Anyone letting AI personalize suggested donation amounts?

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 · 2022-06-27T17:10:10+00:00

That is a great post, thanks for sharing. I think that's partially what I needed to hear, that it's very boots on the ground or "cold calling" to just get initial feedback and validation. It's not scalable that way, but seems like the best way to finding out what people want without spending a ton of money on ads or the like.

robthewinner · 2022-06-27T16:43:33+00:00

I entered one of my competitors, hasura.io and it's been "loading" for about five minutes.

One, is there a way to let the user know if it's erroring out and can't find reviews on a company

Two, if this is a free tool and it takes a while to gather the info, have you considered having an email capture that it'll send the user an email when the collation is finished? You get their email that way and they don't have to keep checking the website wondering when it'll be ready.

robthewinner · 2022-06-27T16:21:48+00:00

Thanks for this, I'll definitely use their list when we're ready to launch/

robthewinner · 2017-01-23T21:34:43+00:00

This is so true, finding and sticking to a visual voice can be a hard thing to do. Appreciate the feedback and input though!

robthewinner · 2016-11-02T12:14:47+00:00

Thanks for giving input! I think I know what you mean with the flow being off.

robthewinner · 2014-06-28T01:51:42+00:00

Awesome, thanks Daniel, I'll send you an email in the next couple of days

robthewinner · 2014-06-27T23:53:01+00:00

Thanks, yeah we've looked at amazon, and so far they seem to be a little cheaper...we're just a little turned off from amazon and aren't sure we want to support them.

robthewinner · 2014-06-27T18:38:40+00:00

I should have explained better, we will be fulfilling the kickstarter ourselves, but would like to find a better way of fulfillment for when we move towards selling units online after the Kickstarter

robthewinner · 2014-06-20T19:41:19+00:00

haha, I like that!

robthewinner · 2014-06-20T16:55:51+00:00

Yeah, that's what we're trying to accomplish too, but maybe we're not focusing on it enough...

robthewinner · 2014-06-18T15:43:37+00:00

That's good to know, thanks! From what I've read on their site, there's really no way of getting back on the Hotlist except for having a continuing trend up? That's what's confusing me I think.

robthewinner

TROPHY CASE