Animal Welfare Professionals

Have any of you used Bonterra?  Is it worth the added expense and is it a good fundraising tool?

Hi Lauren,

We are a small organization, all volunteer, with a budget close to  $100,000 this year.  We've done many things right in our first 5 years, but the one place I think we dropped the ball was in not setting up a donor management program (and a volunteer to run it) at the start of our organization 5 years ago!

We started a newsletter in August 2023--a month before our 5th anniversary,  We're using MailerLite, which is free for the first 1,000 contacts on your mailing list.    We're at about 550 now, so we still have room to grow.  I've since found a free program that will allow us to do newsletters for unlimited number of contacts.  It's called Brevo.  It seems to have good ratings and reviews.  One of us may sign up and play with it after the New  Year.  

What do newsletter have to do with your question?  Well your donor management platform will only be as good as the mailing/contact list you use it with.  I noticed that your website linked me to a newsletter dated in 2015.  Is that really the most recent one?

Now on to your question:  I know people who use Bonterra/Network for Good and are happy with it.  Since we have begun to explore donor management and a more organized fundraising plan recently, I had a presentation about it.  It was impressive.  And expensive.  We could spay-neuter 100+ cats for the annual cost of it, without any consultant to help us.  With the consultant they recommended, it came closer to 200 cats.  Several other programs were recommended by one of the online "help you decide" services.  I've decided to hold off on spending time with them because....

Somehow in poking around online I came across a donor management program called Zeffy, from Canada.  it is a completely free donor management platform AND they cover the processing fees for you in exchange for letting them ask your donors for a "tip" to help continue their free work for nonprofits.  Since I have nothing to lose but time, I signed up and started playing with it.  We're about a week into it, and so far so good.

The one big thing it doesn't allow us to do is a full-length newsletter.  So we'll continue to keep that separate-- not a big deal since MailerLite works for us and the free version of  Brevo might be right when we outgrow the free MailerLite.

The other thing I would wish for in Zeffy at this point is more control and choices with our branding use.  Again, not a big deal.  Our donation forms, online store items, and emails are all branded.  Our tax receipts are not. 

One thing I really like about Zeffy is how responsive they are about help, and how they not only welcome suggestions, but make it open to everyone to see what features/improvements have been suggested by users, vote on  which seem most important, and then put out updates on what has been accomplished (finished) , is in the works, or is being planned as a next step.  All from the user-generated list.  Some of it is pretty advanced stuff for large online stores, other things are absolute minutiae of how to slice and dice reports. 

I've spoken to another board member for our group and our thinking is that free is really good for us.  If Zeffy stops working for us we can always change and spend money.

The other low cost program you might want to consider before taking an expensive plunge is Give Butter.  The platform use is free, and they give donors the option of covering your processing fees.  It looks like it may be a bit more  advanced than Zeffy, which is a pretty young start up.  Give Butter is also more colorful and may have more template variations.   It looks like many groups have 60-65% of their processing fees covered by donors.

Sorry I haven't actually used Bonterra to report on, but I am working my way into the whole donor management thing and comparing options in different price ranges.  I'm happy to answer any questions you may have for me!

Warm regards,

Have any of you used Bonterra?  Is it worth the added expense and is it a good fundraising tool?

Hi Lauren,

We are a small organization, all volunteer, with a budget close to  $100,000 this year.  We've done many things right in our first 5 years, but the one place I think we dropped the ball was in not setting up a donor management program (and a volunteer to run it) at the start of our organization 5 years ago!

We started a newsletter in August 2023--a month before our 5th anniversary,  We're using MailerLite, which is free for the first 1,000 contacts on your mailing list.    We're at about 550 now, so we still have room to grow.  I've since found a free program that will allow us to do newsletters for unlimited number of contacts.  It's called Brevo.  It seems to have good ratings and reviews.  One of us may sign up and play with it after the New  Year.  

What do newsletter have to do with your question?  Well your donor management platform will only be as good as the mailing/contact list you use it with.  I noticed that your website linked me to a newsletter dated in 2015.  Is that really the most recent one?

Now on to your question:  I know people who use Bonterra/Network for Good and are happy with it.  Since we have begun to explore donor management and a more organized fundraising plan recently, I had a presentation about it.  It was impressive.  And expensive.  We could spay-neuter 100+ cats for the annual cost of it, without any consultant to help us.  With the consultant they recommended, it came closer to 200 cats.  Several other programs were recommended by one of the online "help you decide" services.  I've decided to hold off on spending time with them because....

Somehow in poking around online I came across a donor management program called Zeffy, from Canada.  it is a completely free donor management platform AND they cover the processing fees for you in exchange for letting them ask your donors for a "tip" to help continue their free work for nonprofits.  Since I have nothing to lose but time, I signed up and started playing with it.  We're about a week into it, and so far so good.

The one big thing it doesn't allow us to do is a full-length newsletter.  So we'll continue to keep that separate-- not a big deal since MailerLite works for us and the free version of  Brevo might be right when we outgrow the free MailerLite.

The other thing I would wish for in Zeffy at this point is more control and choices with our branding use.  Again, not a big deal.  Our donation forms, online store items, and emails are all branded.  Our tax receipts are not. 

One thing I really like about Zeffy is how responsive they are about help, and how they not only welcome suggestions, but make it open to everyone to see what features/improvements have been suggested by users, vote on  which seem most important, and then put out updates on what has been accomplished (finished) , is in the works, or is being planned as a next step.  All from the user-generated list.  Some of it is pretty advanced stuff for large online stores, other things are absolute minutiae of how to slice and dice reports. 

I've spoken to another board member for our group and our thinking is that free is really good for us.  If Zeffy stops working for us we can always change and spend money.

The other low cost program you might want to consider before taking an expensive plunge is Give Butter.  The platform use is free, and they give donors the option of covering your processing fees.  It looks like it may be a bit more  advanced than Zeffy, which is a pretty young start up.  Give Butter is also more colorful and may have more template variations.   It looks like many groups have 60-65% of their processing fees covered by donors.

Sorry I haven't actually used Bonterra to report on, but I am working my way into the whole donor management thing and comparing options in different price ranges.  I'm happy to answer any questions you may have for me!

Warm regards,

Have any of you used Bonterra?  Is it worth the added expense and is it a good fundraising tool?