Blackbaud NetCommunity

To have some web design for our giving pages within our departmental control has been helpful.

The integration between Query and BBNC for loading communication lists works very well.

Customer support for this product, via chat, has always been great.

When we have carding attacks on our payment gateway it is always a struggle to get all the players to work together and determine how to get us back up and running. ReCAPTCHA at the highest level is not supported, for example.

From experience, the product has not been stable in the last couple years and all signs have been pointing towards a sunsetting of this product for years.

Ease of donation forms online--secure donation pages are very important to our constituents.

Broadcast emails to our constituents

Better capabilities of creating forms within our website's design

Donation forms can be set up for each specific campaign and linked to specific funds and appeals in Raiser's Edge

Event registrations/ticket sales are also lined directly to the event records in Raiser's Edge

NC pulls data needed for sending out e-blasts directly from Raiser's Edge which makes it possible not to have to recreate email lists all the time because you can send it using Raiser's Edge queries. We also like the tracking feature where we know how many emails were opened and resulted in donations

The E-Card functionality is not perfect. We had difficulty sending out e-cards with multiple recipients as all the selected recipients ended up getting emails with the first name of the first recipient used for all of them in the addressee sections. Blackbaud has been unable to fix it for us so we are forced to continue using the limited Ecards function

It is not mobile friendly

It needs to have multiple unsubscribe levels - right now it only gives an option to unsubscribe but we would like to add different levels of subscription

The emails look different in preview vs the final version

Ease of use

Large community

Certificates available

Online forms could integrate better with CMS (other than iframe)

Better API to sync with other CRMs

Lower price

Mass communications to constituents via integration with Raiser's Edge.

Analytics to track online transactions, open rates, opt-outs, bouncebacks.

Relatively easy to use interface.

Server is sluggish at times.

Issues with analytcs not always loading properly.

HTML coding changing communications after sending.

NetCommunity integrates with Raiser's Edge well.

It is fairly simple to construct an email.

NetCommunity has very simple analytics. It would be great to be able to see more in depth information on how constituents are reacting to the email they receive.

Though it is simple to construct an email, making a complex design can be challenging due to the limitations of the design tool.

Although A/B testing is available within NetCommunity, it is not easy to set up.

Email marketing efforts are more targeted and now have a higher response rate. This equates to increased fundraising dollars.

A/B split testing has allowed us to further tailor content that is preferred by our audience. This targeting allows us to be more successful in gaining conversions, event registrations, etc.

For mass volumes of data, the Raiser's Edge plug-in can become tedious to manage.

NetCommunity allows you to update your donation form and mobile donation page.

You are able to create emails and newsletters.

It allows you to find solutions to campaign and marketing needs.

Not very user-friendly. It took me some time to figure out how to update our donation form and to make our mobile donation form match our desktop version.

The templates could be a lot more user-friendly for the end user. I feel there are way too many tabs for the donors to go through to make a donation which may steer them away from donating.

Some donors have had error messages when making donations however this could be the case with every website as issues do arise sometimes.

Handles all donations and event registrations well.

I appreciate the ability NetCommunity has to link with The Raiser's Edge. Makes data entry very easy and efficient in handling donations and event registrations.

My first experience with NetCommunity was approximately 5 years ago. I have not received formal training and had to learn things on my own (with help from support and documentation). It was easy to learn and I gladly use it still to this day.

I believe added flexibility and customization would be beneficial. Perhaps, the ability is there, but I have not yet tapped into it's potential. For example, it would be nice to add more than just a logo on the registration page.

Not sure of what else there is. It has served it's purpose for me quite well.

BBNC transfers the data from the website (donations and ticket sales) directly into Raiser's Edge seamlessly.

The building of the site is very user-friendly and easy to use.

BBNC could improve on the look and feel of the event module pages - very plain.

BBNC could improve on the functionality of the event module pages and donation pages.

Easy management of constituent lists that were used in the past. Search function is easy to use and understand.

Templates are great and easy to use, can easily create an eblast in minutes.

Very strong online community and live chat support.

Eblast template does not always look the same as final copy of eblast.

NetCommunity could house all constituents within itself instead of having to use data porting.

NetCommunity should allow the option of importing organizations like it does with constituents.

NetCommunity is simple enough that a user can customise a web page, donation and response forms, newsletters and templates for other users without having a background in web development. It's great for teams that don't have dedicated IT/web staff.

NetCommunity SPARK allows users to manage their opt-ins and outs for all email, or specific types of communication which the institution categorises themselves. That information travels through the integration plug-in and gets into Raiser's Edge seamlessly.

When paired with the Events Module in Raiser's Edge, NetCommunity is a great day of event tool to check in registrants or register walk-ups.

Profile changes, event registration, and login creation is not seamlessly handled by the plug-in, and it's not automated at all. Someone has to review the data and basically decide how it will migrate to Raiser's Edge for every change. It really misleads other departments to think our work is automated.

The creation of logins is very problematic. If someone forgets they had a login under a different email, you cannot overwrite their Raiser's Edge record with the new login until you go into NetCommunity and delete their old user. In reality, the system should be designed to tell people that their record has an email associated with it already, allow them to make the change. If you don't delete the old user on the NetCommunity, the change gets rejected on Raiser's Edge in the background, so on Raiser's Edge you think that's the login the user wants but the user is sent an email telling them that their info has been updated. It's very dysfunctional.

You cannot delete queries from the tables in NetCommunity unless you delete the record of the emails sent using that query. Then you can't see the full name of the queries to select from, and then you have old queries that maybe don't even exist in Rasier's Edge now listed as usable in NetCommunity.

Ease of use to setup the website.

Easy to change information.

Easy to upload and display pictures.

Customer support is great.

Changing templates is a little difficult.

Importing events into Raiser's Edge from NetCommunity can use some help. Golfers show up as guests on Raiser's Edge.

I like the integration with Raiser's Edge. Having the gifts automatically be processed this way is super safe, and eases a bit of the burden on our gift processing.

Tracking email statistics once email has been sent.

Event registrations with the ability to choose multiple options.

Integration interface with Raiser's Edge has some challenges occasionally with tribute records.

Working behind the scenes requires a whole new vocabulary and I found it un-intuitive.

Interaction with Mobile Pay - could be more automated.

Blackbaud NetCommunity generally allows for html configuration of emails.

Blackbaud NetCommunity provides a simple way for volunteers to access and register for opportunities.

Blackbaud NetCommunity allows for event registrations where attendees may select multiple options.

Blackbaud NetCommunity email communications, event registrations and volunteer pages are not mobile-optimized.

Blackbaud NetCommunity does not offer mobile-friendly donation pages.

Blackbaud NetCommunity email templates are not easy to configure.

Blackbaud NetCommunity can only handle email lists of less than 20,000 requiring us to recreate the email 10 times to send to our house list.

Integrates with Raiser's Edge

Not user friendly.

Blackbaud support was unable to diagnose problems with Spark (more specifically, the set-up) that were causing data integrity issues within Raiser's Edge.

NetCommunity isn't nearly customizable enough.

Online fundraising is easy

Building pages is simple

Can have multiple pages for multiple events

Easier import

Integrate with Raiser's Edge. This is important for us because our staff resources are limited - like any nonprofit - and the smooth integration with oru FundRaising software is critical to our mission.

Event Registrations work well, you can register for as many events as you like

The pages are easy for most of the staff to manage, after training, each department helps the web master by making small changes as needed by their respective department.

Some of the membership information and functionality is limited; we would love to have memberships for an organization, but currently there is not an organization sign on.

Some of the acknowledgment pages are limited in resource information

An event dashboard is unavailable at this time - meaning an organization can not sign in and see who is coming as their guest to our gala

It is very good at integrating with other BlackBaud products.

It is also great at providing a simple to understand interface for editing the pages it serves.

It is fairly straight forward to setup new users and roles for memberships to an email list.

The upgrade process has never been easy for us. This typically takes more than 3 days to work with support to figure out.

With the integrations we use it can be difficult to diagnose problems with the system.

I do not like that it can be very slow at times even with low bandwidth usage.

The database can grow quickly and become larger than expected.

Integrates with Raiser's Edge. This is how we have set up our alumni directories and profile updates.

Integrates with Education Edge. This is how we have set up our parent and student information update forms.

Integrates with FAWeb/NetClassroom. This ensures accessibility of all portals with a single login, and it all integrates well with RE/EE.

It is difficult to customize. The default that we set up is not particularly mobile friendly, and it seems to be quite difficult to make even minor improvements without a consultant.

Along the same lines, there are pre-designed modules, for example, for events. However, all of these are set up to handle registration fees. It can only be simplified so much, so it results in an overly complicated form for free events.

Online donations are easily handled in NetCommunity

Event registrations work well easily to pull into a batch in Rasier's Edge

The basic templates can't be changed and you need to pay Blackbaud to redesign them.

The Alumni Directory isn't very useful.

The event registration form is cumbersome for donors to use.

NetCommunity had a good API which interfaced with a piece of custom software our organization had built to manage our internal operations. This was highly convenient and we have not found another product that interfaces this well.

The product is solid, it may not be particularly user friendly but it does what it is supposed to do.

The support team at Blackbaud was reasonably supportive whenever we called in with issues we were having with the product.

We found NetCommunity to be unwieldy to work with. We needed to keep a full-time web developer on staff in order to maintain and update our ministry website. With our new product we are able to function without a full-time developer.

We found the reporting functions to be counter-intuitive, difficult to work with compared to other products

Some simple tasks, like keeping our email database up to date and cleansed of hard bounces and spam reports, were very manual and required much more time to implement than with other products.

Data integration with The Raiser's Edge - data which is collected in Blackbaud NetCommunity directly integrates with The Raiser's Edge interface and can be seamlessly downloaded into the CRM.

Donation/Event/Membership registration - the product comes with out-of-the-box forms that can be used for these basic functions. They are flexible, but structured enough to integrate the data back to the CRM.

Email marketing - constituents can be emailed directly from the Blackbaud NetCommunity platform by querying the data available in the CRM. Targeted email communications can be setup as well as ongoing subscriptions/newsetters.

Content management - general tools to manage content are available. Business users can add/modify/delete this content without tremendous technical expertise. The content can also be shared across multiple websites - or A/B split tested to determine preference.

Friendly URLs - the product allows for friendly URLs that are also more searchable on the major search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).

For mass volumes of data, the Raiser's Edge plug-in can become tedious to manage.