Sumac Reviews

Sumac is a powerful tool for very specific use-cases eg. membership renewals or ticketing.

The pricing plan makes it very difficult for an organization to grow with Sumac. The interface is not intuitive and the process to make changes is overly complicated. It lacks flexiblity.

The implementation team was extremely helpful when they were doing the initial setup and customer/technical support teams provide excellent service.

Their documentation for initial setup and support documentation is extremely thorough.

Unfortunately, the product is outdated and it's flexibility needs to be improved so it is able to handle more than just specific use-cases.

We were able to use TechSoup to originally obtain the product at an extremely reasonable price, but the ongoing costs are difficult to support in a small organization.

Selling tickets to events and tracking membership. Prior to using Sumac, the organization was using spreadsheets. Using Sumac means there is no data duplication and everyone in the organization knows exactly where to find the most up to date/accurate information..

This software is great. It is very well organized and put together. I didn’t know it well when I first started using it, but once I got a feel for it, I knew it well and was able to organize data better than I was able to do so with Excel at my last summer job.

I’m not sure, honestly. I guess it might just be hard for someone who isn’t as tech savy as I am to use. Its functions aren’t exactly obvious.

Go for it. Very easy to use once you play around with it for a bit.

I had to orgaized patient data with this software at my former job. I realized I can use this platform to easily store and retrieve data when I need to do so.

In searching for a new donor management system, I went through an exhaustive search process comparing features and value for money. Ultimately, we settled on Sumac because of its ease of integration with the existing donor database, ease of integration within the office, and ease of use. Originally signed up with a Bronze level account and quickly upgraded to Silver for the ability to manage more donor contacts. Having cloud access is a major plus as the organization has its fundraising team located in multiple countries. Sumac being located in Canada is a major plus, and their support is excellent.

The UI is quite barebones and not built for aesthetics. It is fairly user friendly. This is a minor quibble as I'm sure they intended the application to be as lightweight and easy to install as possible. It runs on Java so each time a new Java update is rolled out, it will initiate before you open Sumac. Once again, these are minor issues.

Since you can use the trial, try it out and see if it's right for your organization. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with everything it can do, for a fraction of the cost of competitors.

The ability for a fundraising team located in several countries to collaborate in cloud, and create / update donor records is extremely important to the organization. There are more robust features, such as the ability to run comprehensive donor reports, add notes to individual accounts, as well as email donors which we've barely begun to scratch the surface of - these will all be extremely useful for our purposes.

As a Non-Profit I have found Sumac to be the answer I was looking for to manage both clients and donors. After initial set up it was easy for my team to use and update information. The training videos are very helpful and available at any time. I highly recommend it for other non-profits.

The setup was not as easy as I thought. I wish I knew more about how to prep for it

do it!

Quickly accessing communication and donation records for a client. It is so easy to see all the components surrounding a person and who they are connected to.

We started to use Sumac to keep track of our members and their membership. We can easily access all the information about a member or a volunteer, which activites they have attended, their donations and their membership renewal. Sumac also emables to export information for acconting such as the number of domations ans membership renewal, the amount and the source.

Slow to open and sometimes even need to re-download the software.

Keeping track of our members and their membership as well as their donations. Easy export of accounting information

As a social services nonprofit, we use Sumac for both case management and to track donor relations. The database allows us to segment all of our data so administrative staff can use the donor relations profiles, while our clinical staff can easily access all of our clients' information and record their interactions. The forms are also a great feature that have helped us with reporting.

We have encountered a number of issues with compatibility when java updates become available and automatically download. Typically we have had to call to have Sumac tech support help us out.

We have been able to store two very different types of data sets in one database. The multiple different entry options available (check boxes, drop down menus, etc.) have helped make our data entry more consistent which makes for more accurate reporting.

Customization: our non-profit is a collective of 8 partner organizations that each offer their own programming, but unite under one common collaborative. In this, we require our database to operate as 8 separate databases, with the ability for data to be tracked across all partners and programming. Sumac was able to construct a database for us that met this need, with fields customized to manage youth participants in exactly the way we need it. As our collaborative grows, Sumac has enabled our database to evolve with it, always finding creative solutions to meet our changing needs.

With such a complicated structure for our database, unfortunately it can be tricky to upload our data in the correct format. Files have to be meticulously formatted within a certain file type, and the set of steps from data gathering to completion is sometimes frustrating and unforgiving of minor errors. Again, this need for rigorous process is likely because of our operating such a complicated and layered database.

*Great system for tracking attendance records

*High quality and in-depth customization

With hundreds of attendance records from various partners being submitted each year, Sumac allows us to store, sort, and report on all of this information with ease. Allowing this level of customization ensures that tracking of participation across the collaborative meets our exact needs, and lets us retrieve important data easily and accessibly.

Sumac offers great software that is cost-effective for a smaller non-profit.

Their customer support is always helpful and quickly and patiently answer all of our questions. While we don't use all aspects of Sumac's software, there are many components that we would like to incorporate into our practice.

Up until now, we have only had a Silver membership which would have Sumac installed for one user on one computer. We are looking forward to upgrading which will allow us to use Sumac, when a colleague is using the computer where it was installed.

We keep track of our donors and and allows us to keep track of all their information in one place along with issuing our tax receipts.

I find Sumac to be a very intuitive program, which is easy to self navigate, and to teach to others. I have used various databases at various companies, and never have an issue finding my way around their files.

The customer service and technical support team are unsurpassed. They are dedicated to helping users find solutions to their problems, and are more than willing to listen and respond to requests for improvements. Their ability and willingness to respond to the suggestions of their customers makes Sumac unlike any other software company I have worked with.

As Sumac is a software that is constantly being upgraded, some of the newer modules can have user related issues that need to be worked out. However, as Sumac is quite amenable to suggestions from their customer base, so their software is able to respond to customer needs.

We were definitely able to maximize our donor/patron communications using Sumac. We were better able to target specific groups with our communication, and better track donor cycles throughout the year.

We have used Sumac at our organization for a few years, and it suits our needs quite well. It has membership, ticketing and donations, which is really great to have all in one place. The best part is its affordability - as a small organization, we would not be able to afford the more expensive database offerings. You get a lot of bang for your buck! Also their customer service is very responsive and friendly.

It's not the most user-friendly program in the world - you have to click through a lot of pop-ups, and it's not always easy to find what you are looking for. Also, the online aspect is still not that customizable (compared to other ticketing programs) so it's hard to make it match a website's branding. And we have a level of membership which includes a donation portion, and while that works well in their regular system, it doesn't work for donations online.

Expect to spend time on the phone with Sumac figuring stuff out. Watch out for extra fees for add-on features - make sure you only get what you need.

For us, it is really good because we can have memberships, donations and tickets all in one system, and track the contact's activity. Before we were doing this primarily in excel, and that was not as efficient as Sumac.

It allows me to easily track my relationships. Dashboard is manageable. Very quick one you manage some simple keyboard tricks.

It feels like the system isn't fully debugged. IE, pop up windows don't appear in the correct order, it's slow to respond.

It's a great way to manage if you're savvy with database basics. It doesn't feel as friendly as say ArtsPeople for the layman but it is very functional.

We are a grassroots organization and we have a lot of relationships to track. This allows us to manage them in a direct, humane way!

The layout is fairly intuitive for the new user and easy to find the info you need.

It does not have the same capabilities for grant/donor tracking other larger (more expensive) systems have.

Small non-profit org funding; works for most issues, but can't help with larger scale fund tracking.

User friendly

Excellent customer support

Regular updates

Online functionality for some add-ons is very basic (e.g. ticketing) or not available yet (e.g. sales)

The User Guide is good at describing each of the many fields in the database but limited in explaining how these are used together (processes)

start with the basic CRM before including add-ons

donor management, membership management, event management and campaigns