Panorama Reviews

Good Product for Mid-Sized Private Schools

Pros:

Product is easy to use and tech support is quick to respond with helpful information.

Cons:

This product is great and I really can’t think of anything I like least about it.

Fundamentally Sound

Comments: Panorama was originally our second choice because of the interface, but their robust platform passed our stringent IT security certification process. The functionality was great for both users and admins, with a few features that we would like to see improved such as automatic sales tax calculations based on shipping address for online orders. Customer support was top-notch before, during, and after our event. We weren't sure the platform would work as well as it did for a for-profit firm like ours since it's largely used by non-profits for fundraising, but there were no issues at all. Very reliable and mostly intuitive. They have ample documentation, help videos, and great support. We added premium support since it was our first time using it and I would recommend that for large events. Aside from the older looking web templates, and export-based reporting, I'd give Panorama an A- on their auction solution.

Pros:

Secure and stable platform, customer support, online auction capability, overall value

Cons:

Antiquated reporting, web templates are outdated, lack of truly responsive design for various devices, jumping between private/public auctions caused some confusion

Online Auction review

Pros:

Ease of use and fluidity from year to year. Ability to move information over to new years.

Cons:

Mobile interface. Customer service is difficult to get in touch with in many instances but I’ve seen a recent improvement

Great Product & Customer Service!

Comments: We have used Panorama for years for our online Auction needs, have worked with [sensitive content hidden] for several years and have truly felt very supported in this process.

Pros:

Bidding for Good and the ease of the platform for our online auction needs. [sensitive content hidden] were also excellent support for our school.

Cons:

This is small but when I uploaded images to auction items I found oftentimes that I would upload vertically but the image would switch horizontally. It was small and a minor inconvenience.

Good system but difficult to remedy certain quirks such as backing system up

Pros:

Pros are the efficiency of the program.Con is that it’s hard to buy a printer that prints receipts associated with the page size of the receipt we use.Hard for me to understand how best to backup our dats

Cons:

As stated above, it’s hard to find a comparable printer and backup my data

Using Panorama/Bidding for Good for Our Online Auction

Comments: Our online auction is our biggest fundraiser of the year. Using Bidding for Good which is a trusted platform for bidders has helped us achieve our fundraising goals.

Pros:

Bidding for Good is easy to use and looks nice to the end user. One of the best features is the ability to copy over previous donated items and revise for the current year. Since we have been using Bidding for Good for over 10 years this saves me a lot of time.

Cons:

I wish you could speak to customer service on the phone instead of just via email.

All Digital Fundraising Event

Comments: Great experience in running an all digital fundraising event.

Pros:

The most impactful features of the product I found the most useful in pivoting from paper in running a silent auction was to use the online bidding to attract guests to purchase tickets online.

Cons:

Unable to readily talk to a human unless the service to do so was bought. And the turnaround time to respond to online request for info was typically greater than 24 hours.

Nonprofit

Comments: Over good

Pros:

I like the look and the overall concept

Cons:

That I couldn’t have a button for sponsorship That I couldn’t stop the early bird shirt order without erasing all the data

Awful! Declined over the years!

Comments: We paid $600 for this service for the fourth year in a row, and now we can't set up our event or reach a real person to help us. I'll look to sue the company for our money back if we can't get the help we need. This is the last time we will ever use Firstgiving/Panorama. Awful company. Too bad. It used to be good.

Pros:

This service has declined over the years. Customer support is virtually unreachable.

Cons:

The new interface is not stable with Safari. Trying to log into our platform with Chrome and Firefox and can't log-in. When you try to reset your password a "page does not exist" message pops up.

We wanted to move to the Cloud version but the feature we needed membership was available

Comments: We used the desktop version for 7 years to manage donors, donations, memberships, classes and events

Pros:

Nothing, we wanted to move to the version but the features we needed were never converted. We asked numerous times when membership would be available and never heard back.

Cons:

Didn't convert the features were needed to the new version and no one could give us any idea when the features would be available. We converted to NeonCRM

Stay Away!

Comments: Created far more problems than it solved. I should have backed out of the contract within weeks of signing it.

Pros:

Rumor has it that the server-based GiftWorks was a solid and useful product. Not the Cloud version. What I liked was that by migrating to GW I was able to regain (from a GW file in our own electronic archives) 15 years of donor history that my predecessor abandoned when he transitioned to a different product.

Cons:

Everything! Endless "known bugs" that weren't scheduled for fix. A tech support team that, while awesomely kind, also appears to have been trained to "resolve" issues by postponing the solution. Having zip codes and state codes randomly disappear from my records. Having it "integrated" with a peer-to-peer product that has a different default Constituent name protocol, so every single individual who was uploaded from that product generated a new record -- most of them duplicates.

2022 Ride

Pros:

URL assignment to registered riders helps

Cons:

The software is not user friendly for the lay person.

Unhappy user

Comments: We were using Giftworks Anywhere, but after pressure from sales switched to the cloud based app. They assured me the functionality would be the same or improved. This was BS. I wish now we had stayed with Anywhere...at least that was functional. Customer service is terrible. I've been trying to get their help since February and they haven't solved anything. It's going to be a real pain to switch software, but I'm out of options.

Pros:

I like the interface and the tools. Would be great if things worked properly.

Cons:

Smartlists are non-functional. They just issued a bug fix and now I'm getting duplicate entries! They take forever to load. You can't run a report from a smartlist or make a graph like before. You have to export it as an excel file or pdf, it doesn't give you an option for portrait or landscape, or show dollar amount TOTALS!

GiftWorks is a good platform for the basics on donor tracking

Pros:

I enjoy the ease of use for entering donations and making new donor profiles. The search engine in accessible and has useful links incorporated when donors aren't found. I also enjoy the ease of being able to pull up information sing smartlists for tracking donation amounts.

Cons:

It isn't easy to figure out how to use the other features of GiftWorks. I have tried using the video tutorials to increase my capacity on GiftWorks, but it just isn't an intuitive program. Therefore, I find myself limited in what I use GiftWorks for, and constantly frustrated about paying a large sum for a program that we only use for donor tracking.

I was a consultant for Giftworks desktop, which is now Panorama and in the cloud.

Comments: A fully functional system for a small nonprofit. The capabilities include the ability to manage volunteers, which is unusual for this level of software. Also, the ability to push a lot of the work to the constituents, so the need for back-end data input is greatly reduced. This is especially a benefit for a small agency.

Pros:

They have been able to reproduce the excellent, user friendly software that was on the desktop and put it in the cloud. This is not easy to do. I have not implemented the new software but I do have a copy of it and have played with it a lot. One of the things they are conscious of is the ability to have the constituents access the software and have donations, events, and memberships done online, which many others have not been able to do. I always felt that the desktop version was easy to implement and use. There are enough ways to customize the end user experience that accommodate a lot of needed customizations but not so much that the software couldn't be implemented without a lot of customizing, which makes it great for a small organization, which was Giftworks' strength.

Cons:

Because of what makes the software good, also makes it limiting for many users who require a lot of configuration. There are some very sophisticated systems that would be more suited for that type of need.

Good product for good price

Pros:

The price makes it accessible and it's fairly easy to use. It gets the job done and that's ultimately what matters, especially at this price point.

Cons:

The interface feels a little clunky, which is what you'd expect in a way, but I think it can make it hard to navigate sometimes.

Panorama - Health Board use

Pros:

The software is really easy to navigate, and when used properly very easy to use

Cons:

The tutorials they released on updates are more complicated than they need to be.

Gift Works Intuitive yet Useless

Comments: More than anything, I hate that FirstGiving is the only compatible donation service. The donate now button from First Giving is prehistoric! There are so many free better options out there I just wish it was easier to have these other options integrate with GiftWorks

Pros:

I find GiftWorks intuitive to use. All of the customer care representatives are considerate and patient on the phone.

Cons:

The functionality of this software is terrible! The Volunteer Module is not developed enough to be useful. Smartlists and reports do not give me the information needed. When I try to create a custom report the fields I need to pull are not available. I have talked to customer care numerous times about these issues and while they are patient and understand my complaints they cannot do anything to fix the issue!

tech support does not respond to requests for assistance

Comments: I am less than two weeks in and very frustrated. I signed on to this program because it used to be FirstGiving and they had a very responsive support and customer service department. I have been having issues for days and no response other than one email this am saying they left a voice mail for me, when there is no record at all on my phone of a call coming in from them. Had I known it would be this difficult getting tech support on the line or even fixing the issues and sending an email out, I wish that I would have checked out their support more carefully before signing on.

Pros:

Their representative who helped me get acquainted with the program was excellent and took her time helping me understand how the fundraising platform works.

Cons:

I have experienced glitches in the system, edits not able to be made as it is embedded in template, as well as and more importantly, my work not saving. Submitting tickets for support and making calls and getting only voice mail, with no return calls.

Long-time user with good overall satisfaction. Predominately small-to-mid size shops.

Pros:

Easy to use notes section and ability to back-date entries allows to gather comprehensive data on a donor profile. Customized Smart Lists and Reports provide valuable data and support our ongoing efforts.

Cons:

It's a CRM tool, so the data-entry is still a heavy lift. It isn't quite as intuitive as other software systems. It's still a solid software package.

Good Value!

Comments: Straightforward and uncomplicated but has a lot of really great layer of information. It's the little things that make it easier to use, such as emailing a data pull directly and volunteer hour tracking, that make this a good product. My only real complaint was the fact that it wasn't cloud-based...until NOW.

Inexpensive alternative for donor managment

Pros:

Inexpensive, not complicated, importing and exporting is easy

Cons:

Runs slow with large merge mailings, need to separate and/or pull into word

Easy to Learn, Use and Manage.

Comments: We began using GiftWorks in 2009. We are an older, established agency and needed to upgrade from a database that had been created by a volunteer who no longer worked with us. We needed a fresh start. GiftWorks gave us that and more. We love its ease of use and the smartlists and reports we can generate so easily and quickly. Fundraising databases for small nonprofits need to be very user friendly since most agencies with less than a million dollar budget require employees to wear many hats. We see GiftWorks as a strong partner for us. Support has always been available when needed. We hope GiftWorks maintains what drew us to this company in the first place...trust in the software and reasonable pricing. Thank you.

Giftworks is pretty bad

Pros:

It was easy enough to cancel our subscription and it was easy enough to export our data out of the program.

Cons:

It's clunky, hard to navigate and use, expensive. The user interface looks and feels very dated. Very awkward on a Mac. Has made simple tasks such as mail merges quite difficult.

GiftWorks-- Good Donation Tool

Pros:

It is very good at tracking donations and providing a variety of reports about them.

Cons:

While the reporting capabilities are generally good, they can be improved.