Ask Idealware: Finding Current Users of Online Software

Rachel asks: Our org is looking into GiftTool as a solution for several of our needs. However, our senior management has requested recommendations from actual users of the product. Other than contacting them directly, do you know of any way we could get some further insight into what it's like to use the product?

Laura says: Hmm, getting feedback from actual product users - a topic close to my heart! We talked to some folks and summarized the results in our Online Donation Tool report, but it's getting a little old now, and it can be very useful to talk to actual software users yourself. There's the obvious method of posting questions to one or two of the nonprofit technology discussion lists (for instance, the Information Systems Forum, NTEN Discuss, ProgressiveExchange) - but I noticed that you already did that! For a pretty specific tool like this, it can be hard to find users, especially more than one to give you a more balanced perspective.

But I actually do have a trick. If you're looking at tools that are used to collect information online, or especially payment processors like GiftTool, you can often find a lot of organizations that are using it simply by Googling the name and paging in to the more obscure results. A lot of organizations will mention what tool they're using in a privacy policy or as an explanation to their site visitors. For instance, I see a number of organizations using GiftTool on page four of the Google results for "GiftTool." You can then click through to the site, find contact information, and send off an email. I've actually done this a number of times, and, surprisingly, gotten return emails from at least half the people I contacted this way.

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