With Blackbaud Online Express' online fundraising & donation software, users can create unlimited donation forms and send and track email communications. Plus, this simple, smart, cloud-based tool is integrated with the Fundraising and CRM solution, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®. Blackbaud Online Express enables users to create and send mobile-responsive emails. Reach constituents quickly with pre-designed, mobile-friendly email templates created specifically for…
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Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Score 7.6 out of 10
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Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
We selected Online Express because it’s built in integration with Blackbaud. There are better online forms but the need to import into RE is an extra cost and hassle.
Blackbaud's Online Express is MUCH easier to use than NetCommunity. Having the ability to "drop" donation forms directly into our existing website is a big improvement over NetCommunity's web pages. Only wish Online Express offered the ability to track constituents sign up …
Blackbaud Online Express is the legacy version of the NXT software. Using NXT entirely would be preferable; however, many core features of Online Express are not yet present in NXT. For example, Blackbaud just recently added the tribute function to the new giving form option in …
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT does not compare to the back end of Raiser's Edge. There is no way to get specific information, run advanced queries and reports, and run merges through Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT. Despite this, Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is easier for new users to …
My first choice would be Blackbaud RE7 over NXT. I believe firmly that the regular database is still much more capable in terms of data capturing and management. However, from a data visualization standpoint, NXT takes the win. I also believe that Luminate Online still holds a …
I am a long-time fan of Raiser's Edge and feel there is no competition in the arena that I would even consider. They are the leader in the field and continue to grow and enhance their products and add more to their solution offerings every year. We are currently considering …
DonorPerfect worked well enough, but they were upgrading and not supporting the version the organization I worked for had so when we had a choice to go with DonorPerfect's upgraded platform or change to Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge, we chose to go with Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge. …
We previously used Exceed Beyond and found it to be too basic for our needs. It lacked the analysis tools, in particular, and did not offer integrated solutions that allow us to keep everything in one system, ie. all our fundraising and accounting functions. We explored …
I recently started a new position that uses Raiser's Edge 7, as opposed to my previous position that had NXT. I miss a lot of the functionality of NXT, particularly the Analytics. Of the other Blackbaud products I've used (Luminate, NetCommunity), I think NXT is the most …
I used DonorPerfect at a previous job and while it was good, it does not come close to providing the same user experience as Raiser's Edge. I did not find the reporting feature to be all that helpful and was severely limited on how much information I could pull on the donors …
Our organiztion has been using Raiser's Edge (RE) for more than 20 years. I have not used or evaluated other programs. When NXT became available we were already quite pleased with RE so knew we would be getting a good product.
I've used NetSuite, Oracle, and other higher-education-specific CRMs. I find RE - classic and NXT - to be very user-friendly, intuitive, and functional compared with others. By having the specific focus of nonprofit fundraising, there are a lot of options that are not needed, …
QuickBooks is not a CRM, but as an accounting system, it helped us track donors and vendors alike. However, it is not dedicated for relationship management with donors. They did have a non-profit version, but it was only slightly different from the regular version. It mostly …
We have recently evaluated Salesforce for Non-Profits. We have other departments that need to track vendors, actions, give access to consultants, run analysis, and possibly provide email marketing. At this time NXT does not provide all that Salesforce can. We understand that …
For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.
I think this product is well-suited for educational institutions, both at the private high school level and the higher education level. It covers a lot of ground in terms of recording information, and you have a lot of ability to tailor the software to your needs. I think there's some room for growth in terms of recording DEI information. Organizations who have very small staff may not want to consider this product because they might not have the time to take advantage of all the capabilities NXT has.
Online donation forms are easy to create and place within our existing website. The donations received are easily transferred into our Raiser's Edge database.
Creating email communications for our constituents is very simple to achieve in Online Express and the statistics provided are very helpful to see what our constituents are clicking on.
Tracks history of gifts and makes it easy to see giving over time, also good at organizing and accessing complete constituent information around contact information, displaying gifts with date and designations, restrictions etc..
NXT provides easy access to analytics and reports to share for specific dates etc. to support decision making and planning
Display format and organization of analytical information is very intuitive and easy to navigate and helpful in developing reports for presentations.
It does have some "quirks." It can be a little tricky to process the batch until you have done it a few times.
I had a problem finding a constituent yesterday - he was purchasing a program ad for an event - that I knew was in the database. It turned out that he had been marked inactive, and so apparently wasn't included in the search results.
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.
Customer service for all of Blackbaud's products has really lacked over the years. They are starting to get better in the last year but it can very frustrating. The online knowledge base community is the best resource for information. At times it can take hours for a customer sect even rep to help with questions or problems which is not at all ideal in this industry.
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.
For the most part, the instructors who teach the online courses are very knowledgeable and personable. I will say that the instructor-led classes, which are the only actually helpful form of online training offered by Blackbaud, are likely prohibitively expensive for many, especially if you have multiple team members who need to be trained. One-off classes do not necessarily provide the best return on investment as you may not have selected the best class for the training that you're looking for, or you may sign up for a class that is taught by a poor instructor (which is rare) and you'll find yourself needing or wanting to take it again. The only other option is to sign a multi-year contract which is, again, expensive, and may be more than you need. There are definite gaps in some of the course offerings as Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is relatively new. Most of the classes also require a time commitment of one and a half to three hours, which could be more than your staff can spare.
Blackbaud was with us every step of the way during the migration of our data to the newer version of the software. They made it as easy as possible, and the huge task that it was was made much easier with their help.
Blackbaud Online Express is mainly used strictly because of its integration with Raiser's Edge. If a client uses Salesforce for constituent/lead management, other products can offer more flexibility in designing donation forms, email templates, etc. However, they all have their own negatives in Salesforce integration -- that is a whole other can of worms. While the Raiser's Edge integration of Online Express isn't perfect, it is relatively painless compared to the competition's Salesforce integration. Also, for NFP's, Blackbaud's NFP focused business model is a plus.
There just is no system as robust and capable as Raiser's Edge NXT. It's ability to track anything you'd like, give you space to create custom fields (attributes) and utilize fields in different ways than intended give it the extra advatage that we hadn't seen in other products. It's got a vast network of plug ins that help automation features as well.
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.