What Nonprofits Should Look for in a SaaS Provider

Made for whom?
As anyone in the charitable sector knows, nonprofit organizations have very different structures, processes and needs than commercial, for-profit companies. So why would a nonprofit select a SaaS solution designed with the enterprise in mind?

Many commercial SaaS vendors view the nonprofit industry as a “hot” market and as such, are aggressively marketing their existing software solutions to nonprofit organizations. While these products offer many features and functionality impressive to for-profit companies, the solutions weren’t designed for nonprofits and therefore, can’t effectively meet their organizational needs. For example, commercial vendors offering customer relationship management (CRM) software don’t provide online fundraising, Web site support/CMS, or e-communications capabilities — all imperative to meeting a nonprofit’s need to raise more money, reach more people and run more effectively. In addition, while these CRM products could possibly be used in the nonprofit sector, the customized changes needed to function appropriately in a nonprofit environment would require too much time and expense — or you may end up paying for the full product, but only using the fraction of the functionality that’s relevant to nonprofits.