A fundraising platform decision becomes defensible when every finalist performs the same work with the same evidence. Use thirty days to test the product's hardest representative journey, not to collect generic feature demonstrations.

Days one to five: define pass or fail

Choose one donor journey and one staff workflow. Set non-negotiables for countries, payments, accessibility, consent, CRM, accounting, security, data export and budget. Weight donor experience, operations, data, cost, risk and vendor support before scores are known.

Days six to fifteen: build with realistic data

Give each vendor the same anonymised scenario and sample structure. Ask internal staff—not only consultants—to create the form, segment, receipt, reconciliation and report. Record time, support requests, errors and workarounds.

Days sixteen to twenty-four: test failure

Trigger a declined gift, refund, duplicate, consent change, user departure, integration outage and export. Review roles, audit history, accessibility evidence, incident response, subcontractors and service levels. A platform should be assessed on recovery as well as the happy path.

Days twenty-five to thirty: decide and preserve evidence

Calculate three-year cost, check two comparable customer references and document every condition attached to the score. Name the implementation owner and first ninety-day measures. Keep the decision record so future teams know why compromises were accepted.