Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT vs. Kindful (discontinued, now part of Bloomerang) vs. Orange Leap MPX (discontinued)

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is great for a small organization that just needs to track their giving. It will house data and give you some output that can help inform strategy. However, if you really want the system to work for you, you desperately need someone who is tech savvy, detail oriented, and strategy minded. Almost nothing is set up for you at the beginning. You will need to build a lot of the reports, dashboards, and queries yourself. If you've used the system for a while, anything you build will eventually fail because of how often Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT changes things in the system. This system is great for organizations that are small and simple.

Incentivized

Kindful is well suited when:

• Important to integrate with a wide range of systems such as online fundraising tools or event registration without being tied to a single vendor
• Small to medium sized organizations looking for an affordable but powerful donor database/CRM
• Need a powerful but user friendly tool with customizable reports

Kindful is not well suited when:

• You need very advanced customization such as the ability to built entire custom screens
• You need to track donations in multiple currencies

Incentivized

• Inter-departmental communication
• Recordkeeping
• Data Analysis
• Fundraiser portfolios
• Customizable fields and tables
• User-friendly UI - requires minimal coding
• CRM database
• Gift batch entry tools are efficient
• Query allows for highly customizable reporting and tracking
• Canned reports with good customizability
• Flexible and customizable exporting tools
• Low Code
• Compatibility with FENXT
• Map tools in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Web View Lists allow for easy regional searches
• Several powerful tools for changing large numbers of records at once (Global add, global change, and import)
• Mailing list generation
• Duplicate management and data cleaning tools

Incentivized

• We particularly love the flexibility of Kindful's donation pages and donation plug-ins. They make it possible for us to accept donations on our website, without having donors have to leave the website.
• Kindful effectively streamlines back-office functions including acknowledgements for gifts - which saves our small 2-person team vital hours each week.
• Kindful integrates to a variety of valuable platforms, allowing us to manage all of our data in one place. Currently, we integrate with MailChimp [so all email recipients are segmented in Kindful, emails are sent from MailChimp], Fundraising Report Card, and several custom integrations through Kindful's open API [including one that tracks volunteer events and another that connects to CauseVox].
• Kindful's basic metrics and "dashboard" give us instant access to live fundraising results that are shown against historical information - giving us the ability to see how we're doing at all times.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Detailed custom email campaigns and reports can be confusing to navigate. However, Kindful provides excellent customer support and training to make it as easy as possible.
• The price can be a turn off for many people, but if you have an aggressive plan to increase funding, Kindful pricing is scalable based on the size of your database.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

From operations, support, and donor management, Kindful's UX and UI are top-notch.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have not utilized the support for Kindful very often but the one time I have was fantastic. It was quick, courteous and thorough. Kindful consistently offers Webinars that outline the best way to utilize their product and get the most out of it. I think Kindful does a pretty solid job with support.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The instructors were knowledgeable and provided the insight needed for both new users and more seasoned veterans to grow in their knowledge of the product and the features that Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT provides. The learning curve for this product is steep and training is essential. The training available definitely provides the necessary tools to build a foundation upon as well as further ones knowledge of the product.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Because of the easy-to-use drag-and-drop function, teams do not have to call website design-proficient professionals to assist them since Populr also supports collaboration and entire teams can work together to come up with a beautifully designed website and one that is readable.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Kindful's customer service team has saved us a lot of time and effort by being extremely helpful. I can't speak highly enough about the customer service they offer.
• We spend a lot of time cleaning our data base. I wish Kindful had a cleaner integration process.

Incentivized