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<p>At the Tony Hawk Foundation, they use Salesforce for developmental CRM and Filemaker Pro for program management, (grants and case handling).&nbsp;<br />
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Like any tool, the more customized it&nbsp;is to your needs, the better it will function... and a lot of the work of deciding how to handle a complex set of tasks is to prioritize your needs. One of the benefits of an "off the shelf" tool is that it can keep you from expanding your custom solution into features that aren't essential. (Kind of like how looking at web templates can turn&nbsp;the "needs" into "what ifs" through the process of shopping.)<br />
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In my nonprofit experience I've always favored doing things internally to reduce expense. I know that this has limited my work in some ways but it has provided me with a good sense of the data I'm working with. That's just my personal preference.<br />
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A lot of mail-merges and donor communications can be managed by simple Office Suite tools, and even Google Suite has some great tools that are mostly free to use. I can't imagine doing ALL of a nonprofit's work using just these tools but I bet a scrappy crew could do most of their work this way.</p>
