www.charityengine.net

CharityEngine is a cleanly-designed donor CRM and fundraising system that provides robust functionality with features that help make the system more approachable for non-technical users. The dashboard is arranged around a prominent search bar that poses the question “What would you like to do today?” where users can type an action to pull up a list of related pages. The system is color-coded by section, and the color theme changes as you move from section to section. The dashboard features a variety of widgets that you can click into to drill down to the underlying data, or you can click a button to export all the results from the widget. Contact records consist of a series of panels that group information and interactions that you can expand, collapse, or close, and you can print or make PDFs of entire records with one click.

The system supports a variety of gift types, including tribute gifts, pledges, and recurring donations. There is a particular focus on sustainer giving, including a pre-built communications series for sustainers with declined transactions, an automatic credit card updater for expiring credit cards, and a sustainer reactivation form (rather than a new sustaining donation form) to improve reporting on sustainer retention over periods of time. An integration with Double the Donation facilitates matching gifts, and an integration with WealthEngine provides prospect ratings and donor research.

A form creation wizard walks you through a screen-by-screen process for creating several different types of forms, including donation forms, event registration forms, and information collection forms. While the wizard only requires fairly minimal information to create a polished-looking form, there are numerous options for enhancing, customizing, and formatting the forms, success pages, and auto-responders. Donations collected through online forms can either go directly into the database or be held in a pending state for review and approval.

The system includes a robust automation tool that allows you set up triggered email sends and series, auto-create task assignments based on triggers, and update records based on specific criteria. Email and letter templates can be created in the system using its WYSIWYG editor and the vendor will build an email template, web form template, and letter template for new clients during implementation. You can see performance metrics for all email sends. The system also supports broadcast text messaging.

The events module is particularly robust, allowing you to create events, collect registrations online, sell a variety of tickets (including multiple sessions within an event), manage a waitlist, assign tables and seating, manage guests, connect an event to a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, manage volunteer assignments, and check attendees in onsite. You can also provide registrants with the ability to manage their own tickets and guests online. CharityEngine also includes the ability to manage membership and volunteers.

The base implementation price for a smaller organization is generally in the range of $4,000–5,000 and includes system setup, customer training and education, and a basic data import. Implementation costs increase for more complex data migration. Subscription pricing is based on the features and functionality selected, the number of contact records, and the number of outbound emails allotted per month, and generally starts at about $4,188 per year.

System Summary

• Year Launched: 2013
• Pricing, Small Nonprofit (1,000 contacts, 3 users): $1,788/year
• Pricing, Mid-size Nonprofit (20,000 contacts, 10 users): $5,148/year

System Evaluation

* Certain functionality requires use of a custom field.
** Certain functionality requires an integration with a third-party system.
*** Certain functionality is available for an additional cost.