Software > Fundraising & Donor Management

Fundraising Software

By Peter Flory

The fundraising software market is a rapidly changing market. Suppliers come and go. New products appear every year and some products disappear every year. Even existing products evolve and, in some cases, change out of all recognition every three or four years. The choice is better than ever but it is also more confusing than ever.

There are more than 100 software packages available that can be considered to be fundraising databases. These range from free shareware systems available on the Internet, right up to huge systems that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and every possible combination in between.

However, of these 100 plus systems there are 30 to 40 major players and some of these will be mentioned later. So what has been happening in the fundraising software market in the last few years, what is available now and what developments can we expect in the future?

Fundraising Software in the Past

Prior to 1990 there were a very few large and expensive systems that had originally been developed for mainframe computers and one PC based system (which has long since gone). Then in 1990 everything changed, Raiser’s Edge arrived from the United States and many UK software companies started business and developed PC based fundraising systems. By the mid-nineties there were two very well known systems for small to medium sized organisations namely, Alms (later Visual Alms) from Westwood Forster and Raiser’s Edge from Blackbaud Europe. There were two quite well known systems for the large organisations namely, Charisma from Minerva and Care Suite from Care Business Solutions (both of whom are now part of Iris Software Group) and then there were 20 to 30 other suppliers trying to make their mark, some of which have succeeded and some of which have not. Compared with the number of fundraising charities that existed, the number using these packaged systems was a mere handful. The vast majority of charities were using home-grown Access (or similar) systems or spreadsheets or accounting systems or nothing at all.

Fundraising Software Now, 2008

So, what is available today and how has the market changed? Well, Raiser's Edge is the market leader and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future as it has 4 to 5 times as many customers in the UK as its nearest rival. But, as previously mentioned, there are over 100 systems available and of these about 40 that are credible.  The phrase "horses for courses" comes to mind and it is very true.

Choosing a product

With so many suppliers to choose from, you must first decide which ones are compatible with your organisation, with your overall needs, and with your budget, in order to get the list of possibilities down to a manageable size. You can then start thinking about your detailed requirements and matching the supplier products against them.

Single User Systems

If you are a very, very small organisation, have really no money to spend and feel that you have to build your database yourself in Access or something similar, don’t do it! It may appear to be "cheaper" in financial terms, but you will spend vast amounts of time reinventing a wheel that has been invented so many times before and it isn’t that easy.

In order to develop a really useful system you will need to have access to someone with appropriate skills, e.g. Microsoft Access, and you will need to put staff resources into getting the database developed, which can turn into several man-years effort. In addition, if and when your developer moves on to another organisation you will be in big trouble with a database that is probably not documented, one that no-one knows how it works and will rapidly become out of date and eventually usage of it will be abandoned. Believe me, I have seen it many times before and that comes from someone who once wrote a book on how to do it yourself, but times change and this approach is no longer appropriate or necessary.

In fact don’t do it even if you are a bigger organisation and think that your requirements are unique. Firstly, they are probably not unique, you just think they are, and secondly today’s top packages are extremely flexible. You can add your own data fields, tables and even complete new screens to the supplier’s standard system (and in doing so not jeopardise your ability to accept updates of the standard product as they arrive from the supplier).

If you are a very small organisation and/or your requirements are fairly simple, it is better and more cost effective to look at an existing packaged product. If you want a single user system and you can afford £250 to £750, then take a look at KIS Contacts from KIS Software Solutions, CHARITease from JA Computer Solutions, Donor Strategy from CharitySoftware(who now trade as Donor Strategy), Enterprise SCS from Technology Services Group and Advantage Fundraiser from Redbourn Business Systems. (In fact KIS Contacts is only £100). And if you really have no money at all then with the hosted system (more of that later) of eTapestry from eTapestry Inc (now a wholly woend subsidiary of Blackbaud) you can start for nothing if you have less than 500 donor records and pay as you go as you add more records.

The thing to watch out with all low-level, low-cost systems is firstly whether you can get support if you need it, and secondly, how much that support will cost. This support can sometimes be several times the initial cost of the software every year!

Multi User Systems

If you are a small organisation but want a multi-user system with 2 to 5 users and you are prepared to spend £5,000 to £6,000 on the software and as much again on implementation, training and conversion of your data from a previous system, then you can take a look at any number of Access (or similar) based systems such as, Advantage Fundraiser from Redbourn, Donor Strategy from CharitySoftware, Donorflex from Care Data Systems and Subscriber from Dataware Consultancy Centre.

If you are medium sized organisation and want 6 to 30 users, then you should be looking at one of the products based on something a bit more powerful than Access such as Microsoft SQL Server. These include Advantage Fundraiser from Redbourn, Enterprise MRM from TSG, iMIS from ASI Europe (or their agent Fisher Technology), MRS3 from Rivington Street Software, Pro-7 from Protech Computer Systems, Progress CRM from Fisk Brett, Raiser's Edge from Blackbaud, eTarget from Centrepoint Computer Services and thankQ from ESiT.

If you are a very large organisation, then to the list above for the 6 to 30 user range (all of which can scale to far more than 30 users), you would add the heavyweight database systems (based on SQL Server or sometimes based on Oracle) such as Ascent from Ciber UK, Integra and The Care System both from Iris Software Group.

Fundraising Software in the Future

So what development are happening and where are these products going in the future? Firstly, they are all following the Microsoft bandwagon and keeping up with the latest technology released by the software giant. There are no “open software” aficionados here! The latest database developments are all using Microsoft’s dot net and smart client technology.

All suppliers are making their products available for access over the internet, some with more success than others. True “integration” with client websites is a long way off for most suppliers but that is definitely where the developments are leading. Linked to this are the two concepts of “hosted” solutions and co-operative working.

With the advent of cheap broadband connections to the internet, a hosted solution (touted a few years ago as ASPs, Application Service Providers) is now a practical and cost-effective alternative to having the database on your own network in your own office This in turn leads to the possibility of “co-operative working” where several voluntary organisations share the cost of a system and all use the same database, hosted by one of them or by a third party, with very tight security such that each organisation cannot see the data belonging to the other organisations. Centrepoint, ESiT, Fisk Brett and Rivington Street are some of the suppliers offering their products via this approach to database management.

A trend of the last few years is the introduction to the voluntary sector of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. This has been driven by commercial CRM suppliers eyeing up the voluntary sector market and attempting to introduce what they think is wonderful new concept from the world of business. What many of these new suppliers to our market don’t realise is that this is what suppliers in our market have been doing for years under various other names, so it is nothing new. However, the name seems to be sticking and several voluntary sector database suppliers are re-branding themselves as CRM suppliers.

Another trend is the “polarisation” of the market into the big boys and the smaller players. Blackbaud who supply Raiser’s Edge have always been huge (in the USA) but now you also have Ciber UK with Ascent and Iris Software Group who have Care, Integra, Charisma, Profile Concept and Consensus.

The final area of future development is that of data analysis, where fundraising database suppliers are finally waking up to the fact that people want to do more with their database than just record donations and squirt them into an accounts system. They actually want to analyse their data and find out a lot more about their donors from information already recorded in the database. Pareto and RFV reports with graphs and drilldown facilities and links to Excel pivot tables or to the more sophisticated “cube” technology products are becoming common (and about time too!).

What we are waiting for now is the truly integrated website and database in one product.

So there you have it, a brief overview of fundraising software today. More fundraising products are listed on the following sites:

• UK Fundraising
• IT For Charities
• Volresource