[DrewAllen]

We're in the process of reviewing different companies to support us in our online fundraising efforts. This would include things like taking donations online, signing up for events, and implementing viral marketing techniques. The four companies that we are considering are Convio, GetActive, Kintera, and BB's NetCommunity. I'd appreciate comments from anyone who is using any of these companies.

Drew

[SAF]

Hello Drew,
I so very easily could have posted the same question that you did - am glad I did a search first.

You asked
"We're in the process of reviewing different companies to support us in our online fundraising efforts. This would include things like taking donations online, signing up for events, and implementing viral marketing techniques. The four companies that we are considering are Convio, GetActive, Kintera, and BB's NetCommunity. I'd appreciate comments from anyone who is using any of these companies."

Did you get any responses, we have wittled it down to Kintera and Getactive..............
Charmaine
Stand Among Friends
cdesmeules@standamongfriends.org

[DrewAllen]

I haven't gotten any response, yet, but I we haven't made a decision, so I'm still seeking input.

Drew

[Doug Creek]

Our public affairs department chose GetActive, but I haven't had to do much with it yet other then put our information into... I eventually have to figure out how I'm going to get information going back the other way...

[nisaac]

I'm happy to share what I've experienced so far. We currently use Convio, and plan to purchase BB's NetCommunity next year. I have no experienc e with GetActive or Kintera.

We use Convio for our 6 walks. We got Convio at a very reasonable price since our national chapter made the purchase for all the other chapters. Our walkers and donors to walkers love the product. They can easily set up personal web spaces to fundraise for their individual teams. At least 50% of our donation are not received online for most of our walks. The reason I would not recommend Convio as our online fundraising solution relates to the database structure, integration, and the product support. This may be hard to believe, but currently Convio cannot handle an organization. All records are individual records. When we have an organization giving sponsorship money, we have to enter the org's name in the first and last name fields.

Recently, Convio created a relationship with another company to improve integration with other fundraising databases. The integration is done through export/import. You would have to pay for consulting support to set up that data relationship. You would have to pay again for any changes - say you added an attribute for an event. We do not integrate Convio and RE. In fact, we batch in gifts received through Convio.

Also Convio support doesn't come close to Blackbaud's support. I have been told that this is going to change in the future. There is no extensive online knowledgebase and the support techs don't seem as well-trained.

Net Community is an expensive product; however, integration will be complete and managed well. I think BB should have some "template" solutions that they could market at a lower cost. For example, we need a tribute program. It would be helpful if BB created the shell for a tribute program and allowed us the option of purchasing this shell and customizing further ourselves. The cost of NC is high because of the mandated consulting support needed to get the product up and running. I currently use Net Solutions and the integration is done well even with our tribute and event modules. I have faith in BB's customer support. It's just so darn expensive - but we've made the decision that it is worth it for us.

I hope this helps - happy to answer any other questions from my perspective.

Nora

[SAF]

Doug, how has the uploading and downloading to and from RE and Getactive gone. We are undecided about even keeping RE, and might start from scratch with a whole new platform?

[tcarstensen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nisaac

Also Convio support doesn't come close to Blackbaud's support. I have been told that this is going to change in the future. There is no extensive online knowledgebase and the support techs don't seem as well-trained.

I would suggest being wary of any software company's claims about what changes they will make "in the future" while you are in the shopping mode. I've been burned badly by a couple fundraising software companies on that count. They promised to make changes on some big issues that made a difference on whether we decided to go with them, only to have the promised changes never materialize after they had our money in hand.

I had looked at Kintera a few years ago in my old job and was impressed by it's flexibility and ease of use. If it had been my decision to make, we would have gone with them.

[Melissa Siobhan]

In my opinion, Convio has been loading on promises and promises that they can not deliver and never have, never will.

Not only does their support suck but their supposed sync with RE is nothing more than a glorified import that is clumsy and not modifiable by the user.

For a while early this summer we were getting almost weekly notifications that their servers went down AGAIN. They are not prepared for major traffic at all.

I stopped using it and went back to NetDonors it was that BAD.

[scrow]

We have used Convio for our events and online fund developing her for four years. I've been using it since I got here in April - my hair grayer and thinner as a result. Everyone on the events and development staff has acknowledge that we need to leave Convio - the question is if it happens for this events season or next. When we move we will move to BBNC.

Convio is a great event management tool - however it is not a fund or constituent development tool. If you only want to collect money from donors without and type of future development - then Convio is your tool. If you want to do traditional development - go in the opposite direction.

The Convio folks do promise a lot but don't deliever on their promises. Our Account rep and the president of the company has told us in face to face meeting that Convio is not a constitutuent management database - but turn over their business cards and it claims Convio is a Constituent Relationship Management database.
Case in point - you can not collect or assign relationships among individuals. For example in our walk event if a mother, father and two children register for the event - Convio sees them as 4 people that registered for the event that live at the same address. Convio does not do relationships.
Another very fustrating point - all constituent records are the same - their is not a difference between individual and organization records. Convio does not have the ability to enter a company name for a constituent.

However the bottom line is the ability to get at the data. In Convio you have to use their limited query and exporting tools. They will claim you can do a data sync with RE. However they have tried here fro 4 years and only had one data sync with corrupted the RE database. If we have to keep Convio another year I will be getting Blackbaud's Advance Import tool to use with the files I export out of Convio.

I could go on and on - but you get the point. If you have any specific questions - please contact me.

[SAF]

Everyone,
I am glad to receive all your comments. They will help us make a decision. Thank you.

[nisaac]

Scott,

Unfortunately, I can confirm that all you say is true. It's a shame since Convio has a nice web front end that the donors really can understand. The database underneath it is awful.

I agree with you that BBNC is the way to go.

Nora

[DrewAllen]

I've moved this thread to reflect a change in the Forum structure.

Drew

[Betsy Johnson]

Hi,

We just signed on with Convio and I'm wondering what your most recent assessments are of both their product and services. I appreciate your candid replies.

[nisaac]

I'm sorry to say my opinion is the same. We are anxiously looking forward to moving our walks to BBNC. However, there are still some things that Convio does better on their front end. The database structure is still not good for us. There are major slowdowns at times when we are trying to do data entry. We have to double enter all the gifts. In BBNC, we will have a direct connection.

Good luck with your implementation. I hope you have a much better experience.

[Randi]

Found this thread and am interested in finding out if there have been any improvements in the service over the past year.

Is anybody happy w/ Convio?

[Melissa Siobhan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Betsy Johnson

Hi,

We just signed on with Convio and I'm wondering what your most recent assessments are of both their product and services. I appreciate your candid replies.

Betsy, search the archives here and on Blackbaud Fundraising Software: Nonprofit Accounting Software & Nonprofit Management System. It has been discussed several times.