A: Record-keeping is at the core of donor management software. It has to be easy to enter and update data, and be quick to find any particular piece of information; plus you need to have places for all the different bits of data you will be collecting and using in your fundraising efforts.

In all three FundRaiser programs, all data about a donor is contained in one central screen with multiple tabbed pages to help organize it. You can easily keept track of basic mailing list data like donor and spouse names, business name, addresses, codes (to help you group similar records), phone numbers, email and notes (there's room for lots and lots of notes on each person), and much more. You can also record an unlimited number of contributions from each donor, each with at least a date, amount, code and a note, plus an instruction to print a thank-you letter or receipt for this gift.

You can also see and edit every donation in detail, regardless of how many donations there are. You can also make corrections to past donations as easily as you add new ones. FundRaiser automatically keeps track of who the donors are, so you can mix your donors and prospects in the same list...you don't even have to add a code to show who has donated, and who has yet to give.

In all three FundRaiser programs, you code your donors and their donations so that you can quickly and easily group them later...for instance, everyone who gave at the banquet last year, or all your volunteers, or just the businesses and churches. Naturally, the higher up in the FundRaiser Family you go, the more options in coding you have.

In all three FundRaiser programs, you search by name, or address, or in other ways; and the search is almost instantaneous. And then all the data on that person is immediately available for viewing and editing.

Finally, if you need unlimited donor coding, or want to track multi-payment pledges or membership renewal dates, you need to look at FundRaiser Select or Professional, which also introduce user-defined spare fields, and track in-kind gifts (office supplies, food, clothing, etc) separately from monetary gifts. FundRaiser Professional adds both depth and breadth to Select, with more data and coding fields, and entirely new capabilities like the ability to record split gifts (one check given for multiple purposes) and soft credits, and advanced reporting.