Likelihood to Recommend It works well enough for fundraising purposes and donor tracking. I think it would be less appropriate for instances or industries where you don't need so many data points on someone. You are able to attach a lot of information to a record so if you don't need that info (simply need contact info for example) you might want a simpler system
Read full review If you only want to track donations, I'd go with something simpler. If you want to track donations and programs and connections between them, there may be nothing better. If you have no technical abilities and no budget, restricted yourself solely to what it does as described exactly in the manual. If you can't devote about 0.25FTE to the constant maintenance and upgrades, don't go with it.
Read full review Pros Accessing in-depth data for a single constituent is easily done and customizable by user working with "tiles" on the home screen Generating lists of possible prospects with specific similarities can be done with a few clicks and then stored for more research later well designed relationship options allow for a a look at specific constituents and how they might relate to other constituents in the system leading to more effective prospecting Screens can be easily customized by user or user group eliminating irrelevant data and presenting only truly relevant information Read full review NPSP is designed to help with donor management. There are free add-ons for volunteer management. There is a new Program Management Module to better manage program participation and attendance. Campaigns help organize and report on marketing efforts though we use a third-party solution to send out marketing materials. Read full review Cons Certain aspects of Blackbaud are oddly non-customizable. Blackbaud updates/support is slow and often ineffective - our organization switched to Microsoft 365, which is apparently incompatible with Blackbaud. Help/support recommended clunky workarounds that don't actually work, rather than proactively enhancing compatibility There should be a flag in constituent search to show which people in the results list are deceased. Query isn't very user friendly. It should be simple to locate the information that you want to pull, and add parameters to that information. Instead you have to write multiple queries to set parameters, then write a query that looks at those other queries. It's time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and the knowledge/proficiency is difficult to explain or transfer to new staff. Blackbaud generally just feels like its technology is outdated. It wasn't built for the needs of a modern organization, and its developers have failed to make the necessary improvements over time to stay competitive. Read full review Learning curve - very powerful, but takes time to learn Batch processing - takes time and advanced skills to reach efficiency for data entry and certain operations which you want to do in batch Mass email is extremely limited - must choose a third party tool which adds complexity and cost to the system Read full review Likelihood to Renew We've covered a lot, but mostly because we are happy with the system overall. There are a few kinks, and sometimes it takes a minute to figure out the right wording to pull a report or the best way to code a new category that we want to track. But Blackbaud is always there to help us, and once things are figured out - they are super simple to replicate. It wouldn't be worth it to switch to a new system and lose of all our information and time put in to mastering the system
Read full review There is really no other tool to compare and especially since Salesforce for Nonprofits is free!!
Read full review Usability I think Salesforce has so much functionality that it makes it difficult in terms of overall usability. Once you can figure it out, it's a 10/10, it's just getting there. If you're willing to do the work to figure it out then you're golden. For what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to find something with this level of functionality that's easier to figure out
Read full review Support Rating Read full review I have never had bad conversations with any support people with Salesforce but we also have not used them very much. I put it a little less because we are struggling to switch to lightning (some of our custom features do not migrate well) and it feels like the help and support for a little organization is not incredibly helpful unless we want to spend a lot of money.
Read full review Implementation Rating Most of our issues were self-inflicted and related to BB's work. We did not "staff up" correctly, our data to be converted was not in great shape and we set some unreasonable goals. With BBs help we were able to clean our data and prep it for conversion and we adjusted the goals to be more achievable with the timeline we were given. We found the BB staff to be responsive and focused, especially when working on-site with us.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Blackbaud CRM is more robust and has better functionality. It is necessary for a bigger fundraising shop. Blackbaud
Raiser's Edge and NXT worked well in smaller organizations with fewer users and fewer donors/prospects. RE was more affordable than CRM was for the smaller organization.
Read full review As a cloud native organization with no previous Microsoft infrastructure, Salesforce was a more logical and effective option for us. The suite of products was also far more comprehensive and required less customization. We were able to adopt a "configure not code" approach to our development of systems to support our mission that lowered the cost of upgrades.
Read full review Return on Investment Change is always expensive and painful, but CRM is worth the time and effort. One immediate benefit is improved transparency internally, especially for internal accounting, controls, and compliance departments. Cloud hosting helps cut cost and demand on organization staff. Improves access and meets compliance on every level. Ability to make global changes to recording donor phone communication makes it a one-stop resource for a well-run development team. Read full review Salesforce has allowed us to easily track donor communications in one area, which I believe has improved our donor communication overall. Salesforce for Nonprofits has made it easier on my org to track and pull donation-related information and has reduced the amount of time we need to do these regular tasks. Read full review ScreenShots Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud Screenshots