Funraise's Research & Development team moves quickly and regularly releases new functionality. Many of our features are released in beta so we can gather customer feedback and usage statistics that inform feature promotion and future improvements. Your organization can opt-in to receive access to Funraise beta features.
Activate Beta Features
1. Click your Profile Icon in the top right > click Settings
2. In Settings > click Your Organization > find Organization Information > click Edit
3. Toggle on Beta Features > click Save
In Beta
Several large enhancements to our Quickbooks integration. Sync both online and offline transactions with Quickbooks. Configure default Account, Class, and Product/Service mappings. Configure preferred fee reporting: sync amounts with or without fees. Sync Supporters as Customers.
Connect Funraise with Virtuous to automate data syncs. Send Funraise supporter, transaction, and fundraising page data to Virtuous.
Coming soon to beta
Create custom email templates and send emails in bulk to a filtered list of Supporters, Transactions, Fundraisers, or Registrations.
Good to Know
What is beta?
In software development, beta refers to a phase in the launch of new technology. Generally, a new feature will be tested in-house through an alpha phase and then the feature will be promoted to a subset of customers for a beta phase. The purpose of a beta phase is to test a new feature in the real world. Feedback from customers in the beta phase will inform changes to the product that is finally released to all customers.
Why does Funraise release features in beta?
Funraise releases new features in beta because it benefits nonprofit organizations by enabling faster access to new revenue-boosting and time-saving features and enables organizations to provide feedback in realtime to help us build the best products.
To dig a bit deeper, Funraise runs a constant development process where new technology and functionality are built and added to the platform daily. When minimum viability and rigorous testing are complete, the feature is released in beta for organizations to test and prove or disprove the need for the feature. Our product team also receives direct feedback from organizations which enables us to build the best possible tool for all nonprofits, as quickly as possible—THIS is why we beta.
Beta functionality will leave room for improvement
With beta features, you should expect to experience functionality that may need improvement; that's intentional. Our product team works quickly to release new tools that provide 90% of organizations with specific solutions while receiving feedback to learn how we can improve the feature to work for all organizations. We've made it easy for you and your team to submit feedback on Funraise's beta features: https://www.funraise.org/roadmap
Beta functionality is rigorously tested
Although beta features may leave room for functionality or UX improvement, every feature we release is rigorously tested by Funraise's QA team. It's important to know that beta features by nature are more prone to issues as beta features may be untested in the real world.
Beta features can be released at any time
We'll have documentation for beta features available, but new beta features may be released before we have a chance to announce them in our regular release announcements.
What is closed beta?
In general, we try to release beta features to as many organizations in our beta group as possible, but some features may require specific feedback before releasing them to a wider beta audience. In this case, we release features in a closed beta, which is a smaller group of organizations that are invited to participate.
Beta functionality may not be promoted
Beta features may not always be promoted to a full Funraise feature. The purpose of beta tests is to receive feedback and validate the need for features. If we build something that is not helpful to the majority of organizations, it's not likely to be promoted.
Promoted beta features may not be included in all plans
When beta features are promoted to general availability, they may not be included in all pricing plans.