Amanda “Bee” Hickman offers a great little rant titled The Great Database Caper:
There are great databases geared towards non-profit, membership organizations, but there is a catch: most non-profits use their databases (and their members) primarily to raise funds. Organizations that prioritize member engagement want to use their database to look at members as more than deep pockets and eventually they’ll hit a wall using a fundraising database to do that. And most non-profit membership database packages are essentially fundraising databases. There are some great examples of organizing databases out there, but not one of them is perfect.
Perhaps even more interesting than Amanda’s sharp insights is the nonprofit database coders’ pile-on in the comments.