Sumacvs
Bloomerang
Bloomerang: Better if you only need fundraising and want published pricing and retention reporting
Sumac
Modular nonprofit CRM that pairs donor management with client case management
As of 31 August 2026, Sumac's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A Canadian donor database sold as modules, unusual because case management sits beside fundraising in the same record set. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. Sumac is made by Silent Partner Software, available on Web, Windows.
Overview
What Sumac does
Sumac is a nonprofit CRM from Silent Partner Software in Toronto, covering donors, memberships, volunteers, events, grants and pledges. It has been sold since the early 2000s and is bought largely by Canadian and US charities in the twenty to two hundred staff range. The vendor has been consolidating its products under the Societ brand, so buyers will encounter both names during a sales cycle. What separates it from the rest of the donor CRM field is the case management module. Shelters, counselling agencies, food security programmes and legal clinics have to record client interactions, referrals and outcomes, and almost every donor CRM forces them to buy a second system for it. Sumac keeps both in one database, which means a programme director and a fundraiser are querying the same platform. That also raises a governance question the vendor does not answer for you: client case notes and donor records have very different confidentiality rules, and putting them in one system makes permissioning a design decision rather than an afterthought. Pricing is not published. It is quoted by module set and organisation size, which makes comparison against a published per contact product like Keela or Little Green Light awkward, because you cannot price a shortlist without entering a sales conversation. The counterweight is that modular pricing means an organisation that only wants donors and grants is not paying for events and volunteers it will never open.
What people use it for
- A social service agency that must record client cases and donor gifts without buying two systems
- A charity that wants only donor and grant modules and refuses to pay for an events suite it will not use
- A Canadian organisation wanting local support hours and receipting conventions
- An agency replacing a legacy Access or FileMaker database with something supported
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Sumac.
- Pricing is not published at all, so a small organisation cannot compare Sumac against per contact priced competitors without committing to a sales process.
- The interface reflects the product's age, and staff arriving from consumer grade software find navigation and data entry slower than in newer CRMs.
- Holding client case notes and donor records in one database makes permission design a compliance obligation, and a misconfigured role can expose confidential client material to fundraising staff.
- The integration catalogue is small, so payment, email and accounting connections outside the listed few mean manual export or paid custom work.
- Modular licensing means the price rises in visible steps as programmes expand, and organisations frequently discover the module they need most was not in the original quote.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Sumac
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- SumacvsDonorPerfect
DonorPerfect: Larger install base, more integrations and a longer track record for pure donor management
- SumacvsCharityEngine
CharityEngine: Stronger when high volume direct response and payment processing are the priority
Pricing
What Sumac costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Sumac
On request
- Quoted by module selection and organisation size
- Case management is a separately licensed module
- Implementation and data migration quoted separately
- No public price list, so shortlist comparison requires a sales call
Capabilities
Features
Donor and gift management
Contact records, gift entry, pledges and receipting
Case management module
Client files, case notes, referrals and outcome tracking alongside donor data
Memberships and volunteers
Renewal tracking, volunteer hours and assignment scheduling
Grant management
Application deadlines, reporting requirements and awarded fund tracking
Role based permissions
Separates client confidential records from fundraising staff access
Custom fields and forms
Adds programme specific data capture without vendor development
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Sumac the same product as Societ?
The vendor has been moving its products under the Societ brand, so you may see both names for the same platform during a sales cycle.
Can it handle client case management?
Yes, that is its clearest differentiator among donor CRMs. It is a licensed module, not part of the base product.
Is pricing published?
No. It is quoted by module and organisation size, which makes like for like comparison harder than with published per contact products.
Does it work for US charities?
Yes, though the vendor is Canadian and its receipting and support conventions are strongest for Canadian organisations.
Keep looking
Where to go from Sumac
- Sumac alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Sumac pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Sumac badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
Compare Sumac with
- CharityEngine
- Bloomerang
- DonorPerfect
- Bonterra
- Keela
- Blackbaud Raiser's Edge
- CiviCRM
- GrantStation
- SmartSimple Cloud
- Aplos
- Wild Apricot
- CommCare
- OpenGrants
- QuickBooks for Nonprofits
- Raisely
- SignUpGenius
- TechSoup
- Tendenci
Other Nonprofits software
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12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Sumac, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Sumac
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Best Nonprofits software alternatives
Offline-first case management and mobile data collection for frontline health and development programmes
Per month by mobile user countThe rolled-up parent of EveryAction, Apricot, CyberGrants and Network for Good, sold as three product lines
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Grants management for foundations and corporate givers inside the Blackbaud ecosystem
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Open source, with paid hosting available
Nonprofit CRM with its own in-house payment processing rather than a third-party gateway
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Funder and nonprofit data subscriptions from the organisation formed by Foundation Center and GuideStar
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