Serious Concerns as a New User – Missing Basic Functions, Limited Merge Tags, and Ongoing Workarounds
I’m a relatively new user to Better Impact but have 7+ years of experience with another platform called Planning Center. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to feel like I’ve made a serious mistake choosing Better Impact. From the start, I was led to believe in sales calls that Better Impact offered similar functionality to other volunteer management platforms. However, I’ve been shocked at how rudimentary and limited many of the features are. One major limitation is the extremely restricted use of merge tags. I cannot personalize communications in any meaningful way when assigning volunteer shifts, sending out new user login information, referencing activities, or building effective email templates. This drastically reduces the functionality of automated and scheduled communications — something that should be a baseline feature in any modern volunteer management system. Another frustrating issue is how poorly the system handles group volunteering. The hours logged for a group are calculated as if the entire group is a single person, rather than multiplying hours by the number of group members. This means that every time a group volunteers, I have to manually calculate and update the correct hours. This isn’t just inconvenient — it’s a step backward. It actually takes more time than the Excel spreadsheets we were using before Better Impact. There’s also a serious design flaw with the Feedback Fields. While you can create custom feedback fields for individual groups or jobs, those fields are applied globally — meaning that once a feedback field is added, it appears for every volunteer in that role, regardless of context. This makes the feature nearly useless when you’re trying to tailor questions or responses to specific teams, programs, or group activities. One of the most surprising gaps is the lack of automated shift notifications when administrators assign volunteers or groups to shifts. There is no option to trigger an automatic email that tells the volunteer their assigned time, location, and role — nor is there an option to include a button to accept or decline the shift. This kind of notification system has been standard in other software platforms for over a decade. Having to manually notify volunteers each time we schedule them completely defeats the purpose of using a digital volunteer management tool in the first place. These are just a few examples of important basic features that are missing with Better Impact, and I run into new — and honestly shocking — limitations on a near-daily basis. I am beyond frustrated and sick about the thought of all the hours, money, and energy I’ve invested into this platform, not to mention the trust we’ve asked our volunteers to place in it. I’m now seriously considering switching to another software provider, even if that means starting over. The goodwill we risk losing with our volunteers is not worth the continued time waste, confusion, and inefficiency caused by Better Impact’s limitations. I’ll continue to post specific issues and feedback as I encounter them. But I’m asking sincerely: is there a roadmap or plan in place to address these gaps? Because right now, Better Impact is falling far short of expectations — both in comparison to other platforms and to what was presented in your sales materials.