Blackbaud
I use it to look up data on constituents I work with and keep others in the loop by recording my interactions with constituents. It is …
Overview
What is Blackbaud CRM?
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
Recent Reviews
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What is Blackbaud CRM?
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
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Kindful aims to help nonprofit organizations across the world fundraise more effectively. Kindful includes fundraising tools, reporting, and analytics all in one CRM. Kindful was acquired by Bloomerang in January, 2021. It is now a Bloomerang product.
What is Causeview?
Causeview aims to make donor management simple. This solution is built on the Salesforce.com platform and according to the vendor, this provides users with best in class fundraising, events, volunteers and payment processing tools on top of the world’s most popular CRM.
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 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.
Salesforce Sales Cloud, Bloomerang, and Ellucian CRM Advance are common alternatives for Blackbaud CRM.
Reviewers rate Implementation Rating highest, with a score of 8.2.
The most common users of Blackbaud CRM are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(112)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(26-36 of 36)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 19, 2016
After 2 years of BB CRM, here's what I think!
- 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
- 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
- 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!
- 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
- 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
- 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.
July 08, 2014
Easy to Use!
- Track constituent information
- Record financial information
- Store constituent information such as interactions, donations and activities.
- Synching with the CMS
July 02, 2014
BBNC ...is it for your org?
- Locked configuration strategy- if you have a high turn over, or an undocumented culture you will want to find a solution that supports change management. The config files are locked in Blackbaud which means some things you can't change. For orgs that have frequent turn-over this strategy is helpful.
- Blackbaud has tutorials online as well as classes in person staff can take. They offer certificates so supervisors know that staff have been exposed to a body of knowledge. When staff members take the workshops it is important to provide them the time to practice and use what they just learned. We purchased (for a high fee) a pass for any of our staff to take as many of the workshops as possible. We also offered this to key volunteers- as more knowledge makes folks more employable and more comfortable.
- Blackbaud has a very strong team of sales staff. Make sure you demo and that you know what you want. Fees are sadly complicated so use a spreadsheet. Once a quote is sent in writing my experience is there was very little flexibility in pricing. So your first call is really important. Do your homework.
- The Sales experience is rough. Be prepared. Write everything down. It is rough because if you are new you do not know what to ask for. You have the purchase of the function and the maintenance of the functionality you purchase. It is complicated and tricky. It is also frustrating.
- Costs are not consistent. Caution...you are on your own to set your limit or what you can pay, If you are not a techy and new or uncomfortable with negotiations you probably should involve others. Make them explain each line item to you. Do not sign until you know you have everything you will need to achieve your goals.
- There documentation is old school and lacks graphics, workflow and is loaded with text. I would like to use user videos with click through demos.
June 30, 2014
A Fundraiser's View of the CRM suite
- Plenty of space to add detailed notes
- Easy for different members of the staff to see the same information
- Can be used well by trained staff to pull reports for management
- Not always easy to use when trying to find a new function that one was not previously familiar with
- No ability to use via iPhone or other mobile device
- Not easy for remote users who are not inside the secure company network to print reports - too many steps to go through the VPN, etc.
June 25, 2014
My Review and what it do...
- Constituent Management - It's a great database to store donor information
- Email Deployment - Since joining with Convio there are a lot more functionalities
- Landing Page Provisioning - It's a great place to keep all assets in one place
- The main area for improvement is with access for agencies. Seeing that Salvation Army utilized many agencies it was hard to make sure that assets stayed unique to one place.
June 25, 2014
More than just a donor database
- Customization of fields is really awesome - you can do basically anything you can think of
- Report pulling is super useful and you can analyze any information that is in the database
- Mobile/remote access is particularly useful in our organization
- Reports can be tricky to get correct
- Mass imports are hard to get correct - you often have to refer back to the fields, which means you have to start over completely
- Sometimes, the system just runs super slow