Open Forum

I am working with a small museum on evolving their membership program. The Museum is looking for software to help manage their membership. The following systems have been recommended to me, Raiser’s Edge, Tessitura, Altru, SalesForce, and Donor Perfect. I am eager to hear from you about your experience with the list or recommendations for alternative software.
Thank you in advance for your expert advice.

Michael Fritzen
Valley Relics Museum
Board Member
loraxxmrf@yahoo.com

We recently started converting from Raiser's Edge to Altru (with a stop at SRO4 in the middle). If you are looking just for a member CRM Raiser's Edge is pretty universal and used at many, many organizations. If you want a program that will integrate sales into membership then you need a more complex system like SRO (Toptix product) or Altru (Blackbaud - like Raiser's Edge). It kind of depends on what you are currently using as well. The reason we switched to SRO and then Altru so quickly is our development team didn't like how SRO wanted to integrate the member/donor database so we were operating on two systems. Altru had a better data conversion for what they needed so we decided to go in that direction.

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Amanda Kepner
Manager for Learning and Experience Operations
Columbus Museum of Art
Columbus OH
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-16-2017 03:03 PM
From: Michael Fritzen
Subject: Membership software

I am working with a small museum on evolving their membership program. The Museum is looking for software to help manage their membership. The following systems have been recommended to me, Raiser's Edge, Tessitura, Altru, SalesForce, and Donor Perfect. I am eager to hear from you about your experience with the list or recommendations for alternative software.
Thank you in advance for your expert advice.

Michael Fritzen
Valley Relics Museum
Board Member
loraxxmrf@yahoo.com

We happen to be kicking off our own ticketing/membership implementation. After a roughly 4-month RFP process, we narrowed down our choice to Tessitura. We are currently using a highly customized version of Patron's Edge (now SRO4) for ticketing and Raiser's Edge for membership/development. Prior to the RFP we were considering SalesForce as an enterprise platform. There are a number of factors to consider, as I am sure you are aware, when determining what system will fit the needs of the organization. We had a number of "deal breaker" criteria--functionality that must fit our business needs--that shaped our decision to go with Tessitura. However, we are also learning that current business processes may have been shaped by the use of our legacy systems--I call them technology workarounds. We are reviewing our current process and making changes so that we do not move into a new system with unnecessary or archaic processes--this will be one of the more challenging aspects of the project.

Our experience with Tessitura has been outstanding! Their business development team really listened to us and, when we threw them a curve ball, always came back to the discussion with a solution. Now that we are working with our dedicated implementation team, the same can be said of them---solution-oriented, active listeners, high-level communicators, and thorough planners. For us, the fact that the Tessitura Network is a non-profit organization, made up of member organizations, really spoke to us in that they are not a for-profit tech company and only make their platform available to theaters, operas, symphonies, museums, etc.

My advice: bring all departments into the process earlier than later, form a standing RFP work group that will later become the project team, reach out to other museums and schedule a site visit (many are open to discuss pros and cons on their system(s)), stay calm...it will get messy but it won't be forever.

Good luck!

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Charles Vann
Director of Sales
Gettysburg Foundation
Gettysburg PA
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-16-2017 03:03 PM
From: Michael Fritzen
Subject: Membership software

I am working with a small museum on evolving their membership program. The Museum is looking for software to help manage their membership. The following systems have been recommended to me, Raiser's Edge, Tessitura, Altru, SalesForce, and Donor Perfect. I am eager to hear from you about your experience with the list or recommendations for alternative software.
Thank you in advance for your expert advice.

Michael Fritzen
Valley Relics Museum
Board Member
loraxxmrf@yahoo.com

Hi Michael,
         We recently had to review CRM's for our membership program. There are so many CRM's that have so many pros/cons, the best thing to do is to examine them for what fits your organization's goals and needs. Idealware and the Nonprofit Technology Network have done a lot of the leg work for you by compiling a report on the most affordable and widely used donor management systems. You can download the report for free, and they just recently updated it for 2017. They have a few charts and questions to help you narrow down what you are looking for, and then describe what each system can and can't do. I would strongly recommend asking staff and the other board members what they think would work best for the museum, have them look at the charts, and then examining your options through the report. Almost all CRM's offer a free trial period or demos, so once you've narrowed it down to about three, you can see which ones are most ideal for your museum and staff. 

Here's the link to the report, good luck!

A Consumers Guide to Low-Cost Donor Management Systems

Idealware		remove preview
A Consumers Guide to Low-Cost Donor Management Systems (UPDATED MAY 4, 2017) Donors are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. You need them to survive. But how do you manage all the details about their giving-along with all the personal details that are key to maintaining successful relationships-without breaking your bank? With a donor management system. View this on Idealware >

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Samantha Roberts
Events, Membership, Visitor Services Coordinator
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-16-2017 03:03 PM
From: Michael Fritzen
Subject: Membership software

I am working with a small museum on evolving their membership program. The Museum is looking for software to help manage their membership. The following systems have been recommended to me, Raiser's Edge, Tessitura, Altru, SalesForce, and Donor Perfect. I am eager to hear from you about your experience with the list or recommendations for alternative software.
Thank you in advance for your expert advice.

Michael Fritzen
Valley Relics Museum
Board Member
loraxxmrf@yahoo.com