Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
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Bonterra Network for Good
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Bonterra Network for Good offers a nonprofit fundraising suite of applications, with donor management features like intelligent tracking of donor readiness and targeted messaging.
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Pricing
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Bonterra Network for Good
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Bonterra Network for Good
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
$500
Additional Details
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Pricing is based on how many contacts are imported into the Donor Management System. All packages have unlimited users, unlimited campaigns, unlimited peer-to-peer pages, unlimited emails and communications, and optional events and auctions. All packages also include support and data migration.
We chose Blackbaud for their excellent fundraising and donor management platform. It is user friendly with state of the art technology and very comprehensive tool that provides an ideal solution to integrating donors and allows us to drive donor engagement through activation. …
We converted to Raiser's Edge and Raiser's Edge NXT by using several platforms to patchwork together the tools we needed/wanted. Blackbaud had everything we wanted in one tool and was tailored to support nonprofits like ours. Today, the Blackbaud database still functions …
We used to use Network for Good for online giving management before switching to BBMS. I love that BBMS integrates the gifts automatically into the donors giving history rather than us taking the extra step of inputting each gift manually.
RE NXT is Raiser's Edge on steroids and with more web base options Little Green Light offers a lot of similar options for a smaller shop with a smaller budget Donor Perfect - used too long ago to fairly compare One Cause - is more helpful for our auction/gala events than events …
We used to use LGL. We needed more functionality, better reporting, and something that could handle the growth of our organization. We also wanted to reduce the number of products we were using. Network for Good was the perfect solution for our needs. In looking at Raiser's …
Personally, I feel that Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is a good solution for any size organization. They have all you need to maintain and use data regardless of how many records. It’s easy to learn and use. Plus, they offer a ton of resources that you can use to constantly keep learning how to best use features.
We have a small team leading our international nonprofit. Bonterra Network for Good allows us to keep track of our donations quickly and easily, including private donors, larger donor-advised funds, foundations and grants, and easily designate the donation to different campaigns or sub-categories within our organization. The platform syncs well with Quickbooks and we rarely have issues. The issues we do have are always around pulling reports. The platform does not make it easy to pull a quick report, even with suggested filters provided.
There is so much missing functionality in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT (webview) compared to database view - whilst they repeatedly tell us to switch to webview we simply can't due to crucial functionality that is missing.
In our experience, there are a lot of false promises made, particularly when renewing contracts etc, about what functionality is coming soon to webview - particularly regarding the optional modules such as Volunteering.
An increased focus from Blackbaud and all their marketing about pushing third party vendors for certain activities (email marketing being a big one!) all of which come at an additional cost. Although these integrate into Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT, I would prefer Blackbaud to focus on making its own functionality up to standard rather than integrating costly 3rd party platforms.
In my experience, Support for the platform has got worse over the years - I have been waiting over six months to resolve a technical issue which is hampering our use of the functionality.
Inability to create letters within the system (which used to be a feature in RE7 database view) is a huge issue for our supporter base who still appreciate paper-based acknowledgement letters.
In exporting reports, it would be helpful to have a "select all" option so you can easily select everything without having to manually click each one.
In exporting reports, it may be helpful to have the option of saving various options for different needs so you don't have to manually click or unclick each choice every time, as you can currently only save one type.
It would be helpful to be able to change an event/ticket information after it has already gone live for sales as we recently had an issue with this.
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.
We are still learning and rebuilding our nonprofit using this platform, so this year is a trial run to see how we can increase our network and our donations. So long as we are able to see a significant return on investment in terms of donations received through the platform, we will renew for next year.
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.
There is no perfect all-in-one product that works for every organization. We enjoyed using Network for Good. I am giving it a 9 because the cost was out of our range, and the peer-to-peer options (at the time) were limited. We were not able to make it work for our peer-to-peer event. We also weren't thrilled with the online forms. However, the donation pages, donor profiles, and communication tools were excellent.
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.
In 5+ years we have never had an issue with it not working when we needed it to. It is very reliable and doesn't seem to have a lot of bugs or interruptions in service.
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.
It is always fast for us and reports have a very quick upload time. We don't integrate it into other programs so I'm not 100% sure about that, but it always works when we use it and is very reliable. Even when we run Excel files for complete information on donors, it always works very fast.
Overall I feel like I receive sufficient assistance when reaching out to Blackbaud's Support area. When my questions cannot be answered completely during an online chat I appreciate the ability to easily access the ongoing notes so everything is together. It can be frustrating at times, though, as emailing back and forth seems to make solutions take longer.
Most of the time they are quick and friendly and help me resolve any issues. There have only been a couple of times that we couldn't find a resolution and I was just told that NFG didn't have that capability.
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.
As with most trainings, the learning curve is more difficult when mostly online, and I felt that we could have used more check-ins once we'd been using the product for a few months. Most things were explained well enough, but the difficulties discovered through use were not always addressed right away.
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.
We only had one hiccup with the domain that was an issue on our end but NFG struggled to help us. It was finally resolved and we've been good ever since
I have not used other products like this before. I have used and created some SQL databases and ERPs, but have not used fundraising-specific software such as Raiser's Edge. Based on what I know from other products vaguely similar to this - databases and ERPs - this is very user friendly and easy to pick up for anyone, especially with their NXT webview offering.
We used Little Green Light for several years at a previous employer. LGL did not have the extensive integration capabilities or the level of sophistication that BGF has in terms of email, video, donor campaign pages, and exceptional customer support. For these reasons, we chose to go with BGF instead of LGL.
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.
Having everything in one system means that information is much more likely to be up to date. We hardly get any returned mail from the post office when we pull lists.
Our gift officers can easily pull up donor information on their phones while out on a visit, giving them the edge they need to close a gift.
Information tiles on a person's record that are easy to reorganize and collapse per the needs of each user makes finding pertinent information quick.
Minimized the resources necessary to run an online presence. For instance, one moderately tech-savvy person can handle it.
Provides a pathway to increase the number of events the organization can manage.
By being part of a larger group of non-profits that utilize Network For The Good, we receive additional assistance and ideas from related organizations.
