Customer love for Blackbaud

What do you like best about the product?

RENXT is very accessible to everyone. Everyone in our Advancement office likes it and understands how to use it. As the DBA I still work quite a bit in the database view, but I find that I'm using the web view more and more. Most of our reports now live in the web view and we like the functionality of the dashboards and insights.

What do you dislike about the product?

I don't use the web view to process gifts and event registrations. It creates a lot of duplicate records. I still use the database view for those things and will continue to do that until they fix this. You also aren't able to work with tribute gifts and pledges in the web view. This is changing and I look forward to moving to the web view to do this work sometime this year. Losing the Microsoft integration tools early this year created extra work. I had to make a complicated conditional merge outside of the database. This is still an issue. I miss using the conditional merge in Mail in database view.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Remember that you're not losing traditional Raiser's Edge when you buy NXT. You still have that and all of the functionality that still isn't available yet with NXT. You just have a newer and easier view of your database that everyone will now be able to use. You're buying a new view of your database - not a new database that you have to convert to, The analytics with it are pretty spectacular and they will only keep getting better and mroe robust.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Raiser's Edge NXT Database managers who want to only work in database view and stay out of the web view are really missing out. Once you get to know how it can work for you and learn how to report with it you won't go back to reporting in the database view - or worse - in stale Excel or Crystal reports. You might need to work with and change the way you are coding some things - but every organization that I've worked at thinks that they're somehow special in the way that they need to do things. Get over that and move into the future. I enjoyed recently hearing about what the product updates are going to be for 2024 and 2025. I'm not sure that I'll want to give up the database view anytime soon, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

What do you like best about the product?

RE is very, very powerful and totally underutilized. It can record gifts, prospect information, volunteer information and so much more.

What do you dislike about the product?

Very complex. It can take years of learning.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Constituent and gift management. Prospect management. Volunteer assignments.

What do you like best about the product?

Its the industry standard in fundraising

What do you dislike about the product?

There are multiple ways to get the same results. It can make it complicated.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Queries are key problem solvers

What do you like best about the product?

It is one of the best fundraising and most popular tool in the non profit segment of the market.It is developed by blackbaud which has given a lot of time in this industry.This is indeed its best creation which is like a heaven for Non profit organization like us to manage fund raising and easily attract donors to donate fund.It is flexible and user friendly and can be customized to meet the requirements of any non profit organization.

What do you dislike about the product?

It is indeed a great fund raising tool and no dislikes for a great non profit fundraising tool in the market.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I recommend using The Raiser's Edge for better and customizable experience of better fund raising and donor management and getting the reports of the same very easily.The tool is very much user friendly.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use blackbaud's 'The Raiser's Edge' for managing donations recieved by us for our NGO and also have customized it according to our use which can be easily done in it.It is best suitable for tracking funds and managing performace of the institute over a duration and get all sorts of reports.It is far more the best fund raising management tool.

What do you like best about the product?

NXT has been really nice as an alternative to logging into database view. I've been able to give access to the database to more of my team and Board without fearing that accidental changes will be made to gift records. It gives a great snapshot, is incredibly easy to navigate, and feels more like a modern social media type platform and less like a database. I also like that simple changes can be made to profiles (updating an address, solicitor, adding notes) without having to actually login to database view. Makes documentation much more efficient.

What do you dislike about the product?

The customer service used to be incredible - short wait times, great response. Now I often have to wait for lengthy period of times to reach someone. Still, decent quality. Just not as many representatives available and not as much success with those that I've chatted with.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Although it is a pricey subscription to have, it is definitely worth it if you have multiple users needing access to your fundraising data.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

RE houses all of our fundraising data. It's nice having it all in one place and the software is reliable. Although you can't have the same reporting capabilities as you get in database view, it still provides a really great snapshot of a constituent profile. This has been really helpful in capital campaign cabinet meetings as we look at prospects and considering their giving potential.

What do you like best about the product?

Existing integration with existing Blackbaud. Mobility.

What do you dislike about the product?

Implementation & conversion team could have been better.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Depending on the existing CRM/GL environment preparing for the increase in budget may be necessary.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Mobility, user friendly for younger staff

What do you like best about the product?

There are many things that I like about FE NXT. I use the report feature the most and love the chart organizer. It is much easier and faster to create/change chart templates for financial reports. I setup templates according to grantee requirements to make grant reporting consistent year after year. The audit process is smoother as we can export reports formatted for Excel data.

What do you dislike about the product?

All of the modules are not in FE NXT, this sometimes can be frustrating for staff as they would much rather work in NXT.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I highly recommend Financial Edge NXT for all non profits!

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are saving staff time with better reporting and search capabilities. We are now able to reconcile our bank accounts faster by downloading bank feeds on a daily basis.

What do you like best about the product?

Premiere donor management software for nonprofits that has plenty of ways to tracks donations, donor activity and moves management.

What do you dislike about the product?

Wish there were easier queries and more canned queries similar to Salesforce.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We're tracking our donor and foundation activity and fundraising goals and metrics.

What do you like best about the product?

Easy to pull queries and exports that give you the data you need in a flexible format. I also love the "export to excel" feature in the giving history tab.

What do you dislike about the product?

I do not like the fact that ticketing capabilities need to be integrated as an afterthought. Tessitura is much better at connecting ticketing and fundraising. Our organization is using a hack with TicketReturn which is horrible.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Spend time thinking about how your data will be used when you are setting up your input structure

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Streamlined donor giving and biographical tracking

What do you like best about the product?

I really like the robust presentation and user friendliness

What do you dislike about the product?

I wish crystal reports was a feature because I enjoy creating customizations.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I would recommend upgrading to this product to take your organization to the next level

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Accurate reporting

What do you like best about the product?

Speed at which I get information to my program directors.

What do you dislike about the product?

Functionality is not as robust as classic view.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Faster deployment of new tools.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Taking away excuses from program directors and providing accountability for them to manage their programs.

What do you like best about the product?

I like the interface and the framework organization. I like that the development team is wide open for interaction as they develop the system further. And I have found the support to be very responsive and also skilled.

What do you dislike about the product?

Sometimes the screen layout can be too spacious, which leads to a lot of scrolling. And something that is symptomatic of cloud computing in general - when it slows down, it can be difficult to pinpoint the causes.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

One of my primary responsibilities is reporting, and I have found the reporting tools in FE NXT to be much more flexible and usable than our prior, very outdated system. My report generating time per month has probably dropped at least 20% because I am doing a lot less manual excel arrangements.

What do you like best about the product?

RE is an easy product to train on. Onboarding new staff members have been a great experience. I enjoy working with our representative as well. We're looking forward to migrating to RE NXT next month. The customizable reports that have been built for our alumni relations team have been very helpful.

What do you dislike about the product?

There isn't really anything I dislike about the product but I'm excited about the upgrades we'll have with NXT. In our business, where we host an event will make or break attendance. The heat mapping and geo-proximity features will be a big asset to my team. The reports will be much easier to interpret with NXT as well.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

RE allows us to know our constituents better. It's easier for us to collaborate with our development colleagues through a history of notes of engagement.

What do you like best about the product?

Customization. I can make almost anything work.

What do you dislike about the product?

Not user-friendly. Hard to train people who are not super into RE.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Start with nxt.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Donor tracking.

What do you like best about the product?

You can find all kinds of information in Raiser's Edge NXT if you know what you are looking to find. I like the integration plug in with Outllok so that emails I send to donors can be recorded with the click of a button in Outlook.

What do you dislike about the product?

I can't just print a report from a constituents record.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It provides a good CRM and financial management that we need to track all of our fundraising/donors.

What do you like best about the product?

The comprehensive package from Blackbaud for the Raiser's Edge cannot be matched my any other vendor. Not only does the product work well in the cloud environment, but the support team for questions and their continued interest in making their knowledgebase better is great. The product continues to grow as Blackbaud is really putting an effort into developing the product, listening to customer feedback and implementing recommendations. The mapping feature is very helpful when relationship managers are on the road and need to fill time with a visit or two. They can see what alums are around them and gives them the opportunity to connect quickly with the Microsoft integrations. Overall I feel like it does provide comprehensive support to everything that is needed to be successful with fundraising.

What do you dislike about the product?

The cost is prohibitive for many non-profit organizations. But the overall time saving functionality is worth it. Some features that are accessible in the database view of the product at not yet available in the web view, so that makes it difficult to consistently use one product. As an admin of the system, I need to create four log ins for people to join both the database and web view of the system. I also do not like that I cannot query on the tags and other features of the web version within the database view of the system. This would be helpful since half of our team is on the web view and the other half on the database view due to the functionality. There were some additional plug ins that we needed to purchase to make our lives easier. It would be helpful if Blackbaud incorporated some of these into their overall pricing so customers are most successful with their product, which is already on the high range of the spectrum.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Speak with users about the product, what you are interested in doing with it and consider your needs and the needs of your organization. Ask for demos of the product and ensure that it meets the needs you are looking to fulfill. Speak with Blackbaud about the functionalities that have been released and what is on the horizon, as they are developing the product so quickly and pushing through new updates every two weeks or so. Ensure that you are able to write reports and extract the data you need to do analysis. Also ensure that importing data is easy and does not require additional plug ins or purchased services.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are solving ways to track our interactions with our constituency base. By using the Raiser's Edge, we have been able to implement and refine methods that work for our organization. With the flexibility that the product offers, we can adapt our methods to changing benchmarks within our area. Moves management for prospect research is really being tracked with this tool. It is easy for our relationship managers to access their portfolio and manage their prospects while management checks up on the work that they are doing. The integration with Microsoft products really helps create an efficiency when emailing and contacting prospects. Since the pandemic started, this was a perfect way for our team to take another look at the product, do some training and become accustomed to it.