Almabase vs ThankView: Which is a better fit?

Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Camille. I'm the director of Alumni Engagement for Ranney School, and I would give Almabase a five out of five star rating. I haven't used any other alumni-specific software products prior to using Almabase, but I have extensive research and experience using other CRM systems, including Raiser's Edge and Salesforce. Ranney School decided to invest in Almabase software several years ago with the increasing need to engage and reengage with our alumni community. And it's been an initiative that we've continued forward, and the software has helped us tremendously. Almabase was incredibly easy and simple to integrate with our current organization. At first, all we had to do was provide an Excel list of all of our alums, and the partners in the backend at Almabase worked quickly to upload that information. As information is new or needs to be added, it's incredibly simple to do such thing. And what I appreciate the most is Almabase's ability to integrate with other softwares like Raiser's Edge. So our current database with all of our constituent information is easily connected with Almabase, so there isn't duplicating efforts back and forth. My advice to anyone considering Almabase is to definitely give it a look, go through the trial and understand its capabilities. And if you see anything that you wish it did do, definitely mention it to it because the developers are consistently making new changes and they value everyone's feedback. So I definitely think it's a software worth your investment.

Lynsey: Hi, my name is Lynsey and I am the Program Director for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals of Greater St. Louis. And we've been using ThankView for a while and I give it a five. Before using ThankView, we used multiple different platforms. The most recent before ThankView was Hustle. We were trying to use a platform to allow us to communicate, send text messages, but they weren't being received well. So we were trying to find a way to engage our donors and steward them in a different way. In looking for a platform that we thought was going to work, we wanted one that was easily accessible on all different devices because of who we were reaching out to. We needed one that really had a platform for email, that could use a phone number and a text message service if we needed it, but we really wanted the platform to really be email because that was a majority of the communication options we had. And we wanted something that was unique and different, that would get people's attention. And we know video is a great way to capture people's attention. People will watch a video for a few minutes versus read something. And then on top of that, it gave us the ability to have a platform or a landing page for every email we sent out that could recap that information and also add additional things that would allow us to a link out to our website where our website would then give them the tools they needed. So it was a quick, easy place to get one video sent to everybody to allow them to have a landing page that was engaging with the envelopes opening, and then have a place where all of that data was collected in one place that if they didn't watch the video, they could also read what we were sending them. So getting started was fairly simple. I think the hardest part, because we don't have an IT department because we're a very small five person office, that I had to figure out how to do some IT work to get the emails to come from, not just ThankView but from our hosted IRL of cmn.org. But once that was set up and their team was great at helping me get into that system, helping me when I wasn't sure where I was connecting and what I was supposed to be typing, they sent detailed instructions that allowed me to be able to do that. I just had to figure out first where to go, but once that was all established and getting the system connected for that purpose, using ThankView was so simple. I consider myself pretty technology swabby on this, but I think anyone can do it. It's simple step-by-step instructions. There was great online courses that allowed you if you didn't have that understanding of how a system might work. Plus they were great at doing an online course where they walked you through it to help you figure it out. And then once you were on your own, there was easily some how-tos and frequently asked questions that if you couldn't figure it out, you could connect on their website and figure out what you were missing. But it took me setting up one simple test campaign to get the feel and the understanding of it. And from there, it was super easy to start using it in all the different capacities we now use it for. I highly recommend ThankView. It's great to be able to put a face with the messages going out. For us, that was a huge thing. When we started sending out these messages to some of our donors, we're in a unique position. We're not using it truly to capture donations back to us, but what we're using it for is a stewardship type of email. And so it was great that they could see our faces, they could see the faces of the children that we were telling the stories of. And so when we would walk into their stores or our kids walked into their stores or their company business, that they then knew us right from the start, which is a huge component that we were missing. Also, it's great in being able to request videos from people you need. We always need stories. We're a storytelling organization and a storytelling world with social media. And so being able to send out a link that lets those stories be captured so easily that we can send right back out and get those messages dispersed in an easy way made this product such a great tool to use. And it made it so that we were able to connect on a much broader level, and it actually increased our fundraising. We increased by about 38% in the one campaign that we tested this on. So we can clearly see that being able to have that personal touch made a huge difference in them raising more money for us.