www.littlegreenlight.com

Little Green Light provides nonprofits with solid donor management and online fundraising tools in an affordable package. Entering gifts is straightforward, with both a single gift and bulk gift entry forms. You can create pledges in the system and customize the pledge installments, and the system will prompt you to apply a gift to an open pledge if one exists. Recurring gifts cannot be entered directly into the system—they need to be entered using one of your online donation forms and you will need to set up the form to pass a recurring donor tag to a constituent record to be able to track these donors in your system. The gifts will process automatically via the payment processor at the specified intervals, but you will need to manually access reports on expiring credit cards and ask donors to update their information.

Constituent profiles are neatly laid out in sections that you can expand or collapse, and include a color-coded, searchable timeline of all interactions. While the system does not include householding functionality, you can designate a “Spouse/Partner” (as well as other relationships) that can be used to generate labels and salutations and who also will appear in the Soft Credit section of gift entry forms. Little Green Light includes an integration with DonorSearch (which requires an additional subscription) that allows you to import wealth data and prospect ratings into constituent records. You can use “goals” to set up and assign donor cultivation tasks, but this is managed manually, rather than through automated workflows.

You can batch and send letter and email acknowledgements through the system. While you can send emails natively through the system, the vendor recommends using its integration with either Constant Contact or MailChimp for large broadcast sends.

The system integrates with three payment processors—Stripe, PayPal, and ProPay—and Little Green Light charges an additional 1 percent processing fee per transaction (capped at $50 per month) on top of payment processor fees. You can add an option to online forms to allow donors to cover the processing fee costs. You can export transactions for your accounting system, and since the last edition of the Consumers Guide, Little Green Light has added an integration with QuickBooks Online that allows you to reconcile and lock transactions after they are passed to the accounting system.

A widget-based dashboard provides access to key metrics and reports and you can drill down to access detailed data. The system includes a query builder, a number of pre-built reports, and a custom report builder, and you can export query results and reports. A native event management module allows you to track registrations, guests, and table assignments, and the system also includes basic volunteer and membership management tools. Additional third-party integrations are available with WuFoo, Fundraising Report Card, Zapier, and others.

System implementation for new clients is primarily self-service, but Little Green Light provides a library of training videos, regular Q&A webinars, and documentation, as well as email support for all clients. There is also a private Facebook group for system users to connect and share questions and best practices and an external LGL Consultant Network for fee-based support.

Pricing is based on the number of contact records in the database and includes unlimited users. An organization with 1,000 contacts could expect to pay $421 per year (plus up to $600 in transaction fees), while an organization with 20,000 contacts could expect to pay $745 per year (plus up to $600 in transaction fees).

System Summary

• Year Launched: 2009
• Pricing, Small Nonprofit (1,000 contacts, 3 users): $421/year (plus up to $600 in transaction fees)
• Pricing, Mid-size Nonprofit (20,000 contacts, 10 users): $745/year (plus up to $600 in transaction fees)

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.