The Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) published the results of it's first-ever Donor Management Software (DMS) Satisfaction Survey last week. Nearly 1,000 people participated in the survey - whose goal was to help nonprofits "find the DMS that is best for your organization".

Regulars readers of this blog will recall that we were quite disappointed when the survey was announced - due to the fact that CiviCRM was NOT INCLUDED In the list of Donor Management Software solutions in the survey. The good news is that folks in our community stepped up nicely. Despite being a "write-in candidate" CiviCRM got the fourth highest number of respondents to the question "Please select the product that you consider your PRIMARY donor management system."

More importantly, users gave CiviCRM very positive grades across the board:

• 97.4% Would Recommend or Highly Recommend - This means that all but 1 of the 39 respondents who use CiviCRM as their primary Donor Management solution would recommend it to others.
• CiviCRM was rated A or A+ on each of the following criteria:
  • Quality and Reliability
  • After Sales Support
  • Delivers on Promises and Deadlines
  • Value for Price and Value for Time
  • Ability to be Configured
• and got a B+ grade for Usability

The full report is available free to NTEN members at:
>> http://nten.org/research/2008-donor-management-software-satisfaction-survey

We know that there is more work to do to make our donor management features even stronger, especially in the area of reporting. But given that we provide a much broader range of functionality that many (most?) of the other solutions covered in the survey... and given that we are pretty new on the playing field - I think both the team AND the community of folks who collaborate with us to push the platform forward can be quite proud of this report.

... and with our strong "write-in" showing, we hope that future surveys/reports on Donation Management Systems from organizations like NTEN and Idealware will include CiviCRM up-front!