Hi everyone! Thanks again Greg for all your great resources.
I checked out Tech Soup and there doesn't seem to be much there. There are several programs that do donor tracking (which we may not really need anyway) and have some of the built-in features of the mailer programs, but the huge discounts are only good for one year. After that, you convert to a direct subscription with perhaps a small discount. In other words, these are designed to be inexpensive ways for medium-sized orgs to do a solid test of a system before investing in it. They are not designed to be methods for small orgs to get affordable services.
1) Bloomerang, $99/year for the trial.
• Access for unlimited users
• Up to 1,000 contact records
• Five times as many emails as you have records
10% discount on plans up to 40,000 records.
If your contact records grow to more than 1,000 during your donated year of service, Bloomerang will bill you for them at a rate of $1.00 a month per 25 additional records.
2) Little Green Light Donor Management CRM, $40/year for the trial.
$425 credit toward a one-year subscription. If your organization has 2,500 or fewer constituent records, the credit will cover the full year's cost. The subscription allows unlimited users.
• Track contact information for your donors, prospects, volunteers, and others
• Track gifts and pledges (including "in honor of" and "in memory of" gifts and soft credits)
• Coordinate events and appeals, including physical mailings and through integrations with email marketing programs
• Integrations: You can integrate Little Green Light with Constant Contact, MailChimp, Mandrill, Wufoo, Formstack, and PayPal (which may have additional fees).
At the end of the year of this subscription, you can continue it at regular rates through Little Green Light.
3) eTapestry Starter Package, $120/year for the trial.
• Access for unlimited users
• Up to 1,000 contact records
• One online fundraising form to accept donations
• Constant Contact integration: Email addresses can be transferred directly into Constant Contact from eTapestry
At the end of the donation period, you may renew your subscription directly from Blackbaud at a discount of 10 percent off the regular price.
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So...if we don't do donor tracking, we'll still need accounting. Something to keep track of money in and out, as well as donations. And it should be something that
1) Multiple people can use (either from sharing one online login or for using on multiple computers...unless we get an office and computer, but that's for the future).
2) Integrated with one of the mail programs. Last thing any of us wants is to be constantly checking that every new name gets entered in both places, if we end up tracking "subscriptions" or annual donors (might not be relevant for a system of cash donations).
Tech Soup has several inexpensive accounting programs, and some don't cost much at the regular prices, but I am still learning about them. I have a Mac so have only ever used Mac programs.
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Okay, on to the mail programs.
1) Mail Chimp.
MailChimp gives nonprofit organizations a 15-percent discount. And if your list has fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month for free.
They integrate with a variety of other programs. Any costs I mention, or the word "free," refers to the plugins and etc, not to the base programs. This includes: WooCommerce and other e-commerce sites (not needed for us, yet, but maybe useful if we sell downloads to training videos or something), Wordpress ($99 and up), Facebook (free?), Google Docs (free), PayPal (free), EventBrite (free), Twitter (free), Evernote (free), Quickbooks (free for simple, not sure about complex), iTunes (can use to distribute audio recordings of lectures or music), MYOB (a Mac Accounting program) ($29/month and up),
They say: "If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. No expiring trial, contract, or credit card required." Do we believe this? This is for everyone, not just nonprofits.
Here are the prices for more subscribers:
To get unlimited emails, 1001-1500 subscribers is $20/month. Add $5/month for each additional 500. But it seems to cap out at 2600. You can also pay as you go instead of doing monthly plans.
Once you get into "pro" territory, it's $199/month. Not sure if we can or can't do everything we want to do without that.
2) VerticalResponse.
Up to 10,000 emails per month for free. If you're a higher-volume sender, we also offer a 15% discount on our monthly plans.
Pay as you go plan available. Not at all cheap, but may be worth it for occasional overruns.
The free plan is:
• Up to 1,000 Contacts
• Up to 4,000 Emails per Month
• Award-Winning Support
There are tiered plans by the number of people you are emailing (I presume this means # of contacts, not the max for individual emails, but I don't know).
For the Basic service you get:
• Add More Contacts
• Send Unlimited Emails
• Automated Follow-Up Emails
• Remove VR Branding
500 contacts is $11/month.
1000 is $22/month.
2500 is $33/month.
5000 is $55/month.
There is also a Pro plan which isn't much more than Basic, but doesn't seem to offer anything we need.
3) Constant Contact.
A free plan which is only for 60 days. Then two types: Email ($20/month and up) and Email Plus ($45/month and up). 10% discount to buy 6 months at once, $15% to buy a year at once.
For orgs that are not nonprofits:
$20 - Fewer than 500 contacts
$40 - 501-2500 contacts
$60 - 2501-5000 contacts
$90 - 5001-10,000 contacts
If you are a nonprofit, the monthly rates are the same but the discounts for pre-payment are much higher. 20% off for buying 6 months and 30% off for buying a year.
The Email Plus costs a bit more than twice as much and has some extra features: 2GB of file storage instead of 1GB. 3 users instead of 1. Some advanced features like Events Registration & Management and collecting donations.
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Other places to check out:
1) Get Response
Email package plans start at $15/month for 1000 subscribers. $25 for 2500 subs, $45 for 5000. The great news is nonprofits get a whopping 50% discount.
The Pro package starts at $49/month for 5000 subs . It gives you 3 users (instead of 1) and some extra features like autoresponse and landing pages.
Did I mention the 50% discount?
2) A Weber Communications offers a discount of 25% to nonprofit organizations, in addition to three complimentary months to start. You get access to their full range of tools, including powerful autoresponders.
3) Benchmark Email offers a 25% discount for nonprofits, but they don't give you a free period. Choose from a variety of email templates and, if you don't see one you like, you can always design your own. Benchmark Email also has excellent autoresponder capabilities to help streamline your email campaigns, leaving you time to focus on other tasks. You won't be able to perform split testing, but you can still monitor the success of your campaigns with detailed reports detailing how your subscribers responded.
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