Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
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Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Salesforce for Nonprofits, the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud, is a nonprofit constituent relationship management platform from Salesforce, which supports constituent engagement, fundraising, and grants. Nonprofit editions contain Salesforce Lightning Edition along with the former Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) combined.
RE-NXT is much more user friendly than Salesforce. Navigating the software took so many more mouse clicks and the pages were visually confusing. I will say that discontinuing or updating pledges/payment information on pledges was much easier, but that was the only good aspect …
RE NXT is harder to use to than NeonOne - but NeonOne lacks a lot of functionality and is not appropriate for higher education or more sophisticated nonprofits. RE NXT is easier to use than Luminate. Its Marketing module is not nearly as sophisticated as Luminate but that's OK …
Salesforce was a much more user-friendly, powerful system compared to Raiser's Edge Database view. Once we upgraded to NXT, I found a lot of similar functionalities and tools I was missing from Salesforce.
We selected Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT because it is a legacy system that the organization has been using and it would be too troublesome to merge and transfer data and also train staff with new software we aren't aware of. We know what we get with Blackbaud.
We have a mix of both direct mail and online donor base and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge/Raiser's Edge NXT provides the right-size product to manage all of the different channels and the processes involved in managing them. The canned reporting is also very helpful when creating …
Neon didn't have the membership capabilities as promised for membership batching. Salesforce - we will be taking another look at it. We have multiple revenue sources (lodging, education programs, retail) and really need a solution where we can record all revenue, not just …
NXT has a more user-friendly interface than RE and CRM. I have found that the gift officers are much more comfortable with NXT than the others. When recording and displaying donor data and giving, I think NXT is far more potent than either Salsa or Salesforce's Nonprofit …
I’ve evaluated and used Raiser’s Edge NXT by Blackbaud, and in comparison, Salesforce is definitely getting there. It’s more advanced and more secure than Blackbaud, but Blackbaud still does certain things really well — they’ve been around for decades, so they’re kind of the …
Salesforce for Nonprofits is much more flexible than other tools I've used in the past. You aren't limited to staying with one company's suite of products - you have the ability to build out your database / fundraising solution using best in class applications. It also has a …
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is good for a medium sized organization who needs a central piece of software for communication and recordkeeping between office staff, executive staff, and fundraising staff. Front-line staff can record their interactions with constituents, which can be used for analysis and marketing by office staff, and in future fundraising efforts. Executive, fundraising, marketing, and accounting staff can have detailed reports on giving relevant to their specific work. And information can be communicated back to front-line staff by other departments and referenced as needed. Little coding ability is needed, security allows for staff to be limited to the features they need, and customizability means that most needs can be accounted for. Larger organizations might consider whether more robust software requiring more training might meet their needs better, and smaller organizations will likely need to look for something in their budget range. Prospective adopters should note that while web view has been out for a while, it has incomplete and limited functionality. Complete functionality only exists in database view, which is old. Database view functionality is being transferred to web view throughout 2025 - consider whether waiting to evaluate the new functionality first is prudent.
If you only want to track donations, I'd go with something simpler. If you want to track donations and programs and connections between them, there may be nothing better. If you have no technical abilities and no budget, restricted yourself solely to what it does as described exactly in the manual. If you can't devote about 0.25FTE to the constant maintenance and upgrades, don't go with it.
The Work Center for our fundraisers gives a fantastic snapshot of past due actions and overdue pledges. Clicking on the number brings up a detailed list with the ability to add Actions straight from the list.
NXT's ability to customize dashboards and insights gives me the ability to report on statistics that my team needs. The visuals are compelling and helpful.
List generation is incredibly easy. The filters are easy to use, and one the list is made, can easily be exported or shared.
API coverage is limited - certain data is inaccessible for arduous to query (ex: rather that pulling all name format records, must query name format data one constituent/API call at a time.
Native reporting (ie, not using API calls) is limited.
Bulk data maintenance (imports, updates, etc) limited without use of API calls.
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.
I think Salesforce has so much functionality that it makes it difficult in terms of overall usability. Once you can figure it out, it's a 10/10, it's just getting there. If you're willing to do the work to figure it out then you're golden. For what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to find something with this level of functionality that's easier to figure out
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.
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.
I have never had bad conversations with any support people with Salesforce but we also have not used them very much. I put it a little less because we are struggling to switch to lightning (some of our custom features do not migrate well) and it feels like the help and support for a little organization is not incredibly helpful unless we want to spend a lot of money.
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.
Courses are offered both synchronously and asynchronously for various subjects for your employees. I have taken a handful of them and have found them very insightful and helpful. They have helped in getting more out of their product and it helps that you can learn from others in the classes that you take learning what their practices are and how other organizations are doing things with BlackBaud's products.
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.
Raiser's Edge NXT integrates well with the existing products we use like Outlook Email and Double the Donation. They are both integratable and streamline the process. Double the Donation integrates right on the donation form and Outlook as a Raiser's Edge button in the email to record the action on the constituent's record.
As a cloud native organization with no previous Microsoft infrastructure, Salesforce was a more logical and effective option for us. The suite of products was also far more comprehensive and required less customization. We were able to adopt a "configure not code" approach to our development of systems to support our mission that lowered the cost of upgrades.
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.
Salesforce has allowed us to easily track donor communications in one area, which I believe has improved our donor communication overall.
Salesforce for Nonprofits has made it easier on my org to track and pull donation-related information and has reduced the amount of time we need to do these regular tasks.
