USNA AA&F selected Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM to improve constituent engagement and fundraising outcomes. In five years: • 143% ROI • $4.7 million fundraising increase attributable to Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM. • $647,000 of labor costs avoided due to automation and increased reporting capabilities. • $593,000 of maintenance and custom application costs avoided.
What do you like best about the product?
Fully customizable, in the cloud, customer support is FABULOUS
What do you dislike about the product?
The system is pretty complex, with a long setup and steep learning curve
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Totally worth the cost and time investment, but be aware that you will need an on-site admin to manage the system.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Fills all our needs at once
Blackbaud CRM gives us a lot more visibility into key metrics and provides the insights needed to power strategic decisions. The efficiencies of managing this data we’ve gained are amazing, it now only takes us five minutes to run a report that used to take us 24 hours!
The Committee Review feature has saved hours of work, but it really goes beyond that. Now committee members can review files on their own time, whether that be on a free period sitting under a live oak tree on campus or after school hours.
What do you like best about the product?
RE7 is a terrific solution for a public regional university's CRM needs in University Advancement. It's user friendly and intuitive and the training modules are informative and useful. Our staff includes development officers with primarily zero to three years of total experience in higher education advancement, so having software which is easy to use, allows for continuous training, and that is unintimidating for them to use promotes good practices on their part. Further, it enables support staff to run queries and reports that inform the dashboards and spreadsheets we share with university executives and board members to provide valuable updates which demonstrate the department's successes in funds raised, visits made, and other outputs.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not much to dislike about the product. Think the transition into NXT will be even more useful for our department.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We're much more effectively tracking MOVES management related interactions and producing better data for prospect managers to create efficient workflows. The ability to use the collected data to run reports which support the efforts not only of Advancement and the Foundation, but to support other campus units and the University write large are also very valuable.
For these young men, college may have never been a real consideration. But now they’re being offered a $97,000 scholarship and—with hard work—a ticket to a successful career.
For us, funding and giving to organizations is about building relationships and partnerships.
We saw approximately a 300% increase in people using the system while out with prospects. We knew our gift officers needed these tools, and with a remote staff, the flexibility and access to the data has made the biggest impact.
Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT has been a game-changer for us. It’s helped our entire team be better fundraisers. It has improved our relationships with our donors in feeling connected to the organization. It’s really made a difference.
It is only a half-hour process with the new system.
What do you like best about the product?
I love being able to find any information I need by just searching one aspect of the profile I am looking for. I am able to find people or lists of people based on location, age, gender, year of graduation, company they work for or have worked for in the past.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike, that sometimes there is an aspect of raisers edge that can be difficult to navigate, there is sometimes more repetitive inputs because of misspelled names and mispelled spouse names as well. I have also run into the problem of having addresses be written incorrectly for emails and then they do not work.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I am able to solve problems in a way of finding information on people that i need to send email, or mail to, i am also able to input communications or actions I have encountered with alumni for my company
Blackbaud products have saved us time, which saves us money. And being a religious nonprofit, that’s critical to our mission. We need to be able to do the most good we can with the least amount possible.
It has completely changed our membership and giving.
What do you like best about the product?
Raiser's Edge NXT is a sleek interface that has both online and mobile versions to make it possible to use on the go. It is significantly easier to navigate than its partner, the more data-centered Raiser's Edge, which makes it the perfect partner for our Development Directors. It is also more intuitive, which is a wonderful feature when asking people to input data.
What do you dislike about the product?
I am unsure if there are any plans to incorporate the reporting and query features into this version of Raiser's Edge. I believe that people have long wanted an easier, more intuitive version of the software, and this is it. However, only our externally-facing employees reap the benefits of this version. Our database manager and other data-centric positions only ever use the other version because it has more data processing ability.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With ease comes greater use. I believe we would be getting lesser quality, or perhaps just less, information if we were only using the other version of this software, which means that our records would be less complete.
What do you like best about the product?
I like that Raiser's Edge and RE Nxt can be used together by different parts of our nonprofit. I use the database version to make changes, enter gifts, etc, but the development team at my company uses RE Nxt to log their actions and keep track of constituents. We can accomplish everything we need to, and our development team doesn't have to use the clunky database view in order to keep track of their information.
What do you dislike about the product?
RE Database view could be updated. Also, it would be a great help to my company if more than one person could be "in" the same record or event or gift at the same time. We have several large events per year, and it is not time-efficient that only one of us is able to update the event at a time.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
If your nonprofit is looking to expand and become one of the top in its field, Raiser's Edge is the software to get it there.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are able to keep track of what actions are being performed for our donors. We can keep track of our prospects, emails we send, and events that we have. And we aren't even using RE for all of its capabilities.
What do you like best about the product?
As a teacher, one of the best features is the ability to create assignments and grade them all within the program itself. You can create assignments, assessments, and discussions and bulk grade all of them, or individually and write in comments and notes for each activity.
What do you dislike about the product?
The one thing that is a little annoying is that for all of the ease of copying information between sections, if you teach multiple sections of the same course you cannot individually edit class information unless you set them up independently. You also cannot copy any topic information from groups (like homeroom or clubs) to class topics, and vice versa.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We used to have two separate information systems, with all of our classroom content on Haiku and our grading and student records on Skyward. This system completely reorganized all of our content to have it all in one location, which makes student information easier to access and use for both parents and faculty.
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use, love the new NXT version. We also use FE and Research POint
What do you dislike about the product?
occasionally it freezes up and then we cannot log back in
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Fundraising, donor retention and acquisition
What do you like best about the product?
The cataloging of various items I purchase allows for me to save recurring purchases and easily assemble future purchase orders by item or by copying existing requisitions. Approvals are also easy with the preset routing and ensures that all involved parties see what needs to be seen.
What do you dislike about the product?
Load times in the system are not always idea and can slow down the flow of work. There is also limited ability to alter a purchase order once submitted even if it has not yet gone through any approvals. This can result in supervisors being burdened with requests for changes.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
This is a solid piece of web based software to fill a need at small universities or businesses and I would highly recommend it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
This program solves the issue of maintaining contractor and supplier lists as well as records or purchasing history as it is easily accessed through the system. It also makes it easy to view budgets and see at a glance what funding is available for future purchases.
It comes down to communication. We now have a welcome series going, which is a new strategy for us. It’s a great idea, and I love it. People really gravitate toward having that discourse. I was amazed at how many people actually replied.
The software makes me more efficient and better at what I do. That’s the main result that I care about. I am not a technology guy. For a guy like me who is out on the road constantly and always trying to hustle, I need something simple, user friendly, and intuitive. And I love the fact that the Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT is very easy to understand and very robust—so staff members that really enjoy the technology can use it to help me do a better job with my major gift fundraising.
By implementing only Blackbaud products, we now have a robust toolkit to confidently steward our constituency groups.
What do you like best about the product?
The functionality of the system. While it does not incorporate all Functionalities for all Processes it does aid tremendously with gift processing
What do you dislike about the product?
It’s very limited in scope. It is not as user friendly as other systems such a as Blackbaud CRM
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Gift processing. Provides a centralized system for fundraising, stewardship and processsing
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to navigate between different areas, such as records, query,export etc.
What do you dislike about the product?
It can and cannot be user friendly, might be difficult to learn if you are not a computer or data person.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
easier to use than other data bases, so take your time, with correct training you can master it. Also Google when you can
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
merging queries, updating events, exporting
What do you like best about the product?
I have used Raiser's Edge since 1992. I enjoy figuring out how to make the software work for what is needed and feel I know the logic of the software. There are so many different ways to use it. Each organization uses it a little bit differently but all-in-all it's user friendly and easy to work with.
What do you dislike about the product?
There isn't very much I dislike about it but if I had to choose it would be the limited ways you can export proposals. Of course, I have figured out to work around this but it doesn't make sense that you can't export all of the fields available.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
The Raiser's Edge is the best fundraising product out there. There are many other sources from Blackbaud that are compatible with Raiser's Edge.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I am able to store any and all data to do analytic modeling either for immediate use or definitely for the future. By storing as much data as possible it allows one to see patterns and set them. It is a wealth of information as long as you are putting the data in consistently.
What do you like best about the product?
I really enjoy RE NXT, and the ability to organize fundraising data.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike the fact that certain functionalities are not possible in NXT.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Get to know the backbone of RE before converting to NXT.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
THe business problems I am solving using NXT is constituent management. The benefits are to have accurate information.