Trail Blazer Non-Profit Manager

Pros: The response for queries is fantastic.

Cons: Using a MAC makes things a little frustrating.

Pros: Constituent tracking: Donor contact info/gifts/registrations. Revenue/expenses reports.

Cons: $79

Pros: I like the fact that anytime I have questions about the software, I can easily talk to the team at Trail Blazer. They have helped walk me through any issues I've encountered. Their team has very promptly answered the phone or email questions, and I appreciate that kind of support.

Cons: I had not filled this section out, but it looks like I must answer this section. I'm very pleased, but my only suggestion would be to make it even more intuitive and update the look so it's more modern and inviting.

Pros: The set up was straitforward, and the learning curve wasn't too steep. it was easy to integrate with our payment processor.

Cons: The missing piece was bookkeeping integration and their event registration didn't have an integrated calendar.

Pros: Data management. Ease in finding contact and contact information.

Cons: Unable to query contacts with events. Software designed more for campaigns than our nonprofit needs.

Pros: As a small post-secondary trade school and non-profit we need the critical functionality that Trailblazer provides to track all our constituents and communicate with them regularly through our electronic newsletter. Trailblazer lets us track financial information accurately, communicate with our friends, donors and alums (either collectively or by segment), to review an individual's history with our organization prior to meeting with them, and to create reports to track our progress against fundraising and engagement goals. My two favorite things about this software is that it is easy to get up and running and the product support team is off-the-charts wonderful with immediate and knowledgeable answers. This product support experience is really unique and is the *key* reason I recommend this software to anybody who asks.

Cons: It's really hard to do drip-marketing campaigns, where we have a sequence of emails to send to particular subsets of individuals. We've found workarounds (thanks to the brilliant support team) but it really is cumbersome.

Pros: The customer service is what I like best! Someone is always available to help.

Cons: The interface is pretty old-school. There are major improvements needed for creating newsletters that allow the user to be more creative.

Pros: $7a

Cons: Any system you go with has a learning curve. There is a learning curve here too. It requires some logical thinking to use well. You tell it what you want and it pulls the information. You can immediately get to work once you know the basics but as you learn new ways to us it, soon you'll become much more efficient. Email is also a con. It uses html formating. Other services have an easier drop and type interface, templates, and pictures ready to speed up the process. This one requires a little more work. But once you have templates built, it works fine... AND the trailblazer staff will help you build a template if desired. Plus there are great help article and videos to walk you through everything you may want. They have also made some great improvements recently in this area too.

Pros: The data entry is easy, and looking things up is easy.

Cons: If just took some time to get used to it when it was new, but the support team was great

Pros: Now that I am learning the process it is a bit easier.....very confusing in the beginning

Cons: This software was built on a political platform not a nonprofit. If I had been in my position when it was purchased we would not have purchased......the terminology is not totally based for a nonprofit. Is there a way to change that?

Pros: This product organizes and stores data well. It integrates with our website and payment vendor.

Cons: This product requires technical skills. It is not a drag and drop type program and some of the features like email campaigns can be done much easier through other software.

Pros: Trailblazer is extremely user friendly and when you know how to work it, it makes the job so much easier. I love how I can write all the thank you letters in one place and takes out room for error.

Cons: The one thing that I don't like is how when you choose the cycle or year for a donation, it has previous years in it. I can understand going back a couple of years for a choice but not 10. But I guess it can be helpful for those who are trying to put previous records in

Pros: I use Trail Blazer for tracking and updating donor contact and contribution information, and for logging correspondence. It is user friendly and fairly intuitive.

Cons: I wish I could copy/paste donor address data to use in MSWord document correspondence. It would also be helpful if I could navigate between donors without backing all the way out to the dashboard.

Pros: The customer support! Always there and usually quick response, at no add'l cost.

Cons: Letter generation, must export to use this

Pros: I love how easy it is to organize your donors, so you don't miss a beat when thanking them

Cons: I find it very difficult at time to pull the correct reports and get the information that I actually need.

Pros: Easy to keep track of donors-works with Vanco on collecting funds. Great support on all levels. Use for newsletters also. Very easy to add input.

Cons: Sometimes it's tricky on formatting newsletters.

Pros: Donor software can often be out of reach for many “grassroots” charities, however Trailblazer is available at a reasonable price and is easy to use.

Cons: I cannot think of anything that I don’t like

Pros: Trail Blazer is easy to use and easy to learn with a tutorial and lots of instructional videos, but what I like most is the live customer support. They are a small company, but always available with a quick phone call to answer any questions.

Cons: This is pretty minor, but I would like the online payment page on our website to be more customizable. I asked and they are working on improvements to the design.

Pros: Helps with keeping my data base every day.

Cons: Hard to use in some ways. Could be easier to use, if I could teach myself.

Pros: The support team is responsive, always friendly

Cons: There are a few features that the team has already incorporated after my suggestion. I expect that will continue as we discover desired features.

Pros: 1) ease of entering donations and printing thank you letters with various templates. 2) ability to search for specific donors and send merge letters to them. 3) ability to send year-end donation letters to parishioners.

Cons: The only con is that I thought the IT team would set up my database with the funds and popup fields I gave them so it was up and ready to go when we installed it. The last database we purchased was all set up and ready to go when we installed it. So I had to have several online training sessions to be able to get to a starting place to enter donations.

Pros: Amazing customer service. Quick to respond to email or phone call. Tons of excellent knowledge docs and they always help identify which one is best suited for your question. Always willing to help no matter how many times I reach out.

Cons: There's so much functionality and so many knowledge docs that I sometimes feel overwhelmed by it all. Wish there was a 10,000 foot view of everything the system offers, and the we could drill down into specific functionality to learn more. Customer support is awesome when I know what I want to do, but I feel like I could be doing so much more with this system.