Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM vs. Bonterra Salsa Engage vs. Convio Luminate (discontinued)

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

Incentivized

For smaller organizations who don't have extensive data needs (i.e. not many audiences to segment) and who don't need robust reporting, this works great.

Incentivized

It does great with donor cultivation processes and the workflow feature is top-notch for automating processes. Where it does a less than stellar job is getting it to work more specifically for your organization. Often times building that kind of special feature costs a significant time and money investment and it is something that is hard to transfer when it's time to move to a new database.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Integration with SalesForce
• Easy-to-use interface
• Technical support

Incentivized

• Luminate takes some of the legwork out of setting up NSPS for nonprofit use of salesforce.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Translation from salsa engage into our CRM system
• Could use more modern email templates
• More restrictions regarding image upload. Currently, you can upload any size and insert it. The email will not send correctly but you do not receive an error message.

Incentivized

• Big Investment
• It's a sales program with a donation management overlay so it has some troubles around reporting.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

It is an excellent database! There isn't a database on the market which is perfect for everyone but this one is very very close and does most of what we need.

Easy to use interface, far superior to classic. You did this right.

Incentivized

I have not personally had to reach out to Blackbaud CRM Support, because we have a central office that manages the Blackbaud CRM relationship. However, any time I've reached out to our support team, there is nothing they can't figure out by utilizing the support they receive from Blackbaud CRM. I've not had any issues that have gone unresolved, and they can always get things done in a timely fashion.

Incentivized

Support response has been swift and knowledgable, though not always the answer I've wanted. One huge design flaw is if I add a new Salesforce field to sync, Salsa Engage will not sync it unless it has changed since the last sync, requiring me to fake an update for an entire database or re-sync the whole enchilada. Better to recognize it's a new Salesforce field and perform the sync en masse.

Incentivized

Support for the product is horrible; often support will have you bouncing between Blackbaud support and Salesforce support and it's very rare either are able to find simple solutions. Most of the time the solutions almost always cost money and hiring consultants which, for a smaller organization, means not being able to achieve proper solutions.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

EveryAction is a lot cheaper, but Salsa has more featured with targeting certain elected officials/better text messaging strategies

Incentivized

Of the databases I have used, Luminate CRM is my least favorite. However, it is powerful and large enough to function adequately for a large nonprofit; I couldn't say the same for some of Blackbaud's smaller products. We definitely need the full Luminate Suite (Luminate Online, Team Raiser, etc.,) to make it work, though - and we're constantly disappointed by the clumsiness of the way all the pieces interact.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Our event participants are always maxed out and Engage allows them an easy way to sign up and participate.

Incentivized

• Uncertain; we have not collected data on this. Our Luminate package is quite expensive, though.

Incentivized