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DonorPerfect vs SmarterSelect: Which is a better fit?

Updated on February 9th, 2025
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Summary
Key features rated by users
Features selected based on 4,352 reviews from Nonprofit users.
% Fit
High performer
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
4.6
Credit Card Processing
4.6
Electronic Payments
4.5
Donor Management
4.6
Fundraising Management
4.4
% Fit
Missing features
Not enough reviews
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
--
Credit Card Processing
NA
Electronic Payments
--
Donor Management
NA
Fundraising Management
NA
User satisfaction
4.6
User reviews1,224
Ease of use
4.3
Functionality
4.3
Value for money
4.5
Customer support
4.7
4.4
User reviews233
Ease of use
4.1
Functionality
4.2
Value for money
4.5
Customer support
4.5
Price starts from
Monthly subscription
Free version
Free trial
Yearly subscription
Free version
Free trial
Best for

DonorPerfect is a specialized nonprofit CRM designed to help your organization increase funding, establish trust, and achieve sustainability.

Community foundations, private foundations, education foundations, associations, higher education organizations, corporations, etc.

User reviews
pros & cons
1 / 4
View Reviews
1 / 4
View Reviews
Video reviews
Kathleen G
Manager - Community and Alumni Engagement
5.0

Kathleen G.: Hi, my name is Kathleen. I'm a manager of community and alumni engagement at Foothills Academy Society, and I give DonorPerfect five out of five stars. So when I came into my role, I inherited our DonorPerfect software. However, I've been approached by multiple other organizations who do similar work. I have chosen to stay with DonorPerfect because of the high level of support that I get from the team at DonorPerfect as well as the extensive knowledge base and the overall usability and increase of efficiency for our work. DonorPerfect has been the choice to stay with completely 1000%. So the reasons that we chose to stay with DonorPerfect was it's created so much efficiency for us around the work we're doing with reporting to donors, as well as our own internal reports to track and check our data on how we are doing in our fundraising. It's also created a lot of ability through the integration with other platforms for processing golf tournament fees, golf tournament sponsorships and donations, as well as our... What am I thinking of? Oh, as well as all of our financial components. It's just... and the online form section, it's just been an absolute dream to use and really easy to use and really easy to adopt. So we have stayed with it because it's the number one choice. It was so easy to onboard and integrate with DonorPerfect. We elected to do training to increase the capacity of our team as we were all new to our roles. Once we got started, we found it to be very, very easy to use, really intuitive, and the capacity of it as we've grown our team over the last 18 months has really proven a worthwhile investment for us. I think the recommendation I would have for other folks who are looking at using DonorPerfect is considering the offset of how much time you're currently spending maybe working with your data, maybe sending thank you notes to your donors, maybe issuing receipts, and think about how much time you could save if that was a really streamlined process. I would also really recommend considering this to an offset to a cost and an increase in capacity for you to do maybe more meaningful work in your fundraising and not just spending time issuing or printing receipts, and think about how it could really increase the capacity of your organization to have such an amazing, streamlined product integrated into what you're doing. And do training. And definitely do training because it makes the whole thing 1000% easier. It's worth that additional investment. I would say it 10X'd our ability with the product. So buy the product, pay for the additional training so that you're really capable and competent in it, and then watch how much easier it makes your life on the day to day.

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Darla S
Executive Director
4.0

Darla: Hi, I'm Darla. I'm the Executive Director of a nonprofit and I give SmarterSelect a four out of five. We were using online papers for our scholarship application process, and we wanted to go online. So we had also reviewed Academic Works when I was also reviewing SmarterSelect, and Academic Works was more expensive and didn't quite have everything I was looking for. We are a small staff of two, so that means we wear many hats on a daily basis. And as you can imagine, saving time and efficiency is very important for small non-profits, so SmarterSelect offers the Scholarship Matching Questionnaire feature. This 20 question feature allows our applicants to be matched to more than 80 scholarships that we offer. So this was a very valuable tool that really attracted me to SmarterSelect. As you can imagine, matching those students manually was very time consuming. So that was one problem that SmarterSelect helped solve. Another problem that we have is, reaching our college students consistently. They're not very good about replying to emails, so SmarterSelect has the messaging feature. Not only does it offer the email messaging, it has the option for us to text message our students and reach them more quickly. So that's huge for us to make sure we're able to stay in communication with them. And another problem that SmarterSelect solved was, as we were wanting to go online with our application process, and especially during COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to have the students apply online for the scholarships. And as our staff was working remotely, we were able to review and process and communicate with the students. One thing I liked about SmarterSelect was, they offered a free trial. So I enrolled for that and was immediately connected with a technician, I believe his name was Roger. Roger was so helpful. He talked with us. He helped us with the online preparation of our unique programs, helped answer our questions, and the integration of taking our application from paper to online was very customizable. And their customer support really helped us in the initial stages and even throughout. This is year four for us using it and each year it seems like we have different questions and they're always able to help us through that. So the integration has been wonderful. Most scholarship programs are very unique in their own programming and the nice thing about SmarterSelect is that it's very customizable and you can develop the application however you need it to be. You can ask whatever questions that you need to ask and having the Matching Questionnaire as an option to help in the process of matching the student to specific scholarships was a huge selling point for me. And I would highly recommend that if you are in a scholarship program and you have several different scholarships to award with all different types of criteria, SmarterSelect is very workable, very customizable and very affordable.

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User interface
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DonorPerfect

Top Features
43/45
  • Budgeting/Forecasting
  • Dues Management
  • Access Controls/Permissions
  • Accounting
  • Accounting Integration
  • Activity Dashboard
  • Activity Tracking
  • Alerts/Notifications
  • API
  • Attendance Management
  • Calendar Management
  • Campaign Management
  • Committee Management
  • Communication Management
  • Contact Management
  • Credit Card Processing
  • CRM
  • Customizable Branding
  • Customizable Fields
  • Customizable Forms
  • Customizable Reports
  • Customizable Templates
  • Data Import/Export
  • Document Storage
  • Donor Management
  • Electronic Payments
  • Event Management
  • Event Scheduling
  • Forms Management
  • For Nonprofits
  • Fund Accounting
  • Fundraising Management
  • Grant Management
  • Member Database
  • Membership Management
  • Mobile Access
  • Real-Time Analytics
  • Real-Time Reporting
  • Recurring/Subscription Billing
  • Registration Management
  • Reporting & Statistics
  • Social Marketing
  • Third-Party Integrations
  • Volunteer Management
  • Website Management
See All features
Hide Nonprofit Software Features -

SmarterSelect

15/45
Show Nonprofit Software Features +
DonorPerfect
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
SmarterSelect
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
DonorPerfect
  • By SofterWare
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 1981
SmarterSelect
  • By SmarterSelect
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 2007
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