My organization had specific needs as we were merging with another nonprofit. Before the merge, we used Abila and they used Raiser’s Edge. We all wanted a new platform that would serve our combined needs, not charge us an arm and a leg with customizations or consulting costs, or the continuous purchase of new modules. LiveImpact met all these criteria, and once we saw the demo we were sold. Our bosses recognized the benefits of LiveImpact as well. I don’t know of another software out there that offers such a comprehensive platform including a CRM with events, auctions, fundraisers, email campaigns and newsletters, payments, advanced reports and analytics, and moves management. LiveImpact also offers grant management, which was a big plus for us. Another advantage was the role-based access with different dashboards, so our CEO and Board Members can quickly get the information they want without being overwhelmed with unnecessary information. We had exceptionally strong support from the LiveImpact team. They helped facilitate our conversation through the merge, encouraging us to meet internally as a combined development team to identify our most common uses and prioritize our processes. They wanted to ensure that we are successful in using the platform, and went above and beyond in providing onboarding help and support. We ran our latest fundraiser through LiveImpact - online ticket purchases and donations were automatically entered in the database, and for those who gave us a check, we could easily enter the payments so all the information was in one place. Abila only had basic functionality to manage events, so using LiveImpact really saved us a lot of time and use of multiple spreadsheets. Since it was a concert, we assigned every single person a seat and a ticket using LiveImpact. We also used the check-in phone app as people arrived. We had some challenges as we were using the events functionality for the first time, but support was one phone call away to answer our questions. My colleagues and I are finding LiveImpact relatively easy to learn and use because the interface is intuitive. I use it 3-4 days a week to update contacts and check donations; and we are just beginning to use the moves management functionality. My recommendation to others would be to take the time to think about your most common uses and what you want the software to do for you. LiveImpact is easily customizable; you can do so much more in it than in other software.

LiveImpact was referred to us by a colleague, and we were impressed with the demo. The main attraction for us to move to LiveImpact was that all the functionalities we needed i.e. donor management, events, newsletters, email campaigns, and online fundraising were under one umbrella. Prior to LiveImpact, we were using Salesforce, Eventbrite, Mailchimp, and Excel spreadsheets. My staff was spending significant time exporting and importing data, and maintaining data accuracy. Using multiple tools, especially during our annual gala event was very time consuming. We signed up with LiveImpact and had to jump right into our annual gala event. LiveImpact was extremely responsive to our needs and we were very happy with their support. Instead of the traditional onboarding, they customized it to our needs, and helped us streamline our entire event to be a success. Earlier we did ticket sales in Eventbrite, then exported the data and the admin did the seating chart, and after the event was over we extracted the donor data to Salesforce. We used LiveImpact for registration, ticketing, seating charts, email acknowledgements, payments, check-ins and all our donor information was updated automatically in the central database. LiveImpact has taken the headache out of doing an event for us. LiveImpact also offers features that are complex to use in other platforms. For example, merging contacts simultaneously is very easy to do in LiveImpact as it is visually laid out compared to Salesforce. LiveImpact’s donor database is very similar to Salesforce in terms of capacity and functionality, but its interface is more user friendly for non-tech savvy individuals. Salesforce is complex and becomes hard to navigate. Also, Salesforce terminology is not geared towards nonprofits. Salesforce uses words such as account, opportunity, a donor is a contact, therefore one has to constantly do some interpretation. LiveImpact uses familiar nonprofit language and goes a step further as we could define the “names” for our contacts. We customized the system based on how we refer to our contacts, our processes and how we work. Having one platform makes everything easier for us, including training our staff on one software. Its more efficient and cost effective. With LiveImpact the support we get has been amazing and very helpful. They are very attentive and very flexible with our needs.