Blackbaud NetCommunity

Blackbaud NetCommunity is a simple and straightforward fundraising platform and can be easily implemented. The program allows for email communications, sign-ups, and online donation forms. It is great for segmenting specific messages to different constituents. We had several different e-newsletters and constituents could sign up for specific ones. In addition, we could change the messaging in the emails to specific groups.

It is pretty user friendly and easy to use. Each donation form can be linked to an event in Raiser's Edge which is pretty handy. It allows to quickly set up event pages which links to RE easily too.

It is not suitable for peer-to-peer fundraising

Well suited for collecting online donations.

Blackbaud NetCommunity is helpful for reaching mass populations via email communications and tracking analytics to record ROI on communications. It's particularly helpful for companies or institutions who are tasked with fundraising. The program shines with Raiser's Edge integration for event registration, attendee tracking, and mailing opt-outs. The program could use a facelift in its interface.

If you have Raiser's Edge, NetCommunity is beneficial because of the data integration. If you do not have Raiser's Edge, you might be better off choosing a different provider, as many of the newer services, like MailChimp, are more intuitive and user-friendly.

The migration of data from another software was very easy. All we needed to do was map the existing fields and we were able to create custom fields to accommodate specific needs of the clients.The dashboards and reports are excellent tools for management to make decisions about fundraising efforts.The complete records for each constituent and the ability to connect constituents to one another and to corporate donors enable my clients to reach out in specific campaigns that are tailored to move a group of donors.

NetCommunity is perfect for any fundraising donation, email, communication need. NetCommunity is a great tool for a small business/foundation. It integrates with Blackbaud Raiser's Edge so if you are looking to have all your email, relationship, marketing tools in-house then stick with Blackbaud NetCommunity and all products related.

I believe it is well suited for online donations, memberships, event registrations, and email communications. It does quite well in what I've needed it to do. It would be nice to have added customization in event registrations, but perhaps I have not asked the correct questions that would get me to that point.

BBNC is an all in one system allowing the administrator to go to the website, log in the back end and make immediate changes versus having to go to a different system to make the changes.

For those using the events module, NetCommunity is great, though if you do a lot of walk/run type of events where individuals sponsor other individuals, something like TeamRaiser might make more sense. If you don't have the staff resources for web developers dedicated to fundraising tasks, then NetCommunity is a great tool. It's not as customisable as an experienced programmer/developer might want, but it still has a lot of options. It also has a lot of nuance, and if you cannot make an investment of time or money into getting staff trained, it's not going to work out well.

It is great to use as an online platform for credit card gifts to your organization. Does not work well for information you want to integrate with Raiser's Edge if that is what your are using as your constituent database.

If the main person, or people, who will be doing the work in NetCommunity have prior website experience, that will be an incredible boost to making this product work for you. I went into this with no background of that kind, and found it extremely difficult, and the available classes only helped some. Smaller offices might want to consider other options before going with this since it does take some serious time to make it do what is needed, and it is a serious cash investment for smaller offices. I like the ability to track email statistics, how secure it is, and it is our only online donation option at this time. We are using NetCommunity for event registrations as well as cash donations, for multiple office locations, and the ability to connect information to Raiser's Edge is very good.

I'm sure that NetCommunity is a fantastic product under certain circumstances. I've spoken to many other organizations that love it and could never imagine using anything else. Our organization just wasn't suited for the way that Spark integrated with NetCommunity and Raiser's Edge as a whole.

It is great for building multiple pages for multiple events. It does not, however, allow peer to peer fundraising and is not super social media friendly. We are using other programs for that. Building pages in NetCommunity is easy!

Well suited for organizations with membership and event needs. The donation pages are good, but if your are ONLY taking donations and do not need to worry about the events or membership, then one of the "smaller" blackbaud products may be for you. I LOVE the integration between BBNC and Raiser's edge. This is the best integration I've experienced between an on-line site and the Raiser's Edge.

I think the sweet spot for NetCommunity is in the email blasts and newsletters. I would encourage users to look at other options when it comes to a quick and affordable solution for serving web pages. It does work well for web pages but we have noticed that the trouble it takes to upgrade and maintain for such a small portion of the program it is not really worth it on that front. The BlackBaud support is very good though.

It is so well integrated with Raiser’s Edge (RE) and Education Edge (EE) I am scared of transitioning away, because that would probably mean constant data transfers. It is also fairly easy to design web pages for those without a foundation in web design. The email data is also comprehensive and shuttles read and bounce stats into a tab in RE.

It's less appropriate if you only need it for online donations, event registrations and emails. Consider Online Express for this which is much more cost effective. During the selection process think about what you really need it for. Also think about the people who will be using it. If you don't want to invest in the training dollars and the users don't want to take the time to take the training you might be frustrated.

I think it all comes down to what approach your team prefers to take with fundraising. For some organizations, where you are using a more traditional fundraising approach, I could see NetCommunity being a good fit. But for us, because we use a less traditional, more marketing approach, it just wasn't a good fit.