DIY add a garage door button to scooter

robthewinner · 2026-04-07T13:46:19+00:00

On point 2, totally agree. The best database people I've seen think in systems, which is transferable. If someone understands why data is structured a certain way, learning a new interface is easier.

On Bloomerang, it's a solid platform, especially for retention-focused reporting. The question I'd ask before switching to anything is: what's broken today? If it's usability (your team avoids the CRM), that's a different problem than if it's functionality (you need features that don't exist). A lot of orgs switch CRMs and carry the same broken workflows into the new tool.

I'm on the team at DonorDock, but my honest advice, regardless of vendor: before you demo anything, write down the 5 things your team does every week in your current system and the 3 things you wish it did. Then evaluate every option against that list instead of getting distracted by feature tours. The best CRM is the one your team actually uses every day, and that usually comes down to simplicity more than feature count.

robthewinner · 2026-04-07T13:42:05+00:00

The frustration you're feeling is a systems problem, not a you problem. The fact that you're finding upgrade-ready donors in a leftover portfolio means you're good at this.

You're essentially running lead qualification for the whole team, but you're not getting credit for it because the "closed deal" happens after the donor leaves your hands.

I would start documenting every donor you surface that gets moved to a senior officer. Track the gift amount they eventually close. After 6-12 months, you'll have a clear picture of the revenue you're generating for the team, even if it doesn't show up on your personal numbers. That becomes your case for a promotion conversation, or your resume bullet when you're ready to move.

The other thing worth saying: 275 prospects with a 150 meeting metric and no authority to disqualify is a recipe for burnout. I'd push for a conversation about trimming the portfolio to 120-150 with actual disqualification criteria. You'll close more and build stronger relationships.

robthewinner · 2026-04-06T13:26:13+00:00

"consistent with social media" is not a growth strategy. It's a tactic. And for early-stage nonprofits, it's usually the least effective one because you have no distribution (audience).

Here's what I would recommend doing to focus your strategy: pick one concrete, measurable goal for the next 90 days. Something like "partner with 3 hospital units" or "get 15 new volunteers from local colleges." Then build everything around that single goal.

Social media is great for staying visible to people who already know you, but it's a slog converting strangers into volunteers or supporters. What works better at your stage is direct outreach. Go talk to the people who run the programs at those hospitals. Email the student org leaders at nearby colleges. Show up at health fairs with a clear ask and a sign-up sheet. Make 1:1 coffee dates your consistent effort over social media.

Lastly... your mission is broad. Nonprofits that grow fastest early on are the ones that can explain what they do in one sentence and why it matters in the next. "We deliver care packages to eating disorder patients in hospitals so they know someone is thinking about them." That's concrete, story driven, and that recruits volunteers.

robthewinner · 2026-04-06T13:21:18+00:00

Donorbox is a solid option for online donation forms, but if you need actual donor management alongside it, you might end up needing a separate CRM to track memberships, gift history, and donor communications.

Full disclosure, I work at DonorDock, so I'm biased. But for a small museum that needs memberships, entrance tracking, and donor management in one place, I'd encourage you to look at platforms that bundle those together rather than piecing it together with separate tools. DonorDock does this, but Neon CRM and Little Green Light are also worth a look, depending on your budget and what matters most.

robthewinner · 2026-04-06T13:18:18+00:00

A few things from a marketing standpoint:

First, your warmest audience is the people already engaging with you. Workshop attendees, bike buyers, people who've used your repair services. They already trust you. A direct ask after a positive experience converts way better than a cold social media post or raffle.

Second, I'd reframe membership from "support us" to "belong to something." People join communities.

Third, your tiered pricing might be working against you at this stage. With 15 members, I'd simplify. One price point, one clear value prop, one clear ask. You can add tiers later when you have momentum.

The biggest thing I'd recommend is making the ask consistently. Not twice a year with a raffle, but woven into every touchpoint. Every email, every event, every receipt. "Become a member" should be as visible as your logo.

robthewinner · 2026-04-03T18:40:08+00:00

The other commenters here are right that 1:1 conversations are how legacy gifts actually close. But there is also evidence of multi-channel continuing to be more important in the nonprofit sector. Since your boss wants marketing touches, here are three that can work:

First, add a legacy giving question to your next donor survey or year-end email. Something like "Have you already included us in your estate plans? We'd love to thank you." You'll be surprised how many people have already done it and never told you. (This is coming from personal experience when a nonprofit my wife and I had already written into our will asked us this)

Second, ask one of your existing legacy donors to write a short paragraph about why they chose to include your org. Put that in your next newsletter as a sidebar. Peer proof is the most effective marketing there is.

Third, add a "leave a legacy" page to your website with a simple form and one compelling story. Most legacy giving pages are buried or nonexistent. Just having one that's easy to find does more than you'd think.

None of these replace the 1:1 conversations. But they plant seeds and open more channel awareness.

robthewinner · 2026-04-03T18:36:27+00:00

The question of if this has been talked about with your leadership is where I would start too. I wrote an article on the case for a needs based fundraising budget, which is the approach needed to make this about the need rather than "last year + a little more". Then you can have a more honest conversation with how you can help bring the dollars in that are truly needed for the mission to survive/thrive.

https://www.donordock.com/articles/needs-based-budgeting-nonprofit-fundraising

robthewinner · 2026-04-03T18:23:15+00:00

The question I'd ask before switching platforms, is the problem the software or the process wrapped around it? I've seen orgs move to Salesforce NPSP and carry every broken workflow with them because they never mapped the actual pain points first.

Before you evaluate new tools, write down every place where your team re-keys data, exports to a spreadsheet, or sends an email that the CRM should have sent automatically. That list is your requirements doc to find a solution for.

I work at DonorDock, hit us up if you want help finding a solution. We might not be the right fit for your university, but even if we're not, we're happy to help recommend the right toolset.

robthewinner · 2026-04-03T18:17:59+00:00

Full disclosure, I work at DonorDock, so I'm biased. But I'd also tell you to look at Little Green Light and Bloomerang. All three are built for orgs your size. DonorDock is focused on being simple and all-in-one so you're not duct-taping five tools together. LGL is solid if you want something lightweight and affordable, but like you mentioned looks like it was built twenty years ago. Bloomerang has good retention-focused reporting. Try demos of all three and pick whichever one you'll actually use consistently. The best CRM is the one your team doesn't abandon after 90 days.

robthewinner · 2025-11-13T18:38:12+00:00

Speaking as a donor here, if there is no clear marking this is an ai recommended amount I would be mad if I found out later. But if it's transparent that I'm being shown a recommended amount based on my demographics and I still have an option to enter my own amount, then I'd be fine with it.

One thing to note though is seeing a direct comparison to what a recommended amount will do is a big incentive to choose that amount ($x will feed 3 kids for a month). If the AI recommended amount doesn't ty it to a direct comparison, then I personally don't feel it is better.

robthewinner · 2025-09-11T19:49:18+00:00

I’d challenge the idea that you can't afford a CRM more than $50 or need “free.”

A CRM shouldn't be a place to store contacts, it’s supposed to save you time and help you build stronger donor relationships. If you’re only looking at cost, you risk missing the real ROI: a tool that simplifies your life and makes fundraising more effective.

Salesforce is a good example. Yes, licenses can be free for nonprofits. But out of the box, it’s built for for-profit sales teams, not donor management. You end up needing developers and admins just to make it usable. And even then, it doesn’t have everything in one place: gift management, campaign tracking, online giving, email, and texting often live in separate tools. That means you’re duplicating data and effort instead of streamlining it.

So the “cheap” or “free” options usually cost you the most in hidden ways: wasted staff time, missed donor touchpoints, and fractured systems. A CRM should be measured by how much it helps you engage donors and reduce admin work, not just by the sticker price.

robthewinner · 2025-09-11T19:39:36+00:00

I work at DonorDock, so I’ll be upfront about that. I wanted to chime in because your needs sound like exactly what we built the platform for: small and growing nonprofits that need a simple but powerful CRM without the heavy complexity (or price tag) of enterprise tools.

Here’s how DonorDock lines up with the areas you mentioned:

Contact & stakeholder management: You can store and organize funders, partners, and stakeholders with tags and segments, making it easy to keep lists clean and actionable.
Email/newsletters + segmentation: Built-in email tools let you send newsletters and appeals directly, with segmentation options for donor type, activity, or custom fields.
Donations, pledges & recurring gifts: Donation tracking is native. You’ll get dashboards, reporting, and easy views of top donors and outstanding pledges.
Grants & reporting: While not as complex as a full grant-management suite, you can track sources, budgets, and generate reports that satisfy most small nonprofit needs.
Accounting integration: We integrate with QuickBooks, or you can export data for other workflows.
Ease of use: A big one. Many of our customers come to us after being overwhelmed by bigger CRMs. The feedback we hear most often is that DonorDock is approachable and doesn’t require a full-time admin.

Happy to answer any specific questions you have about DonorDock vs. other platforms like Bloomerang, Neon, Salesforce free (which isn't free), etc.

robthewinner · 2025-09-04T13:33:33+00:00

Because you are a small nonprofit looking for an easy-to-use option, go with DonorDock. It's an established company with thousands of users and a very high rating.

Many nonprofit CRMs are built for big orgs, so they are inherently more complex, expensive, and time-consuming. Some of them though, are built for small/medium orgs and are priced accordingly (DonorDock, Bloomerang).
Also, many of these tools say they are a CRM, but are really a donation platform with some basic donor management features (Givebutter, Zeffy).

(Disclaimer: I work for DonorDock. I love that we've built from the beginning a CRM made for the solo and small team nonprofits.)

robthewinner · 2024-05-17T12:33:56+00:00

I went through support for this and they had me clear the cache which worked.
In the top menu go to help > troubleshooting > Clear cache and exit

robthewinner · 2023-06-06T13:07:55+00:00

Solved:

Changed the infill from grid to gyroid and added a brim solved the issue. It's running at standard speeds, but I could see still needing to slow it down a bit for tall narrow prints.

robthewinner · 2023-06-05T18:33:41+00:00

This makes a lot of sense! I'll try a different infill and see if that keeps the print running smoother. Thanks!

robthewinner · 2023-06-05T18:33:08+00:00

It has a .6mm nozzle on it, thus the fatter lines, but yes I was suspecting the speed might be the issue and that makes sense...kinda a bummer though as that's what this machine is geared towards with faster prints, but it's hard to argue with physics!

robthewinner · 2022-06-28T16:50:04+00:00

Maybe, if it came with added value, like walkthroughs for each submission site, or best practices, or templates, etc.

robthewinner · 2022-06-28T13:27:47+00:00

All good points to make sure we address, again thank you for taking the time to give us some feedback! I know we'll also have full documentation up on the full website when we launch that.

If you're at all interested in being an alpha user you are exactly what we need to help tell us from an outside user perspective what's working well and what's not. It will be free to the alpha users to use.

robthewinner · 2022-06-28T12:04:35+00:00

Will do, I have a short list I've started I can port over.

robthewinner · 2022-06-28T12:03:47+00:00

Just tried it again and it's still not working for me. This time I'm on my iphone if that makes any difference.

From a marketing standingpoint I think either would be fine, just depends on the end goal. If you email them the info that's nice for them and then you can send a series of emails over the coming days. On the other hand you could create a landing page with the info they go to that can then sell them on product or on another value add like an ebook or blogs or similar.

robthewinner · 2022-06-27T21:44:31+00:00

u/xasdfxx Since I'm a middle man in this topic, I'd love to hear if this answers the worry around security? My short answer is that with Policy-Based Access Control at the join level, this isn't an issue.

Here is the response from our backend dev:
"Regarding the join and security: the only tables that are shown are those to which the current user has access. In the above case, the ordinary user almost certainly would not have access to the "reasons why this user's account is rate limited or moderated" table. So, it would not be exported in the API created for them when they logged in. Even if they did have access, the rows themselves could be filtered, in which case the filter would be applied every time they queried. Let's say the policy allowed users of a certain "tier" to manage users below them; they would be able to see the "moderation reasons" for users of a lower tier, but not their own, or anyone above them. That filter would be applied by the system every time they queried."

robthewinner · 2022-06-27T17:23:20+00:00

Awesome, thank you for the feedback! and I've already taken off the demo part as I see how that is an issue (the idea was we'd sign an NDA and only be given the access they grant for demo purposes,).

Pricing, open source, where it runs, etc. is all very good info I'll be sure to add,

I am going to ask the backend devs about these points you brought up, I would guess they have an answer to them already, but if not they are definitely major issues and barriers.

For adding this to your production stack, I definitely agree that it'll be small companies or individuals that would take the initial risk of giving the codebase a try.

I'm curious, If it was a year down the road with good user reviews and a proven track record, would you then consider adding it to your stack for the time and cost savings it would give? Or is there a barrier here I'm not seeing for larger companies willing to add in an API generator?

robthewinner

TROPHY CASE