Specific scenarios where Blackbaud DonorCentral is well suited are definitely in regards to our Development team. They can quickly update our constituent's memberships and keep our communications team in the loop on current member emails and those who are in need or renewals. It also helps with their development and fundraising events. They are keeping track of the highest donors and those big prospective donors for future events. Scenarios, where it is less appropriate, are definitely in my meetings department. It does not sync with our registration database for conferences, so we have to do double work verifying if they are members or not.
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is good for a medium sized organization who needs a central piece of software for communication and recordkeeping between office staff, executive staff, and fundraising staff. Front-line staff can record their interactions with constituents, which can be used for analysis and marketing by office staff, and in future fundraising efforts. Executive, fundraising, marketing, and accounting staff can have detailed reports on giving relevant to their specific work. And information can be communicated back to front-line staff by other departments and referenced as needed. Little coding ability is needed, security allows for staff to be limited to the features they need, and customizability means that most needs can be accounted for. Larger organizations might consider whether more robust software requiring more training might meet their needs better, and smaller organizations will likely need to look for something in their budget range. Prospective adopters should note that while web view has been out for a while, it has incomplete and limited functionality. Complete functionality only exists in database view, which is old. Database view functionality is being transferred to web view throughout 2025 - consider whether waiting to evaluate the new functionality first is prudent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I gave it a low rating because response times are slow. It does have multiple ways to reach support, but it usually takes a while before you "get in front" of the person you need to fix your issue. Also, problems seem to happen a lot, so it makes the process more frustrating.
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.
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.
Courses are offered both synchronously and asynchronously for various subjects for your employees. I have taken a handful of them and have found them very insightful and helpful. They have helped in getting more out of their product and it helps that you can learn from others in the classes that you take learning what their practices are and how other organizations are doing things with BlackBaud's products.
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.
I do not know of any other alternatives, as I do not work in the development department. Our Development team would have sourced alternatives to settle on this one.
Raiser's Edge NXT integrates well with the existing products we use like Outlook Email and Double the Donation. They are both integratable and streamline the process. Double the Donation integrates right on the donation form and Outlook as a Raiser's Edge button in the email to record the action on the constituent's record.
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.
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.
