Almabase

Highly Functional, Modern Solution for Fundraising, Crowd Fundraising and Alumni Management

Opmerkingen: Overall, I would recommend Almabase. Our organization took about 12-18 months to cutover from our legacy alumni website to NetCommunity in 2020-2021. We didn't anticipate cutover again this soon, but we were able to pull it off within five months of making the commitment. A lot of that is testimony to the support the implementation team and helpdesk at Almabase provide.

Pluspunten:

We were looking for a solution that could deliver a modern and responsive website for a team that would need a less technical, day-to-day interface for management, data-synchronization, and low-code/no code page design and development. Our organization liked that Almabase integrated with Raiser's Edge NXT and that it could deliver on a number of key initiatives. During our website development and cutover process, we tested the platform's capabilities with Crowd Fundraising and a very complex Event. While there were some synchronization challenges, the Almabase support team was very responsive and helpful in making the process very successful.

Minpunten:

The donation/gift synchronization is well-developed, but the event module and community module will require some additional work to better develop an engagement score methodology. These weren't the highest priorities at the time of cutting over, but they will require significant time/resource investment on the part of our team to utilize to the greatest advantage.

Good Fit for Bridge City High School Alumni: Excellent Customer Service

Pluspunten:

From the first demo throughout our selection process and onboarding, I found Almabase customer service to be a great asset every step of the way. I love the feature requests that are actually voted on by their users and implemented!

Minpunten:

Our Alumni group is from a smaller high school. So it's been a lot of learning on Almabase's part as well...getting to know our culture better and finding ways to help uniquely serve us. It's not really negative...it's just taken some time.

Awesome experience

Opmerkingen: Very good. The team was very attentive.

Pluspunten:

Easy to set up and user friendly. Great feedback

Minpunten:

Not sure I love how the videos display. Multiple videos take up to much screen space.

New but loving it!

Pluspunten:

We are still in the opening phases of using Almabase but are so grateful for the level of customer service and our alumni are very excited!

Minpunten:

I wish we had more control over what the site looked like.

Chief of Staff, DARO

Opmerkingen: The Almabase staff is very knowledgeable, helpful, respectful, and friendly.

Pluspunten:

I like the way it creates events in Almabase and one does not need to recreate the event in RE NXT.

Minpunten:

It would be helpful to have additional security rite controls.

GSSM Transitions to Almabase

Opmerkingen: I am so excited about our new alumni directory! It is much more user-friendly than our former database and has many options that I have not even had time to explore or set up yet like the job board. I have received rave reviews from the alumni who have updated their profiles in our new directory. It was worth the investment of time and money to provide a robust database for our community.

Pluspunten:

Almabase provides an easy-to-use, visually enticing database to house alumni data and a place for alumni to find classmates and make connections. The support received during the onboarding process was stellar and the resources provided were very helpful.

Minpunten:

I have no complaints. There were parts of the setup that I needed help with because I am not as tech-savvy as others may be, but I was able to complete the onboarding process, migrate data for 2700+ alumni, and set up a weekend-long event with their great support. I hit some snags, but they were fixed in a timely manner and I always received prompt responses.

Exceptional Customer Service

Opmerkingen: Phenomenal! Customer Success managers are super responsive, will always have an answer or follow up with an answer, they have designed features to meet our needs, and have been great partners!

Pluspunten:

Willingness to create new features to fit our needs.

Minpunten:

Nothing. I love everything about Almabase!

Successful three-day giving event using Almabase

Opmerkingen: Our institution successfully leveraged the Almabase platform to execute our seventh annual spring giving event, and our experience was overwhelmingly positive. Overall, we would highly recommend Almabase, especially for Raisers Edge customers who have struggled in the past with settling giving day data.

Pluspunten:

-The interface was very easy to use to build our giving event site -Our donors enjoyed the giving experience, including the functionality to share the campaign, the tribute wall, the page layout, and the ease of giving -Reconciling the gifts in Raiser’s Edge was as easy as it’s ever been for us - the process of matching the gifts to the appropriate records made this a very smooth process for our gift processing team. -The clear and supportive customer experience was unmatched. We had regular meetings to discuss our project; and questions were resolved quickly. -We were impressed with the go-live support - the Almabase team was very responsive when issues arose during our three-day event.

Minpunten:

Tracking donor count and lack of joint gift functionality in tracking on the event page.

BFHS - Christy

Opmerkingen: It has been a very good experience, especially when we have issues. The team works with you until you have a resolution.

Pluspunten:

All of the features available and tool for our alumni to engage.

Minpunten:

We have never used it to it's fullest capacity. One reason is because our alumni do not want to sign up for "another" platform to check.

Great for alumni management

Opmerkingen: I inherited our account three years ago and couldn't be happier. I've been able to add new records quickly, create specific pages, directories,and spaces for our alumni, and work with the Almabase team to refine the product.

Pluspunten:

We love that Almabase offers an easy to use contact directory and allows for event registrations. The customize pages also allow us to create content specific to our school.

Minpunten:

I think networking is an essential function of the database, and there are a few bugs with Almabase. The industry/field section needs to be standardized/a drop-down so alumni can search quickly, like LinkedIn. Same is true for colleges and universities--the most annoying thing is when a user has misspelled "University" so there are several lists in the search feature.

Great do-it-all product

Opmerkingen: For a small shop like ours, a product that could do it all for online alumni engagement and giving and at an affordable price was critical and Almabase provided that. The customer service team has been helpful and the organization seems well run and communicative between the sales team, client success managers, and engineers/product team.

Pluspunten:

Out team appreciates the diversity of the features of Almabase - it includes alumni communities, alumni database, a mentoring platform, giving platform, event management, and much more. Many other products just did one or two of these well, but almabase has it all.

Minpunten:

Since we are trying to get the product to work for us in multiple ways and Almabase seems to be adding features frequently, there have been some growing pains with the product such as outages or bugs, but these have been minimal and the benefits outweigh the costs.

All in one shop for Giving and Alumni Engagement!

Pluspunten:

Crowdfunding opportunities, email marketing and registration pages.

Minpunten:

Onboarding process requires you to watch several webinars that were a bit difficult to follow. There are alot of capabilities and functions that help Almabase integrate with Raisers Edge NXT, however, there is room for improvements and adding better integrations.

Love Almabase!

Pluspunten:

Almabase has been such a great improvement for our Alumni Engagement as a small school. It provides great resources and benefits for our alumni, while allowing us to track engagement in ways we were never able to before. We especially love the communications center and events module.

Minpunten:

It's difficult to find cons of Almabase, as the team is always working on and releasing product improvements. I've been very happy with the product for our use.

Almabase is a Game-Changer

Opmerkingen: We are beyond pleased with our Almabase experience.

Pluspunten:

Aside from ease of use and 'off the charts' functionality, the support team is what sets Almabase apart from its competitors.

Minpunten:

Have not encountered anything I don't like about the platform. The fact that the platform is evolving sometimes requires a check-in to make sure a feature or functionality will still be available when you plan to use it. So far, the team has been very supportive of every adaptive use of the platform.

Wonderful Almabase team and great product!

Opmerkingen: Overall experience has been very positive, especially the face to face help when encountering website questions. Thank you, [SENSITIVE CONTENT]!

Pluspunten:

It is really easy to generate a mass email to send out to alumni, whether it be a fundraising campaign, event announcement, or alumni newsletter. There are also many design features available to be able to include links, photos, videos, etc. It doesn't take too long to build out new tabs or pages on your website, and Almabase provides so many resources for help, such as online articles and tutorials. Almabase also provides face to face help via Zoom. Shoutout to [SENSITIVE CONTENT], in particular, who has been fantastic and invaluable in every facet of helping us with our website. He is always available via email or Zoom to explain any user issues, solve website-building problems, or recommend new ideas for better engaging our alum in an accessible way.

Minpunten:

There are some areas of the software that are not user intuitive, but the Almabase team is always available to help with any issues that might come up. It is also a challenge to have alumni consistently update their profiles, so it is helpful to remind alum to update their profiles in every email sent out on the platform, with links to the login page.

Well thought through platform to enhance alumni relations

Opmerkingen: _Ongoing support_
Once our organization decided to partner with Almabase, we were transitioned to an operations team to ensure that our alumni data and site features were in order and functioned as we desired. The operations team adjusted to our needs and became much more attentive as our needs required. Currently, it seems like our admin team has continuous access to the Almabase support team. They are friendly, professional, and always strive to communicate clearly, even with feature requests that are not part of the platform. One benefit that showed how willing our Almabase support team goes above and beyond as a partner is how they initiated a regular quarterly review of the platform and features after we launched. They demonstrated how ongoing support is part of the fabric of their company. _Features_
The main reason behind choosing Almabase as an alumni relations partner was how they come alongside our efforts to keep our alumni information current. Our alumni benefit because they can easily stay updated on what’s happening with their alma mater and effortlessly network with one another. Our current students benefit because they can begin networking for future placement opportunities. Our staff benefit because this active directory, updated by each alumnus, enhances all our communications about news, events, placement efforts, and services.

Pluspunten:

- End user experience - user friendly and easy to navigate, not cluttered with extra features - Sign-on experience is elegant and simple - Admin portal (Data Studio, Communication Center are strong) - Directory and user profiles - organized, easy to navigate - Ongoing support - Almabase support partner with you to enhance efforts - Career Center - easy to use and maintain

Minpunten:

- Career Center could use more sorting options for the end user

Almabase Really Helped Our Alumni Association

Opmerkingen: Could not be happier. TO the overall look and ease of the site to the care that the staff offers... there is no better fit for us.

Pluspunten:

Almabase is extremely user friendly and easy to manage from a backend perspective. A lot of the site is customizable and the customer support team is always there to work with you through any issues you have. It is also extremely easy to integrate to our database at the school, which was super valuable.

Minpunten:

There's honestly and truly nothin that I dislike. The team at Almabase is always on working on new ways to improve their site, and will even take suggestions when you'd like to see something happen.

A Non-Profit's Insight into Almabase

Opmerkingen: My overall experience with Almabase has been phenomenal. I love the way my customer success manager is always there for me whenever I have a question or need help troubleshooting anything. I also love the skill workshops that ensure that I am a professional at what I do. Further, I truly appreciate their development team's willingness to make customized edits to suit our organization's needs. It really makes a difference.

Pluspunten:

I like most about this software is the ease of event creation. The templates make the creation of multiple events simple and efficient.

Minpunten:

I don't like how their are certain aspects that are finicky. For example, when copying an event, the titles often remove your cursor as you are typing and sometimes it states that an event has that name already. Another example of finicky behavior is the time selection in an event. You need to make sure you click okay every time and you can't type it in: little stuff, but over time can be cumbersome.

Almabase platform and customer service is everything I was looking for!

Pluspunten:

When I became the alumni relations coordinator for Thomas Aquinas College, I immediately began searching for a replacement for a print alumni directory. This platform exceeded expectations in that it provides the directory service that I was looking for AND provides a full service engagement platform for all facets of alumni relations. From emails to events to chapters and more! Most of all though, the team at Almabase is 110% top notch. They are personable, responsive, and complete. Whether I have a question on hot to best use some functionality or have a suggestion from my users regarding improvements on the platform, the Almabase team is always helpful, thoughtful, and responsive. This customer support you enjoy speaking with!

Minpunten:

There is little not to like. For myself, wearing multiple hats at our institution makes it difficult to use the product to its full potential. Also, our users are interested in sharing their directory information with each other, which is not a default setting. However, support has been very responsive regarding this feedback and we are working towards a solution. In all, I am very happy with the product and so are my users.

Perfect platform to start an alumni database management

Pluspunten:

user friendly database management system. Most of all good support team to assist with troubleshooting and problem solving.

Minpunten:

Latest tranding features such as mobile app feature, e-membership, etc

Almabase provides an amazing product that has helped our school increase our alumni engagement.

Pluspunten:

Almabase has a plethora of features that help our school interact with our alumni in different and meaningful ways. We are able to host events, share news, and fund raise all in one location. Almabase is a true investment in our alumni and they really appreciate the efforts we are making beyond the years they spend on our campus.

Minpunten:

A challenge for us is getting alumni to join the platform. We are constantly looking for ways to get alumni to visit the site and see what benefits they can receive.

It's been an excellent tool for day to day to Alumni management services.

Pluspunten:

It's very user friendly and helps keep up to date Alumni contacts, who are notified of the latest events and updates on Campus and help interact with other alumni and students.

Minpunten:

They have been very quick to answer any queries. Their customer support is excellent! No cons that I can think of. I have been using it every day and its very rare we come across a glitch which anyways is taken care of immediately.

A very good experience

Opmerkingen: I am very satisfied with Almabase.

Pluspunten:

It's very easy to use and the platform is very friendly. The costumer support is very good and fast. They really work together with you. What deliver and provide what they set out to do. If you don't have time, experience, team to work with it is a very good start point in order to connect and engage your alumni network.

Minpunten:

There is no much. One of the things is that the platform is very good but the design is limited in somehow. You cannot change the design and specially, the structure, of the homepage. The changes available right now is the colors, fonts and the header/footer. When they are able to let you free to create your own structure and design of the page, it will be amazing!!

Giving Day Solution Helped us Reach Highest Levels of Giving

Pluspunten:

Almabase is very intuitive to learn and easy to use. We recently tried the giving day solution for our alumni outreach. We achieved our highest level of alumni engagement and giving ever. However, the best part of Almabase is the loyal Customer Success team. Their support was above and beyond industry best practices, and they truly felt like part of our team in achieving institutional success.

Minpunten:

While the solutions are very easy to use and set up, they offer limited range of custimization. Though, this is not without merit, because these solutions have been set up for success backed by data. Also, their limited customization options were not unlike those found at other providers.

Database for alumni

Pluspunten:

This platform is very user friendly and well organized. With the help of customer support it was very easy to set up and offers a large variety of functions.

Minpunten:

There are some limitations in the user approval process and some backend functions.