Panorama

Good Product for Mid-Sized Private Schools

Avantages :

Product is easy to use and tech support is quick to respond with helpful information.

Inconvénients :

This product is great and I really can’t think of anything I like least about it.

Fundamentally Sound

Commentaires : Panorama was originally our second choice because of the interface, but their robust platform passed our stringent IT security certification process. The functionality was great for both users and admins, with a few features that we would like to see improved such as automatic sales tax calculations based on shipping address for online orders. Customer support was top-notch before, during, and after our event. We weren't sure the platform would work as well as it did for a for-profit firm like ours since it's largely used by non-profits for fundraising, but there were no issues at all. Very reliable and mostly intuitive. They have ample documentation, help videos, and great support. We added premium support since it was our first time using it and I would recommend that for large events. Aside from the older looking web templates, and export-based reporting, I'd give Panorama an A- on their auction solution.

Avantages :

Secure and stable platform, customer support, online auction capability, overall value

Inconvénients :

Antiquated reporting, web templates are outdated, lack of truly responsive design for various devices, jumping between private/public auctions caused some confusion

Definitely not the best...but getting better at least

Commentaires : Long story short, while I wasn't impressed with Giftworks Cloud by any means it did get better. I wasn't pleased, however with my monthly price going up (they said this wouldn't happen). I can understand that when you roll out a new program it costs money, but when one of your "selling points" for your current customers to switch from old Giftworks to the new one was that our price wouldn't increase then that's a bit misleading? When I buy software or anything for that matter, I rely heavily on user reviews. I would not go back to Giftworks, I did find a donor management system that is more powerful, user-friendly and overall better in every way for HALF the price. Before you decide on Giftworks or the, even more, pricier systems, I would look into Little Green Light (LGL for short). LGL has turned my reporting around substantially. Writing acknowledgment letters is so much better now and it's so much easier to use. In closing, there are better options and there are worse options...Giftworks cloud seems to be "middle of the road" and hopefully will be getting better as they introduce more features.

Avantages :

I do like that they decided to go with the cloud instead of their Giftworks Anywhere software. With Giftworks Anywhere you had to have Citrix Receiver which never seemed to work right. While I didn't have a very long time to check out the features of their new cloud database, (they only allowed me a week even tho I was already a longtime customer) I still wasn't able to check out all the features that I felt they needed before because they weren't enabled in the 1-week trial or they just weren't available.

Inconvénients :

Giftworks was the first donor management system that I had ever used but I had constant problems with it (mainly Citrix I think, but at that time you needed to have Citrix installed to use Giftworks Anywhere). The reporting features were confusing and didn't report like I felt they should. For example, It took me several tries to finally come up with a decent list of monthly donors...you wouldn't think that should be too hard right? I never found an easy way to build a monthly donor list, but I ended up making a list of donors that had donated 10x or more the previous year... although it also gave me other donors on this list that didn't fit any of my criteria? The filtering was terrible and I would end up with partial data or too much like I just said.

High Quality Software

Avantages :

I like how it is a one stop shop for Fundraising, Auction/Event Mangement, and CRM.

Inconvénients :

There are a couple of features that are lacking: 1. There is no donor (user) portal login for them to personally manage their donations and 2.) There are limitations with making bulk changes to donor records.

Customer support

Avantages :

I found it useful to track donations, but other than that I don't feel it is user friendly

Inconvénients :

With getting a new computer, giftworks would give me an error. The first time I called they said they would send me an email, which I never got. I called again and started receiving emails with suggestions. I went two weeks without giftworks, because when I would log in it would lock up my computer. I asked the the person I was working with that she call me.She did NOT. She kept suggesting things that weren't working. I finally figured out it was time to unistall and reinstall, she then suggested that. Very frustrating experience.