Most traditional philanthropic software environments consist of a hybrid of multiple non-integrated or insufficiently integrated individual software applications. These can consist of any combination of donor databases, excel spreadsheets, accounting packages and other applications that each support one key function or department of the organization.

In this environment, transactions are recorded in their individual applications and must be aggregated and reconciled later for accounting, reporting and other purposes, creating a software environment where information sharing across the organization is time consuming, consolidated reporting is cumbersome and administration is neither efficient nor easily scalable as the organization grows.

NorthStar 500 was specifically designed to replace the smaller individual applications that constitute the above environment with a single, unified, software application that would provide dramatically enhanced organizational capacity, reporting speed and accuracy and overall scalability.