Great tool needs more support to carry into the future
We utilize it for donor records, prospect management, bbis, wealth screening, donor information
Overview
What is Blackbaud CRM?
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
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Executive Director
University of Cincinnati foundation (Philanthropy, 51-200 employees)
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What is Blackbaud CRM?
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
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Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Blackbaud CRM?
Blackbaud CRM for enterprise-scale Nonprofits, Higher Education, and Healthcare organizations combines data management and automation with the ability to scale, adapt, and integrate across applications to retain and grow supporter value. Its out-of-the-box capabilities enable enterprise-level advancement organizations to work more effectively with large, multidimensional datasets, including:
- A holistic view of constituents to manage interactions with them based on whether they are Individuals, Households, Groups, or Corporations and maintain visibility into corporate hierarchy.
- Sophisticated donor management capabilities such as Stewardship Plans, Fund Management, Recognition Programs, Naming Opportunities, and Donor Challenges to increase donor engagement.
- Market segmentation to support complex multi-channel outreach programs.
- Research and Analytics powered by Blackbaud’s native prospect research tool, ResearchPoint, including data modeling and benchmarking.
- Mobile and web access to empower on the go fundraisers with constituent information through their mobile devices.
- Direct
data access to cloud environments via read-only, read-write, and self-service
developer portal to speed development cycle while maintaining control and
optimizing security and compliance.
Blackbaud CRM Features
- Supported: A single source of truth with a holistic view of constituents whether they are Individuals, Households, Groups, or Corporations
- Supported: Moves management and stewardship capabilities to expand and nurture major donors
- Supported: Segmentation support for multi-channel campaigns
- Supported: Planned Giving, Matching Gift Management, and Online Giving to support specialized fundraising needs
- Supported: Automated receipting and acknowledgement, end-to-end credit card processing and robust accounting functionality streamline gift and revenue management
- Supported: Ability to tap into Blackbaud's philanthropic data set and data modeling
- Supported: Integration with business intelligence and data analytics solutions.
- Supported: Microsoft integrations to automate key visualizations, workflows and build low-code/no-code apps
- Supported: Open, industry-standard REST APIs to extend and customize the core CRM solution.
- Supported: Wide selection of partner apps in Blackbaud Marketplace.
- Supported: Extensible revenue data model to manage process of tracking, crediting and recognizing donors based on the gifts they make
- Supported: Embedded data hygiene management including duplication management and address validation
Blackbaud CRM Video
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM Competitors
Blackbaud CRM Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Mobile Web |
| Supported Countries | Global - US, Canada, EMEA, Asia-Pacific |
Frequently Asked Questions
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 6.9.
The most common users of Blackbaud CRM are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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We utilize it for donor records, prospect management, bbis, wealth screening, donor information
- Analytics
- Wealth screening
- Sophisticated functionality
- Customer service
- New development
June 01, 2023
Blackbaud CRM provides value for better fundraising, relationship management, and prospect engagement
We use CRM to manage all alumni, parent, and student data. It is largely focused on fundraising activity, relationship building through engagement, and moves management for prospects. It addresses many things at once - it is a one-stop place to find information. I use it daily and regularly as a fundraiser. It keeps track of my prospects, managing those relationships, and fundraising activity. Thankfully, our in-house team of Information Services routinely makes improvements and listens to feedback from fundraisers who use it nearly everyday.
- Makes it easy for fundraisers to keep track of the activity they need or want to accomplish
- Allows fundraisers to easily enter email correspondence through their email add-on
- Listens to customer feedback and makes quality enhancements
- The sticky function of data filtering.
- It can be overwhelming because there is so much information.
- The way revenue/gifts are can be confusing. There are also too many tabs to find information.
- There are a lot of little frustrations and tedious little steps to complete.
I work in stewardship, so I use the CRM to maintain fund records, update stewardship plans for donors, and track engagement.
- Easily add update info
- Historical record keeping
- Easy access to reporting and query features
- add comments/notes directly to stewardees
Blackbaud was an innovative product that was used within the advancement/development office at the post-secondary institution where I had worked at. Blackbaud was primarily used at this post-secondary institution to manage donations and fundraising. Donations and fundraising contributions were obtained and entered into the system, reconciled and charitable tax receipts were issued using Blackbaud. It addressed many issues by providing a means to efficiently track donations.
- Efficiently tracks charitable donations
- Strong analytics and reports
- Creates tax receipts for donors
- Can be difficult to use if you don't have experience - more user friendly
- The reports and analytics are not easily customisable.
- User/Customer support can be improved.
Blackbaud CRM has been an integral part of the CRM department and has helped in narrowing down key issues being faced by top clients which in turn has helped in negating the said issues and thereby directly affecting the company's profit margins. The software not only provides a one-stop solution to most CRM-related queries but also has very robust back-end support which helps in resolving any software-related queries in record time
- Easy to see key constituents for a data set quickly
- Very responsive email systems
- Excellent post sales support team
- Closed ecosystem, hard to integrate with other CRM softwares
- Rigid Modules, difficult to make changes as per organization's requirements
- Difficult to train a new user with limited training modules
February 15, 2020
Face for Radio. Things aren't always what they seem.
We use the Blackbaud suite across the school. We use RE for our fundraising CRM, Core on the school side and FE in the business office.
- The Blackbaud CRM is excellent at creating its own custom reports.
- RENXT is a powerful tool to use on the road.
- The reports are not easily customized and some are not customizable at all. For example, in the dashboard, when they give you the number of donors that increased giving in the previous year, you'll get a falsely inflated number because they count any new donor (who gave zero) as a donor that increased giving.
- The RENXT reporting is beautiful, but again, not very customizable.
February 09, 2020
Rock solid software system
It is used by the Development Dept to manage our donor base. It greatly reduces the time it takes to get receipts and eliminates the need for a hard copy. The ability to attach documents to a donor file is extremely helpful.
- Tracking donor gifts and donor touches.
- Alerting staff of need for donor touches.
- While the support has been great, at times we have needed someone with advanced expertise.
February 06, 2020
Blackbaud CRM has solved all of our needs!
At Florida State University, we currently use Blackbaud CRM across the entire organization. About 7 years ago, we switched from another platform that was very outdated and hard to use. Blackbaud CRM allowed us to add more details about the many constituents we serve, including current students, alumni, and friends of the university. We can track interactions, event attendance, giving history, and even keep notes within each constituent profile. It has helped us immensely as we all work with the same populations in different capacities.
- It is incredibly user-friendly! From the first time I opened a constituent profile, I could easily navigate between tabs and find the information I need in a timely fashion without confusion.
- It allows personalization! Depending on what information is most relevant to me, I can organize the widgets that are shown first. I typically look at the same few pieces of information on every profile, so I don't have to dig for it!
- I love the "Recently Accessed" feature to the left of the main page. It helps me navigate to the last few records I've looked at. However, if I'm doing a fuzzy search for "John Smith" and I click on the wrong one, it'd be great if that search was added to my "recently accessed" list, instead of just the record I clicked on. This would allow me to keep up with which names in the search I've already looked at.
- Query View! I have recently started using queries and they are so helpful. However, they are very difficult to learn and hard to tailor to exactly what I need. The main issue, as a higher education institution, is that a lot of our constituents have multiple pieces of information for categories. For example, if I want to pull a list of alumni who graduated with a degree in Marketing, some alumni may be missing if their primary degree is not Marketing - and some alumni may be repeated.
Blackbaud CRM would be a great tool for larger organizations or higher education institutions with a high quantity of constituents. It is great for organizing a lot of information in a single record. While it would be great for any organization, it may be under-utilized for smaller businesses that don't have repeat customers or constant information streams.
January 06, 2020
Blackbaud for your non-profit
My organization made the switch from an older, more basic database, to Blackbaud during the Summer of 2017. I was in charge of the process and the reason we made the jump was that the other database was too simple, didn't have enough functionality, or even multi-user access. Since making the transfer, the organization added more and more functionalities.
- Accurate collection of contact information.
- Multi-user access.
- Payment options.
- Forms.
December 12, 2019
A great product that shows you what you need when you need it
We use this CRM as our main database in our Philanthropy department. Our data department supports not just our fundraising team but our hospitals and schools as well. We are an academic hospital and university. It helps us track our donors, alumni, employees, and grateful patients in one location. While other departments (like student records) have their own software to store student info, the schools use our database (Blackbaud CRM) to pull lists and reports to communicate with their alumni.
- Queries and exporting is a breeze once you are familiar with the product. It helps us pull out exactly what we need.
- The integration of this CRM with so many other products and enhancement plugins has been vital in streamlining many of our processes.
- Some of the online products by Blackbaud, such as Luminate, do not integrate so well.
- When using complex/long/or multiple negatives in a query we sometimes are not able to get the results we intended.
December 04, 2019
Blackbaud leaves much to be desired
We used it to collect donations and donor information for our non-profit. It allowed us to store, categorize, and sort data across the organization in one platform.
- Growing donor/supporter base.
- Collecting donations.
- Having a landing page for donations.
- The internal CMS is extremely difficult to use.
- It's hard to get someone on the phone.
February 27, 2019
CRM - A platform for growth and accountability
Blackbaud CRM is "the" software for large and complex nonprofits such as universities, hospitals, and national organizations. It is a full-featured CRM that manages everything from mailing lists to planned giving to grant management with deep reporting potential. The major contribution to a well-managed department of philanthropy is transparent accountability for fundraisers, processes and donor communication. That said, it is not a quick, easy or cheap implementation. You get what you pay for, and I believe this is a great product.
- Managing a large development/fundraising team's goals and outcomes
- Working hand-in-glove with various types of fundraising activities: research, on-line, direct mail, events, grants, and planned giving
- Layers of security that enable user groups to get what they need and nothing more
- Reporting! Reporting! Reporting!
- The marriage of event registration (on-line) and CRM needs some work.
- Challenges to adapt to organization culture surrounding things like "naming conventions", specialized reporting needs, some bugs in roll-up reporting on couples or families.
- Tribute giving tracking/reporting is awkward.
- Better shared language of function between BBCRM and other BB products like Netcommunity and Raiser's Edge. Can cause some errors in the implementation process.
- Netcommunity functionality pushing data to CRM is messy and fraught with challenges.
January 25, 2019
A highly flexible CRM solution for growing organizations
Blackbaud CRM was used to help manage funding and outreach efforts with a client that was a medium-sized non-profit organization. It provided a wealth of features and was sometimes a bit overly complex. Organizations that are looking to grow both financially and with its membership base will find a great deal to like about the product.
- Blackbaud CRM works really well with large member bases and outreach efforts.
- The program offers great CRM fundraising features for in-depth marketing campaigns.
- Blackbaud CRM can also be utilized and integrated alongside other Blackbaud products. This can make the product highly desirable for pre-existing Blackbaud product customers.
- The product is fairly complex and powerful. The implementation process can be difficult if not adequately prepared for in advance.
- The product really requires a dedicated staff to support it as an ongoing effort. It's not something can be left alone after installing.
- Training costs can be higher than other, less powerful CRM packages.
We use it for email newsletters to donors, donation forms on our website and for data management. It's being used by our Communications and Development departments. It addresses the business problem of emailing our audience and allowing donors to safely make online donations.
- Customizable
- Personalization in emails
- Support articles
- Hard to use interface
- Outdated front end
- Importing contacts takes multiple steps, is not easy or intuitive
- Hard to teach others how to use Blackbaud
- Difficult to find what I need
- Very hard to segment out inactive emails
April 24, 2017
Such a Difference: Blackbaud's Help Desk
We are pretty much a Blackbaud shop, using Blackbaud products for finance, development, and student management. The push to go with Blackbaud has been mainly to build as seamless an interaction as possible between the needs of those three departments. We are soon going to implement the next version of the finance and fund development software, and are currently implementing the worlds-of-difference replacement Blackbaud is developing for their student management solutions.
- Help desk. Can't praise that enough. As the main in-house resource for figuring out all things Blackbaud, when something "interesting" occurs their online chat is both responsive, helpful, and delightfully prompt.
- Reaching out to customers to get their input. Particularly in the past 5 years, Blackbaud has vastly improved their interest in listening to their customers.
- The interface is overly complex - intimidating for the new user. That said, they are working on improving that with the next generation. It will be interesting to see what abilities will go by the wayside in an effort to simplify.
- Setting up user access is complex, and not complex enough in some cases.
June 24, 2016
Blackbaud
Blackbaud CRM is used in the business office for financial data and our development office for fundraising.
- Geared for smaller organizations
- Has majority of fields to store data
- Needs to update system for speed in running data through
- Needs to update system to show new interface
- Needs more ability to customize system
- Needs to flush out purchasing/PO module
- Needs better ability to write custom reports and data fields
June 01, 2016
Not just another database solution...
The organization I was at used Blackbaud CRM for record management, processing of gifts, events, reports, etc.
- Support is second-to-none.
- Blackbaud CRM is one of the more customizable options. Since you can't always be sure of future needs, this is a must-have.
- It is one of the easier systems to learn. Many CRM options are cumbersome and require much more training. I had no issue training individuals with varied experience levels.
- As with most (read: all) Blackbaud products, the pricing is a bit high. There are other options that are significantly cheaper - which makes Blackbaud CRM a much less-likely option for smaller organizations.
April 19, 2016
My Review.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud CRM is being used to track and inform our advancement and alumni activities for our department.
- Blackboard provides great training for their products which is important when introducing new team members to the necessary software.
- Blackbaud CRM allows easy web access to our database which is important when out in the field for real time updates.
- Blackbaud CRM improves team time management by allowing the inclusion of important and efficient reminders.
- I have no feedback in this area at this time.
March 04, 2016
Blackbaud CRM - Ready To Use Right Out Of The Box
I was implementing and training Blackbaud users at a non-profit client of mine. It was used as a donation and fundraising tracking system for a community college foundation. The system was very powerful, especially against the background of the client's former software infrastructure which consisted of an Access database combined with QuickBooks.
- Very flexible configuration options.
- Excellent reporting options.
- Tight accounting system integration.
- Learning curve steeper than other competing products.
- More expensive alternative to other systems.
- Social media functionality not there yet.
February 19, 2016
After 2 years of BB CRM, here's what I think!
It is used in several departments within the organization, serving multiple purposes. It addresses the business problem of housing donor and prospect data.
- I like how user-friendly and intuitive BB CRM is. A new user can learn quickly, which is a useful strength in our department.
- I like the customization of the features. What I want my layout to look like can be different than my colleagues.
- I also think Blackbaud is great at allowing you to get only want you want out of it. With such a large database, the ability to drill down to specific data records is super helpful.
- Querying for data is a complex process- one that requires much time and practice to get good at it.
- We have issues with our system during the import process- duplicate records are not handled well by the system.
- We're only just learning about export definitions, but once we know more, it seems to be a much better way to organize data output than query.
February 12, 2016
Blackbaud review
We are the philanthropic arm for a local community owned hospital. Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge was used as our donor database for record management, gift processing, reporting and events.
- Pledge reports are clear and easy to run, as well as a few other financial reports.
- Records are clearly organized with tabs to select your area of interest
- Record searching is all inclusive
- The platform for event management and registration did not work as promised. Data being imported was all wrong and had to be removed
- Poor customer service
- Social fundraising aspect did not work as promised
January 15, 2016
CRM after using and implementing for multiple organizations
Blackbaud CRM is being used by participating Federations (separate organizations) as their sub ledger for fund raising and overall constituent management. It provides the ability to have a comprehensive view of constituents and is customizable to meet additional needs.
- The user interface is user friendly, intuitive and customizable through security. Reduces the change management obstacle in training.
- The application is both configurable and customizable. This presents significant benefits in addressing unanticipated needs, once the proper resources, and training are established. Examples are creating custom reports, adding functionality, interfacing with other applications / platforms.
- Support and application enhancements. Blackbaud support is effective in addressing out of the box functionality and overall supporting customizations as well. Blackbaud's knowledge base and community provide several resources that can be leveraged in support and enhancing the application.
- As an enterprise application, I would like to see additional application administration functionality incorporated as part of the application. A specific example is providing additional functionality to address database maintenance.
- Additional report development tools to allow users (non technical) to create dynamic reports. Currently you can use MS Report Builder and leverage an adhoc query but believe this can be enhanced further.
- Surface the Financial Transaction Model to the application further. This would allow users to see revenue changes overtime better when reconciling revenue.
January 08, 2016
I'm a fan of Blackbaud!
We used it while I was at UGA. They still use it [as] a broad based donor and constituent management database. It is used to track donor contact reports and giving information and a broad spectrum of alumni and donor information. It is used to run reports and in overall relationship management with key people.
- The product was very good at maintaining records and information. The information was agile and simple to retrieve and operationalize.
- The system is user friendly. We implemented across an entire campus and more specifically within a division with hundreds of employees. Overall people took to it quickly.
- The product I think does a more than adequate job of managing contact tracking which is key in all kinds of fields. This is critical because either for your own reasons, or as you depart from an organization, you are able to leave an accurate track record of your activities for the organization's continued success.
- Three words. Desk. Top. Queries. I advocated for this the whole time I was there. Was told that users querying information from their desktops would crash the system. Can't believe it. Product like this shouldn't have that problem and as a user, my job would have been made infinitely easier had I been able to query information on the desktop.
April 08, 2015
Blackbaud/Convio daily user
Almost our entire organization uses Blackbaud CRM to manage our participant database for our clients' fundraising events, including event registration (teamraiser), donations, email campaigns and websites (PageBuilder). It is a one-stop shop for event fundraising and communications.
- It integrates your database, allowing you to collect registrations and donations online, and then build email communications and websites that integrate with those contacts, so you don't have to import/export between tools.
- It also provides tools for your participants, so they can customize their experience with your website and your communications, manage their own fundraising and participation, and conduct their own peer-to-peer fundraising efforts.
- Blackbaud's responsiveness to their clients reporting issues with their CRM is notoriously delayed. It often takes them years to address bugs, and if the issues reported are just "nice to haves" and non-urgent, they often never get addressed.
- The system has required significant customization on our end to make it work for us. While we've had clients who are smaller organizations use it right out of the box, if you are a larger organization with more specific needs, you're going to need a consultant or a IT department to help you customize the system.
- The help feature built into the system is not very helpful and often outdated, with information that doesn't reflect the way the system currently operates. (They are also doing updates but not updating the help.) The online trainings that Blackbaud offers are pretty superficial and often don't speak to the way an organization uses the system. I've trained myself to use the system, through trial, error and explore, and our organizations trains all of our employees and clients on Blackbaud ourselves. Blackbaud does not provide that.
December 18, 2014
BB CRM 2.93
Blackbaud CRM is being used primarily as a constituent management tool. The problem it addressed was the lack of a CRM that could record moves for individual and foundation prospects. It is not integrated with other revenue systems.
- Application is robust in terms of performance and lack of downtime.
- Application can be used after brief training.
- Application is powerful in that it can easily create constituent groups and the prospect management applications are strong.
- Great room for improvement on reporting capabilities.
- The foundations module is not worth the price, is very hard to use.
- The concept of research groups needs to be rethought, as they are very hard to utilize by users.