CRM Solution Specifically Designed for Non Profit Organisation
Say, Salesforce is such a solution. I'm looking for something more focused on the care aspect than on the fund raising side. A Paid for solution that is scale able is ideal.
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Scott Fell
Did those links offer enough assistance to make a decision?
ASKER
This has given us a good summary - but no decision yet - can you offer more suggestions please?
I tend to be in the custom space. I have had a client use one of the mentioned systems and I found it to be overkill and over complex for what they needed.
You say Salesforce is not focused and it may feel that way because these systems try and be all things to all people. Salesforce can be modified to be more specific and that will come at an additional expense.
The first thing to do is determine your needs. Are you using something now? what do you like about it and what do you feel it is missing? Are you putting on events? Does that need to be integrated automatically with your front facing website? What do you mean be being able to scale in realistic terms?
You say Salesforce is not focused and it may feel that way because these systems try and be all things to all people. Salesforce can be modified to be more specific and that will come at an additional expense.
The first thing to do is determine your needs. Are you using something now? what do you like about it and what do you feel it is missing? Are you putting on events? Does that need to be integrated automatically with your front facing website? What do you mean be being able to scale in realistic terms?
ASKER
Scott Fell, Thank you for the insightful info.
My issue with Salesforce is that its written for commercial use. I'm looking for CRM written from ground up for non-profit and care focused. We currently not using anything and get by with Google Sheets...
Main modules required are:
Care Based module to handle medical and other information about our senior citizens.
Accounting module to handle donors.
Volunteer module to handle our interactions with them - this has been partially implemented in our website www.SOSA.Joburg
Web integration not essential as long as CRM allows for eg ODBC connection we can extract info for website.
Scaling: We are talking 2 users, 600 senior citizens and 300 volunteers currently.
WWW.theaccessgroup.com is an example of the approach we after.
My issue with Salesforce is that its written for commercial use. I'm looking for CRM written from ground up for non-profit and care focused. We currently not using anything and get by with Google Sheets...
Main modules required are:
Care Based module to handle medical and other information about our senior citizens.
Accounting module to handle donors.
Volunteer module to handle our interactions with them - this has been partially implemented in our website www.SOSA.Joburg
Web integration not essential as long as CRM allows for eg ODBC connection we can extract info for website.
Scaling: We are talking 2 users, 600 senior citizens and 300 volunteers currently.
WWW.theaccessgroup.com is an example of the approach we after.
I have not used it, but have followed closely, https://www.odoo.com/ which used to be OpenERP.
It's modular and there are internal and 3rd party apps that can do what you need.
Like I said, I work primarily in the custom space with smaller businesses and I find that the advantages of all of the mentioned systems can also be a disadvantage in that they cover too much ground to the point you need to change your business process to meet the needs of the software instead of the other way around.
> Care Based module to handle medical and other information about our senior citizens.
This can be done with most of these since it is basically contact management. Watch that there is HIPAA compliance.
>Accounting module to handle donors.
Quickbooks online may be able to handle this as well as basic contact managment
>Volunteer module to handle our interactions with them
MailChimp, Constant Contact et el along with your website can be used
>Web integration not essential as long as CRM allows for eg ODBC connection
An ODBC connection can't happen unless it is a system that you host on your server and have access to the db. None of the systems mentioned will be on your server. Connections are going to be via an API and will require server side programming on your end.
Your budget is going to come into play as well. Do you want a bicycle or car? Both will get you from point A to point B. One takes more work on your end but is significantly less cost. Both have available features that can put you in the l ow, medium or high end of the spectrum.
It's modular and there are internal and 3rd party apps that can do what you need.
Like I said, I work primarily in the custom space with smaller businesses and I find that the advantages of all of the mentioned systems can also be a disadvantage in that they cover too much ground to the point you need to change your business process to meet the needs of the software instead of the other way around.
> Care Based module to handle medical and other information about our senior citizens.
This can be done with most of these since it is basically contact management. Watch that there is HIPAA compliance.
>Accounting module to handle donors.
Quickbooks online may be able to handle this as well as basic contact managment
>Volunteer module to handle our interactions with them
MailChimp, Constant Contact et el along with your website can be used
>Web integration not essential as long as CRM allows for eg ODBC connection
An ODBC connection can't happen unless it is a system that you host on your server and have access to the db. None of the systems mentioned will be on your server. Connections are going to be via an API and will require server side programming on your end.
Your budget is going to come into play as well. Do you want a bicycle or car? Both will get you from point A to point B. One takes more work on your end but is significantly less cost. Both have available features that can put you in the l ow, medium or high end of the spectrum.
ASKER
Tx for the valuable feedback and advice Scott.
PS
Say, our immediate needs is actually just to store our contacts in a well-designed database. If we could access this database via ODBC, and even better, if this database was in MySQL, it would interface wonderfully with our Access program.
Out of the various programs that you are aware of, and especially those that are Open Source or Low Cost, can you recommend one that fulfills our requirements. This way, we would be able to store just our Contacts and all the related fields in that database which would serve as a wonderful repository for our Access application. Your thoughts would be apreciated.
Thanks
PS
Say, our immediate needs is actually just to store our contacts in a well-designed database. If we could access this database via ODBC, and even better, if this database was in MySQL, it would interface wonderfully with our Access program.
Out of the various programs that you are aware of, and especially those that are Open Source or Low Cost, can you recommend one that fulfills our requirements. This way, we would be able to store just our Contacts and all the related fields in that database which would serve as a wonderful repository for our Access application. Your thoughts would be apreciated.
Thanks