Reach Beyond

Finding a CRM That Understood the Not-for-Profit Sector

Who is Reach Beyond?

Reach Beyond is a nonprofit organisation focused on managing donor relationships, donations, prayer partners, and communications through publications and outreach.

Mike, a technical volunteer with decades of experience at IBM, became involved in the organisation after retiring following a 50-year career in the technology sector. Mike took on the responsibility of helping Reach Beyond find and implement a replacement CRM system when their previous platform was nearing end-of-life.

Why was Reach Beyond looking for a new CRM?

Before moving to infoodle, Reach Beyond had already experienced one difficult CRM migration.

Their original system had been heavily customised and built around older database structures. While it worked for many years, moving away from it proved challenging and time-consuming.

When they were informed they would soon need to replace their new CRM again, the team wanted to avoid repeating that experience.

Mike began researching 15 different CRM providers, comparing:

• operational costs
• customer support accessibility
• target market focus
• ease of communication
• migration experience
• overall suitability for nonprofits

After narrowing the list down to three providers and conducting demonstrations with the Melbourne-based team, Mike also interviewed existing infoodle clients to better understand their real-world experiences.

What made infoodle stand out?

For Mike, one of the biggest deciding factors was confidence in the people behind the product.

After speaking with existing clients and hearing consistently positive feedback around service and support, one particular conversation stood out.

“The decider was when I learnt that one of the clients that I interviewed had also worked at IBM for many years. I knew she was familiar with high standards of service and support. That was the icing on the cake for me.”

The team ultimately chose infoodle’s CRM and integrated Finance package, giving them a connected system for donor management, communications, and accounting workflows.

How did the migration process go?

Compared to their previous migration experience, the move to infoodle was significantly smoother.

As the project progressed, infoodle had also released its own built-in mail management and distribution functionality, allowing Reach Beyond to streamline publication delivery to different recipient groups at the same time.

Mike described the migration itself as relatively straightforward once the team understood the new terminology and mapped their existing data structure.

“Our migration was relatively trouble free… when we needed help and guidance, the infoodle team were responsive to our questions. This migration was a breeze compared to our previous migration experience.”

The organisation also integrated with Xero, which aligned well with their existing accounting processes. While there were some minor setup challenges initially, Mike noted that these were largely due to learning and configuration rather than limitations of the system itself.

What has the experience been like since implementing infoodle?

Today, Reach Beyond has five staff members actively using infoodle across different areas of the organisation.

For Mike, one of the standout aspects continues to be the quality of support and the understanding of the nonprofit sector.

“To deal with an organisation which is focused solely on the not for profit sector is a huge plus.”

He also highlighted the importance of having a system that balances affordability with reliability for organisations operating within tighter budgets.

“We have been using infoodle for around 18 months and find it to be a reliable, affordable, robust product.”

Looking for a CRM built for nonprofits?

For Reach Beyond, the move to infoodle wasn’t just about replacing software. It was about finding a system – and a support team – that understood the realities of nonprofit work.

From donor management and communications to finance integration and ongoing support, the organisation now has a platform that helps their team work more efficiently without adding unnecessary complexity.