Software alone seldom gets the job done. Lots of people have already weighed in on Blackbaud’s purchase of Convio (two of my favorites: [link] and [link] ). Here my perspective. Disclosures: I have clients that use both companies’ products, as well as products from their competitors, open source products, and homegrown solutions. Luminate? MORE >>

There are key components of advancement support missing in the current software (one of the two areas above, or Events management, or Volunteer management, or on-line fundraising, or Campaign Reporting, or…). Our current vendor has gone out of business, or has stopped supporting our current software. We can’t.) Time-management. MORE >>

I received an email newsletter today with the following pitch for a web-based donor database (perhaps you can guess which one): The Cloud offers you constituent relationship management (CRM) software that's less expensive, easier to maintain, more accessible, more intuitive, and with greater flexibility and capacity than you've ever seen before. MORE >>

Test the computers and software in the classroom before every training. You'll get new staff, staff will need to learn new things over time, and there will be new software releases. A question was posted to a listserve for nonprofit techies looking for tips on training staff on a new database. Not everyone can train. It's an art. MORE >>

then see software vendors, who are already busy with other prospects, scrambling to pull together responses and often (quite frankly) not able to deliver their best because of the timeframe. Tags: Databases Donor Databases IT Management Nonprofit Technology Software " But if you're a vendor it often does. What do you think? MORE >>