Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT vs. Kindsight iWave

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is a great fundraising tool. It is visually pleasing and straightforward for the most part. Being able to open different aspects of the database in different tabs and have reports and exports running in the background is a great time-saver. Having information tiles that you can move and reorganize used on the user means that I don't have to scroll to the bottom of a record to find out a person's giving history. If I'm working on a specific data project involving actions, I can move that tile to the top and it will stay there for just me while I'm working. It doesn't affect any of my other users' settings. Being able to send out links to gift lists to members of my fundraising team is excellent. Clicking the link brings them to the batch info and they can zero in on their prospects in the database directly from those lists. Blackbaud's Email marketing is my least favorite part because there's missing functionality I wish it had, like exporting email statistics and viewing them in general. I understand that other partners which can integrate would take care of this, but still.

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iWave is well suite for gathering a better idea of who you should focus on for major giving efforts. While it gives you a lot of good information, some of that information feels not very important and therefore, clogs up the data you actually need. iWave should not be used for something like direct mail list making. iWave seems to really be focused on the major donor aspect and it is not a tool to be used to help with regular annual giving

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• Blackbaud RE NXT is extremely well organized and easy to use. The simple layout and straightforward functions make interacting with the product pleasant and easy.
• Blackbaud RE NXT's dashboards are amazing. They make reporting so easy because the dashboards convey all necessary information in an easy-to-read, unique format (depending on how you want it displayed). It is relatively easy to create a dashboard, and the options for customizing it are great.
• Blackbaud RE NXT is great for receiving and processing donations. From the simple donation forms to the automatic batch creation, using RE NXT makes processing donations much more efficient.

• The 360search allows you to do a comprehensive search across the multiple data sources at the same time.
• You can stay organized during your research with the user-friendly and customizable Profiles and Labels.
• The PROscreen ranking system allows you to get a quick snapshot of the alignment of a particular donor with your mission in an easy to read format that can be exported for another colleague with little extra explanation needed.

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• Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is constantly updating and making major changes, so you never fully understand the system
• The way some things are labeled in the system doesn't make logical sense. You almost have to learn a whole new language to get the most out of the features.
• There's no way to re-generate a copy of a receipt, which is wildly inconvenient.
• A lot of features are very limited based on your subscription. They give you a wide range of features but almost none of them work to their full potential. Even if you're paying a lot of money for the system, you will still likely feel like you're doing a free trial.

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• It's honestly tough to say what needs to be improved on a platform that I am a big fan of. The only time I am ever frustrated has more to do with the fact that some individuals are very adept at masking their charitable activities from public databases, and given that iWave can only show you what is publicly documented information I wouldn't consider that a liability of the product... rather it's a challenge of the field.
• Some areas of improvement could include more online filtering and searching of Foundation grant histories. My current workaround is to download the entire grant history as a CSV (another good feature of iWave), and use Excel to sort and filter my results.

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I don't know for sure what we'll do, and I wouldn't publicly share that anyways. Speaking only for myself, I wouldn't jump for joy if I was given the task of transferring CRM providers when this org has a Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT database that's 28 years old, but being aware of what's on the market is always responsible. With the planned functionality updates to Web View over 2025-2026, the phasing out of features in database view, and the changes to contract structure laid out in investor updates, there's a lot of factors that could change in the next few years. And Blackbaud has not made it clear how much work the transfer to Web View only will be for us over the next couple years: It means updating all of our policies and procedures and all of our documentation and retraining all of our employees at minimum, and that's assuming that all existing fields and features remain accessible without modification.

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Learning the overall useability of Blackbaud Raiser's Edge is a fairly steep learning curve, however, the support team that Blackbaud Raiser's Edge employs are top notch, helpful and very knowledgeable. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge also maintains an extensive library of articles that are very helpful, as well a useful tutorials, including step-by-step articles as well as instructional videos. With these tools at your disposal you will be competent in no time

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It is easy to understand and user friendly. Even the upload format for screenings is simple. You are able to alter scoring levels and layers to tailor to your organization's hierarchy. The new color scheme for Kindsight is a bit harder to see but there is workarounds by using an extension within your web browser for that

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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.

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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.

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You are better off using the user community or Facebook group to get answers than the support provided by Blackbaud. Oftentimes, support reps are not even aware that new features are being rolled out, nor do they have fundraising experience so you end up explaining more to the rep about what you are trying to accomplish and why than getting to the issue.

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iWave customer support is more responsive than most software platforms I currently use. My requests are always handled promptly, and support is incredibly responsive, friendly, and patient. Plus, I can always get someone on the phone immediately if I need a problem resolved right then and there. In addition to the live and personal support, the iWave knowledge base is frequently update with new content, including video webinars that help you become a more powerful user of the software.

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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.

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The content is solid, but for those who benefit from in-person interactions, it can be a bit challenging. While the online format is great for flexibility and accessibility, there’s something about face-to-face training that makes it easier to absorb and ask questions in real-time. Overall, though, it’s a solid resource for self-paced learning.

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I can't recall many specifics, mostly due to my own limited use of the entire NXT range of functions. One thing that I dislike is that when previous "Contact Reports" (Talisma term) were imported the dates were all converted to show as the date that they were imported into NXT, rather than the original dates they were entered into the old CRM. During the implementation, similarly, a few batches of Actions were re-dated to show the date of the batch transfer or update (not from the old system, I believe).

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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.

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iWave is affordable, offers current data, and is continually adding new data sources. They are the only product that offers international prospect information, which is helpful as our institution borders Canada. I was impressed when our sale representative went out of his way to teach me about how I could screen Canadian prospects in a way that helped us calculate an estimated real estate value for our prospects. We had no other way of getting this information as Canada does not provide the information publicly like tax assessor offices do in the United States.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• We have consistently been able to increase our annual donations year over year since using iWave. There was an 11% increase just between our last fiscal year and the previous fiscal year.
• Time spent on researching donors has decreased since all of the information needed is on one website rather than searching all over the internet for the information needed.

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