Open Forum

Hello Everyone,

On behalf of the Andrew Jackson Foundation, we are seeking advice from fellow museums, cultural attractions, and similar organizations regarding our ticketing software. We are currently using Tessitura V15 and have reached a crossroads in deciding whether to upgrade to V16 or transition to a new platform entirely.

We originally selected Tessitura for its CRM capabilities; however, our development team transitioned to Bloomerang CRM earlier this year. In addition to evaluating Tessitura V16, we are considering the following alternatives: ACME, Veeart, Blackbaud Altru, and Ticketure.

If you have experience with any of these platforms, we would greatly appreciate your feedback. Also, if you use a different software and are happy with its performance, please feel free to share your recommendations with me.

Thank you for your time and assistance.

If you want to include the Wishlist: ( I made this up - I am not sure what everyone wants but I feel like these are the top 10)

Ticketing
Membership Management 
Mobile Tickets
Add-on (upsells and donations)
Website Support
Ease of use
Reports and Analytics 
Mobile Scanning
Capacity Control
Seat Map 

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Tiffany Canino
Executive Assistant
Andrew Jackson's Hermitage - Home of the People's President
Nashville TN
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Hi Tiffany,

Sounds like an exciting time for the foundation! There are so many tech options out there for institutions, many of which have overlapping features and functionality.

When we help an org evaluate new technology, the first thing we'd recommend is making a technology map, which should outline all of the pieces of tech you use that touch the constituent, what each tool collects, and how it connects to other systems in your tech stack. From there, it is helpful to discuss with internal stakeholders in each department how they wish data would flow between these systems, as that is generally a common pain point that we see. You might buy the best ticketing system in the world, but if that data doesn't flow seamlessly into your CRM, then many people on your team are going to have data gaps. Same thing goes for membership data, volunteer, donors, etc.

It sounds like with your development team on Bloomerang, you might be starting to see some of the challenges of fragmented data with ticketing/memberships and donor info in different systems. I would recommend considering how your ticketing system you end up selecting is going to integrate with your CRM as a first step. While Bloomerang is a good donor management CRM, in my experience, it lacks the robustness you will need to integrate the ticketing data into it. It does not have a native integration with any of the tools you listed as options (like Ticketure, ACME, etc). So I would be curious to learn if moving to a more robust CRM would be something you all would consider in this, as I think you will run into frustrating challenges if Bloomerang is your source of truth for data.

Buying a new ticketing system is an exciting task! In my experience, taking a step back to evaluate the full landscape of tech and data at your foundation is the best first step. It will help you be a lot more clear about requirements you have once you start scheduling demonstrations.

Hope this was helpful and please feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any questions!

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Karen Senette
Head of Business Development
Digital Reach Online Solutions
Anchorage AK
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