just what group I want to use.

Cons

I use Trailblazer for people to sign up for workshops and events. I don't like that I can't add items to the registration page. We would love to be able to ask things like what Parish people belong to, a title line, etc.. We also have Deacons, Priests, Bishops and the Archbishop and their titles are always used. When signing up they will sometimes add it to the first names block. Otherwise, I have to go back and add it for any correspondence. Also - some of the columns that I think should always show up are different on all of the queries I use. For instance, it would be helpful if the Title always showed up.

Pros

Being able to access by multiple staff/volunteers from different locations. And the ability to pull information Searches by a variety of Attributes, which can be added to. Use of mass email communications is great and easy to use once templates are set up.

Cons

The cons list has shortened over the last 4 years as the company has upgraded and added to the system.

Pros

The software has many features that have worked well for our group which is a membership based nonprofit. Over the few years that we have had it, the company has made substantial improvements on a continuing basis. However, the assumptions underlying the software's design and features must be a close match to your real world operations or you will likely need to adjust how you do some things to make the software work for you.

However, the software is very adaptive, it has many features we need and quite a few we have not implemented. Also, and this is critical for us, the software support, training and consulting is worth every penny you pay for the annual license and more!

Cons

There are some issues but these are the nature of the beast with a product with so many features. One is the learning curve (although you can restrict access to certain features on a user by use basis to let them "grow" into the system). Another is that for a membership based system there are design assumptions that we have had to "work around" - but the programmers and tech support have been wonderful to make changes, tweaks and suggest alternative ways to get things done.

Pros

I think in some cases it can be user-friendly and in other instances because we don't use it for what it was made to do it is hard to navigate.

Cons

As a non-profit person, there are a lot of things I don't like about it. I think to sum everything up it's bulky and not made to do what I need in the field I'm in.

Pros

I like the fact that anytime I have questions about the software, I can easily talk to the team at Trail Blazer. They have helped walk me through any issues I've encountered. Their team has very promptly answered the phone or email questions, and I appreciate that kind of support.

Cons

I had not filled this section out, but it looks like I must answer this section. I'm very pleased, but my only suggestion would be to make it even more intuitive and update the look so it's more modern and inviting.

Pros

1) ease of entering donations and printing thank you letters with various templates.
2) ability to search for specific donors and send merge letters to them.
3) ability to send year-end donation letters to parishioners.

Cons

The only con is that I thought the IT team would set up my database with the funds and popup fields I gave them so it was up and ready to go when we installed it. The last database we purchased was all set up and ready to go when we installed it. So I had to have several online training sessions to be able to get to a starting place to enter donations.

Pros

I love how easy it is to organize your donors, so you don't miss a beat when thanking them

Cons

I find it very difficult at time to pull the correct reports and get the information that I actually need.

Pros

The best thing about Trailblazer is the customer service. The guys are extremely accessible and helpful. They are willing to walk me through a process, or just do it for me - whichever I request. After trying two other donor management softwares that offered little or no help, Trailblazer's amazing service is a welcomed benefit.

Cons

The learning curve for Trailblazer is long. Therefore, whenever I wanted to do something new, I'd run into a wall. It seems like the first six months - at least - were pretty frustrating because there was always a glitch and I could never just get something done quickly. The glitch was in the training, not the software. I'd like to see a series of training videos that we could have our staff watch, in order, so that a general level of proficiency could be attained up front.

Pros

Data management. Ease in finding contact and contact information.

Cons

Unable to query contacts with events. Software designed more for campaigns than our nonprofit needs.

Pros

Helps with keeping my data base every day.

Cons

Hard to use in some ways. Could be easier to use, if I could teach myself.

Pros

the program is very easy to use for donation tracking and works well with Vanco for online donations and events

Cons

Needs some software improvements. Templates don't save the margins for envelopes and do not allow you to have a left sided letterhead. Extracting information for year end letters can be cumbersome but customer service is very good at helping out to get what you need.

Pros

This product organizes and stores data well. It integrates with our website and payment vendor.

Cons

This product requires technical skills. It is not a drag and drop type program and some of the features like email campaigns can be done much easier through other software.

Pros

Trailblazer is extremely user friendly and when you know how to work it, it makes the job so much easier. I love how I can write all the thank you letters in one place and takes out room for error.

Cons

The one thing that I don't like is how when you choose the cycle or year for a donation, it has previous years in it. I can understand going back a couple of years for a choice but not 10.

But I guess it can be helpful for those who are trying to put previous records in