Andar/360 vs. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

If they are a United Way organization, I would absolutely recommend. If they aren't a United Way but offer employee giving to organizations, or act as flow-through, Andar/360 will also be a great fit. If the charity is a smaller organization, Andar/360 would be too complex and wouldn't be used to its full capacity.

Incentivized

I have found that Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is very versatile in its use-cases. We have it integrated with their other product - Financial Edge, which allows for auto data replication in each database. We have used it to cut down on double-entry of items between our development and finance office. Their product however, is not the easiest for new users to pick up on and start using. It helps that it is a typical SQL-based database, and that they have online trainings though.

Incentivized

• Fund distribution
• Reporting
• Record keeping of funds and other data points
• Audit track
• Data import
• Queuing tasks

Incentivized

• The Work Center for our fundraisers gives a fantastic snapshot of past due actions and overdue pledges. Clicking on the number brings up a detailed list with the ability to add Actions straight from the list.
• NXT's ability to customize dashboards and insights gives me the ability to report on statistics that my team needs. The visuals are compelling and helpful.
• List generation is incredibly easy. The filters are easy to use, and one the list is made, can easily be exported or shared.

Incentivized

• Data export
• Navigation between records
• User interface

Incentivized

• API coverage is limited - certain data is inaccessible for arduous to query (ex: rather that pulling all name format records, must query name format data one constituent/API call at a time.
• Native reporting (ie, not using API calls) is limited.
• Bulk data maintenance (imports, updates, etc) limited without use of API calls.

Incentivized

We have a lot invested in NXT and it suits our needs perfectly. There would be no reason for us to consider a needless conversion to a new solution. I do not believe there is any other product on the market that would be worth considering.

Incentivized

NXT seems easy to learn on a relatively deep level. There are glitches, like with everything, but it is usually easy to see where they are, most of time. I like that Development staff can choose what they want to see and where they want to see it, and it doesn’t affect my screen.

Incentivized

The only reason I cannot give a 10 is because like all web based products, internet connection is required and that is not something that can be counted on 100% of the time. When the internet connection is stable, I have had little to no issues using Raiser's Edge.

Incentivized

NXT itself is a pretty simple interface, and is great for front-line fundraisers to be able to look up info and run some simple "reports"/analysis. It's very quick and intuitive, but the back-end attached to it (RE 7.96) may have connectivity issues from time to time. NXT itself, though, is simple enough that issues are rare.

Incentivized

The support hat Blackbaud can be iffy at times. When they are busy they must hire on a large temporary worker pool to help support and often times they are not capable of answering the right questions and delaying the process for your solution to be complete. When it is not the busy time, most things get answered in a normal rate.

Incentivized

When you get a good, knowledgeable person for in-person training, you can't beat it! Hands on, real time, questions answered on the spot. And they want to make sure you get what you needed before leaving. To also have dedicated time without other distractions is very important to the learning process in my opinion.

Incentivized

I gave a rating of 8 because Blackbaud gives very good general training, but it is not specific to your organization, so it can only go so far. I've seen that every organization uses Raiser's Edge differently so what works for one organization doesn't always work for another. I would highly recommend taking as much of the training as possible because it is informative and gives you a great base knowledge of the system.

Incentivized

Training is key. Blackbaud offered the training package prior to implementation and it helped us understand how to build it so that the future use would be appropriate to the operation of the organization. Data conversion stage was also very important. A lot of work must be done before making the final decisions about the data conversion - what data to convert and what to leave out, where certain information was supposed to be placed within RE.

Incentivized

Andar/360 is very robust, as the United Way is a large and complex organization across the globe. Andar/360 has almost everything that meets the needs of such a complex giving and funding structure.

Incentivized

We switched from Jenzabar which was a huge pain point for us. Our IT department had to write our reports but they did not have the capacity to manage everything by themselves. Jenzabar was able to store our data but retrieving it was a huge challenge even for someone with a tech background.

Incentivized

Pricing really seems to be all over the place, and everything else you need is an extra add-on cost. The biggest issue is training. Options are limited unless you subscribe and pay for it across your contract.

Incentivized

New features are constantly being added to Raiser's Edge NXT that expand its capabilities. Features such as constituent mapping and easily accessible actions allow for more in-depth analysis of existing constituents. The future ability to manipulate soft-credits and customize reporting dashboards will make NXT even more attractive to our fundraisers and executives. It's great to see that the software is evolving.

Incentivized

• Distribution of funds gets recalculated with employee giving; it has a very complex backend structure and sometimes it's out of your control
• Amazing import capability to bring in data from other tools via integration
• job queuing to save time and bandwidth
• Export and querying needs much improvement, the logic build is not intuitive, and the interface is outdated

Incentivized

• Time management, saved time with data, resulting in a cost savings of 20%
• Made reporting easy with processing donor gifts and recording them approximately
• Improved fundraising as the preferred platform and increased donations by 15%
• Attained a holistic approach to identifying prospective donors

Incentivized