Kindful, a Bloomerang product vs. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit

Kindful is well suited when:

• Important to integrate with a wide range of systems such as online fundraising tools or event registration without being tied to a single vendor
• Small to medium sized organizations looking for an affordable but powerful donor database/CRM
• Need a powerful but user friendly tool with customizable reports

Kindful is not well suited when:

• You need very advanced customization such as the ability to built entire custom screens
• You need to track donations in multiple currencies

Incentivized

Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit is well suited for non-profit settings requiring one coordinated and one-stop-shop for electronic file management, especially of Microsoft file types such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel sheets, and PowerPoint presentations. Some scenarios where it is less appropriate are for those who need to transfer or share files across different platforms outside of the Microsoft Suite of products.

Incentivized

• We particularly love the flexibility of Kindful's donation pages and donation plug-ins. They make it possible for us to accept donations on our website, without having donors have to leave the website.
• Kindful effectively streamlines back-office functions including acknowledgements for gifts - which saves our small 2-person team vital hours each week.
• Kindful integrates to a variety of valuable platforms, allowing us to manage all of our data in one place. Currently, we integrate with MailChimp [so all email recipients are segmented in Kindful, emails are sent from MailChimp], Fundraising Report Card, and several custom integrations through Kindful's open API [including one that tracks volunteer events and another that connects to CauseVox].
• Kindful's basic metrics and "dashboard" give us instant access to live fundraising results that are shown against historical information - giving us the ability to see how we're doing at all times.

Incentivized

• Providing a basic framework for nonprofit organizations who've been limping along or have capped out with their current platforms to consider switching to amplify and multiply their capabilities, reach, and impact
• Increasing the accessibility for both citizen developers and tech teams to extend a platform, so long as there are clear parameters (business use case) and thoughtful design and architecture planning
• Sharing some core infrastructure that accelerates the use of important tools to further the mission of nonprofit organizations

• Detailed custom email campaigns and reports can be confusing to navigate. However, Kindful provides excellent customer support and training to make it as easy as possible.
• The price can be a turn off for many people, but if you have an aggressive plan to increase funding, Kindful pricing is scalable based on the size of your database.

Incentivized

• The system is ridiculously hard to implement, requiring too many tiers of Microsoft cloud services to be enabled.
• The technical aspects of the product are far too complex for anyone with standard cloud-based app training to implement.
• The non-profit "qualification" system is poorly designed.

Incentivized

Powerful and scalable system that can continuously be developed as requirements evolve

I have not utilized the support for Kindful very often but the one time I have was fantastic. It was quick, courteous and thorough. Kindful consistently offers Webinars that outline the best way to utilize their product and get the most out of it. I think Kindful does a pretty solid job with support.

Incentivized

We recently added HarnessApp to our software tools. Harness has a strong donor interface but not the backbone that Kindful has to offer. We find them a good match. I looked at dozens of other platforms that compare to Kindful but we always find ourselves sticking with Kindful as our primary CRM.

Incentivized

Other solutions may have a head start in terms of features, but MC4N is catching up quickly. Easy integration with the entire Microsoft tech stack including Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, Power BI saves costs over time. Microsoft’s Power Platform also allows for easy and rapid low code extensibility. Finally, the Common Data Model enables interoperability with other products and oAppSource apps.

• It is great to be able to quickly tell a prospective sponsor how we are doing financially in each fundraiser along with repeat donors that are helping to keep us going.
• I love that it sends a receipt to the donor immediately (if the email address is included in the profile) without me having to do anything! I am sure our donors love it too.

Incentivized

• Attempting to deploy Microsoft Cloud for Non-profits had a negative impact on our donor relations staff, the technical team tasked to deploy it, and upper management who watched the deployment fail.
• Overall, this product is too dependent on too many Microsoft Cloud services to really deploy with any sort of clear expectation to management of what the "hidden" costs would be.

Incentivized