TrustRadius Insights for Bonterra Development + Digital are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Efficient Donor Segmentation: Users have praised the platform's efficient donor segmentation capabilities, enabling targeted emails and enhanced engagement strategies. This functionality allows for personalized communication based on donors' preferences and giving history.
Streamlined Event Management: The events module is highly valued for its streamlined event management process, catering to events of varying scales with ease. From registration to attendee tracking, users find this feature essential in ensuring successful event execution.
Flexible Financial Analysis: Customers appreciate the system's flexible financial reporting tools that cater to diverse analytical needs. With customizable reporting options and detailed insights into financial data, users can make informed decisions and track financial performance effectively.
Bonterra Development + Digital EveryAction was primarily used to collect contact information, track event, attendees and sign ups, engage with individuals and groups online via email and digital outreach forms, and list build, as well as maintain active lists. it addressed the issues of housing email contact information, Cell Phone, contact information, mailing addresses, and contact preferences, based on geography and outreach type all in one platform.
Pros
Email list outreach
Event page building
Tracking content
Collecting contact information
Cons
The digital page building tool could be slightly more intuitive
Automating some of the email list outreach functions to avoid large amounts of bounce backs or spam boxes
Likelihood to Recommend
A scenario in which Bonterra Development + Digital EveryAction is extremely applicable, is creating an event, creating a call list for outreach to people for that event, creating an email list to generate RSVPs for that event and creating a central tracking location for all RSVPs and outreach correspondence. It is less appropriate, if the event is small scale among highly connected individuals who are already on a personal basis with each other.
Our organization is an NGO and uses the Bonterra EveryAction for most of its fundraising functions.
This includes:
a) creating a contact record for prospective and current donors
b) tracking individual donors and funds raised
c) tracking the effectiveness of email campaigns
d) managing grant prospecting and reporting
e) creating custom reports on funds raised, grants awarded, team to-dos (called follow-ups), etc.
f) Running analytics and generating visuals on grants, donors and funds raised g) creating and sending our monthly newsletter
h) hosting our donation page
i) importing information from our wealth screening software
There really is a wide scope of solutions that Bonterra EveryAction provides beyond what a traditional CRM can do.
Pros
One stop shop for creating newsletters, sending them out to mailing lists, and tracking analytics (including donations).
Grants management (we are able to track funds received, reports due, and all points of contact associated with a given donor organization).
Contact records (the new contact record feature makes it easy to find past donation history, demographic information, survey responses, communication preferences, etc. for a given contact. We are also able to import information from our donor prospect software into the contact record so everything is in one place).
Cons
User interface: The user interface seems a bit dated. The categories on the main page are not named in a way that makes it intuitive to find where to go for what you are trying to do. For example, the donation page information is under "online actions", email campaigns are under "targets emails", but to schedule send e-mails, that's under "automation". There's a lot of EveryAction-specific lingo to get used to.
Learning curve: Because Bonterra has so many functions, some of them are quite hidden, and some are complicated. We are very glad to have paid for premium customer support as there are features we could not have figured out ourselves. We have had to create our own instruction manual to onboard new members of the team when they join.
Search function: The search function is finicky. For example, I cannot search for a grant from the main search bar as that is only for contacts. You'd then think the easiest way to find a grant is to search for a donor and then pull up the grant through the contact record but grants in the contact record are not clickable. The only way to open up the grant from there is to click on the last financial contribution from the donor that corresponds to that grant and click "edit".
Likelihood to Recommend
Bonterra EveryAction is very well suited for the more "traditional NGO". My organization, for example, has many more grants than we have individuals who donate to us. However, Bonterra EveryAction truly excels on the individual fundraising side. It allows you to launch email campaigns, measure their success, track interactions with donors, and create contact records with fields for almost anything you'd want to manage about a donor. There are additional features that are not relevant to my organizations, but that I know could be an asset to others such as managing volunteers and phone banking. For us, these features just add to the bulk of the software, though. We really appreciate that we've been able to make many of Bonterra EveryAction's features work for grants management -- but it is definitely not the software's main function.
I would not recommend it for organizations that do not have much time to get to know the tool or are only planning on using one or two features.
I've been using Bonterra's tool EveryAction for 9 years while at various non-profit organizations. It meets our CRM needs, as well as our email marketing and text messaging needs. We primarily use it as an advocacy tool. I really like how easy to use the tools are, including mobile messaging, online actions, and targeted email. It's been great for our digital organizing program.
Pros
Customer relationship management
Easy-to-use tools
Advocacy tools
Cons
The deduplication tool could be better.
The mobile messaging inbox is very slow when attempting to respond.
Likelihood to Recommend
EveryAction is a great tool, and I recommend it to any non-profit organization. I wouldn't recommend it to smaller or mid-sized organizations as it is expensive, but to others, it would be top of my list.
We have used every action in this past cycle for clients like Floridians Protecting Freedom and American Bridge PAC. The tool was helpful in list organization and connecting audiences to other tools like Facebook. I appreciated how seamlessly every action could sync Facebook audiences for online advertising. Having used tools like NGP and VAN before, I found every action reasonable to learn.
Pros
List organization.
Syncing audiences.
Contribution reports.
Cons
Tutorials.
User friendliness.
Likelihood to Recommend
Bonterra is well-suited for running digital campaigns. I appreciated how simple it was to get our online advertising up and running for various clients. While I did not work on the email side of things, I could tell Bonterra was helpful when emailing our audience. Bonterra was also useful for generating contribution reports so we could evaluate tactics better. I think where Bonterra falls short is in its user-friendliness. Luckily, I had experience with tools like NGP and VAN.
We use Bonterra Development + Digital for a number of things, including: organizing, marketing, donor relations/fundraising, and mobilization. It also communicates well with local voter data systems, making it easier to reach a targeted base of voters. In my position in the communications department, I use it to send emails, create sign-up forms, and share events our organization hosts. Besides social media, our website and Google Workspace, it is our #1 way to connect with our audiences.
Pros
Contact tagging and categorization
Data analysis
Cons
Direct email tool is lacking in the editing department, with what feels like frequent bugs.
Email drafts should be savable as version that we can revisit.
Dual user editing is not possible. Collaborative work would be helpful.
Any advanced styling of pages and emails needs to be done by a web developer. The drag & drop editor is great but limited, as most are.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is a great tool overall, but it is expensive. Selling it to management to keep as an expense for small nonprofits is challenging. It is a powerful mobilization tool and often underused when compared to the price tag, however. Moreover, it is cumbersome for new users to learn how to use it and there is little in the way of video tutorials.
Bonterra Development + Digital is great for our advocacy alerts. We use it mostly for advocacy.
Pros
Create-a-list is a great, easy-to-use feature.
Building an email is easy.
Cons
Being able to schedule emails based on someone's time zone, like we can with SMS.
I'm an admin of the parent committee and have access to all child committees. I wish we, the admins, could be able to pull a report that pulls data from all child committees. Some reports allow us to, but I wish we didn't have to switch committees to access the full range of data. Similarly, in Create-a-List, I have to switch committees in order to build a Saved Search that asks for specific forms or emails from a child committee.
I find it cumbersome that there is no type of export that allows you to choose all fields that are available on a constituent record. The "standard text" export format is useful, but still we are limited in what we can export.
There's no report in EveryAction that allows me to pull constituent records, all email addresses associated with them, and the subscription status. I have to run multiple reports and use X Lookup to match them. The "Email Address Status Report" doesn't include VAN ID, and an "Email Type Export" from a Saved Search does not include subscription status or email score. Similarly, I wish we could see email score on the constituent record.
In Create-a-List, there's no way for us to use a specific email address or phone number from a list/search. Or even as an "exclusion" in Targeted email. You can select certain domains to remove from Targeted email, but not an entire email address.
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall, I'm happy with Bonterra Development + Digital. My biggest complaint is the data sharing between committees and all of the switching I have to do. If it's not possible to share all information, even just sharing information about forms in child committees would be incredibly useful.
We have relied on our Bonterra Development + Digital EveryAction CRM since 2016. As our organization has grown, we have been able to use more and more of its features. It has always been reliable and we are confident in its ability to keep our client information secure and available.
Pros
Store, organize, and retrieve data
Collect survey and registration information
Support giving campaigns
Cons
Drag and drop templates
Search and tagging features
Interfacing with Zoom
Likelihood to Recommend
We like linking our Zoom events to our Bonterra Development + Digital EveryAction CRM, there are still tasks that we need to complete manually.
We use Bonterra Development + Digital across the various departments of our large organization as our CRM and online action engine – as well as for email marketing, text messaging, and more – and for some of our grassroots fundraising functions.
Pros
email
analytics
client support
Cons
duplicate record management (need to use email address as unique identifier)
multi-function advocacy forms (e.g. need to integrate into one form the ability to email, tweet, and call targets)
Create A List (need better organized categories and more-intuitive functionality, e.g. boolean search)
visual editor deployment (need this functionality in online forms, as well as across all email types – including autoresponders, templates, etc.)
event creation (needs to happen in one place instead of multiple places that then have to be integrated in online actions)
email sending and scheduling (need ability to send emails on a rolling basis – by time zone, and randomly over a longer duration)
asset library (need a way to see all images and other things in an asset library)
origin source codes (need to automatically create these for supporters and online forms)
automations (much functionality needs to change to make it intuitive and to make it effective for email welcome series)
...
Likelihood to Recommend
Currently the best option for an all-in-one CRM, digital advocacy, email + text marketing, fundraising, and reporting solution for nonprofits. Other companies may beat them at one or more of these individual functions – and Bonterra Development + Digital certainly has room for improvement on the margins in terms of user-interface and features – but they're what you need for a one-stop-shop. The ability to integrate all of these functions – and do so fairly well – is the top selling point. And for most nonprofits, the organizational value of broad integration likely far surpasses that of narrow excellence.
It accurately tracks user data and refines approaches based on that information.
Pros
Organize Information.
Easily Upload Data.
Make notes and track user changes.
Cons
Searching directly from an uploaded file.
More versatility when uploading files using templates.
The ability to change the uploaded file without starting over.
Likelihood to Recommend
Using Bonterra Development and Digital is straightforward. It helps track user data but is not as helpful in tracking more detailed user changes as on some platforms.
We use the EveryAction version of the NGP-VAN software. We utilize this system for outreach to our network of supporters and potential supporters. Farm-To-Power is a national organization working as a farmer's and rancher's rights campaign in the renewable energy space. We collect and share stories and build a movement of farmers and ranchers to mobilize to speak at hearings and take other public actions. We use EveryAction as our nucleus for all this work.
Pros
Ease of use for VAN software- many versions that are all similar.
Ease of issue resolution (since becoming directly acquainted with a senior client success manager).
Cons
Tech support resolutions and turnaround time (when going through basic channels).
Continuity of the software—We recently lost a feature we had enjoyed for the first several months and were told that it is "not currently possible" with our version of VAN—even though we had it.
I wish you could see ALL bulk uploads at ALL times, not just the last 100 batches or lines.
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for network building and outreach. Overall, we have been quite happy with the system itself. There are some limitations to not purchasing the voter file from VAN. We did not need the voter file as our outreach was much more targeted to farmers and ranchers. We have gotten around the lapses with additional tools and software. Overall, I'm thrilled with it. I have used multiple versions of NGP-VAN at various organizations. I now administer our software in my current role and actively fought to bring VAN to our organization.
