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Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Overview

What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools.Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment,…

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Recent Reviews

I'm a fan!

8 out of 10
September 13, 2022
I use EMS daily in Admission for intake of inquiries and applications to our school, running lists and data, and management of the current …
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Work needs to be done

5 out of 10
June 25, 2021
Incentivized
It is Being used across the whole organization. Switched SIS almost 1 year ago. I had used Education Edge for 3 years prior to changing …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Product Details

What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools.

Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment, and tuition payment.

Blackbaud Learning Management System™: Track students' academic performance and progression with 24/7 cloud access to submissions, assignments, discussions, online communities and tools.

Blackbaud Student Information System™: A source of data and information, ranging from schedules and grades to course requests and attendance history.

Blackbaud School Website System™: It allows users to leverage all the information sources within a school community for website content purposes. It allows schools to update content, change design, add pages, and create new sites with ease.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Screenshots

Screenshot of Topics pages help organize units of learning throughout the year in the Learning Management SystemScreenshot of Blackbaud's education management solutions come with strong reporting tools to get the information you need quicklyScreenshot of Schedule view makes it easy for teachers to manage their daysScreenshot of Blackbaud Enrollment Management System Admissions Checklists help applicants track their progress in the admissions processScreenshot of Blackbaud's education management solutions come with strong reporting tools to get the information you need quicklyScreenshot of Keep track of all the key information about your students in one place

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Videos

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Competitors

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, Canada

Frequently Asked Questions

Veracross, Senior Systems, from Community Brands, and FACTS Student Information System are common alternatives for Blackbaud Education Management Solutions.

Reviewers rate Blackbaud Learning Management System highest, with a score of 7.3.

The most common users of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(228)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 35)
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April 28, 2022

Admissions Feedback

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management during the Admissions process from prospective family engagement, capturing recommendation forms, scheduling interviews/assessments, committee review, and contract posting. We also use different parts of Blackbaud's education management with Academics, Faculty, Extracurricular, Raisers Edge, etc. The teachers are able to use Academics to track assignments, tests and attendance. RE is used for our donor database and to track all donations.
  • Ease in completing applications.
  • Ease in completing enrollment.
  • As a parent and employee, I love how all of the platforms are integrated with each other.
  • I wish that it was easier way to generate a contract.
  • I wish that there was a way to post a candidate to Committee Review from the candidate's profile, instead of having to go to Committee Review.
  • I wish there was a way to customize our dashboard in EMS.
I love how all information is accessible on the cloud. It is very convenient for us to track the applicants recommendation forms, report cards and school visits (tour and shadow day/s). Committee Review is one of the best features that Blackbaud introduced, allowing all of our applicants to be viewed by our Admissions Committees while still keeping all financial information blocked by the committee.
JT Amirault | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used campus-wide as our primary solution for managing student information, learning management, admission/enrollment, public website, and athletics/extra-curricular, advancement, conduct, and accounting. Teachers post and students access class materials, assignments, assessments, grades, and schedules; teachers record class attendance, communicate with students and parents, view student progress and permissions/clearances for extracurricular activities; parents view student info, progress/report cards, and submit online forms. Grades and attendance data fuel program to determine and support at-risk students and eligibility for extra-curricular activities. Data also drives review of gender-based performance differences and classroom space utilization. Off-campus tutors access course information to keep in sync with on-campus classes. Resources are posted such as information sheets, how-to videos, school and area resource links, calendars, etc. Athletic teams, games and practice schedules, and results are managed. A school store sells logo'd products. Event registration and online giving is utilized. Parents, students, and employees access the authenticated area of the site while all the public-at-large access the front-face website. Tight integration with G-Suite augments Blackbaud and enhances collaboration.
  • Classroom management of rosters, assignments/assessment, and grading at a class grade book level and grades for report cards. The grading function is flexible in terms of how a teacher might manage their class grade book and support consistency for rolling up grades for report cards.
  • "Pushpage" communications to constituents is a powerful tool for targeted messages and for tracking results of messages read, bounced, opt-out, and clicked through.
  • In attendance management, there is a nice feature to alert parents and staff when a student reaches a threshold for number of times tardy. It is difficult to do the same for absences ... we have a policy that when a student reaches a threshold of number of classes absent, their grade starts getting reduced for each additional absence. This is hard to track at a class level ... 5 absences could be 1 day out missing 5 different classes or it could be across multiple days and be 5 misses of the same class.
  • Online forms have good basic functions, however, additional formatting control and ability to include/merge more data from student records would greatly add value.
  • easier integration with other SIS / LMS ... like CANVAS and google classroom
Tough question ... direct experience at two schools demonstrate this is well suited to private prep schools. It is not clear to me in which schools it would be less appropriate. Perhaps, a school without a 1-1 tech program would find less value as this is all about the online experience.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used school-wide as our SIS and SLS. We also use the Enrollment portal.
  • Attendance portal - ease of taking attendance by teachers and editing/inputting by the attendance office
  • Courses set up is intuitive thanks to a great tab set up
  • Directories - availability to use filters
  • Sky lists - love these!
  • Forms - lack of conditional questions
  • Gradebook -lack of links to assignments
  • Not being able to customize displays, for example, Grading tab - we just finished 1st semester and teachers could only see the current quarter but not the 1st one which is still part of the first semester. Lack of customization in assessments.
  • Scheduling- even though re-running generating schedules, we're still getting a high number of unscheduled students. Lack of being able to limit the number of scheduled classes in a row for teachers.
The flow from Admission to Academics is pretty painless and set up nicely. What I do not like is that the parents who are existing parents and incoming parents can overwrite data in their accounts via admission.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across departments- admissions, registration, advising, student portal, financial aid, and billing. It houses all of those functions in one system behind one log-in. It serves students from interest to graduation and is also used by the wider community as an intranet where information is posted to be shared and disseminated.
  • Electronic application process, including recommendation letters
  • Easy grade entry for Faculty
  • Online course registration
  • Online student directory
  • Reporting
  • Cross-module information sharing
  • Document reader for admissions submissions
For simple, small institutions, the solution will serve basic needs and be a workable SIS for a reasonably low cost. It is not yet ready to support larger institutions and in many ways still looks like a K-12 system instead of a higher education system. The upcoming integration with Financial Edge and the ability to connect with Raiser's Edge will be attractive for some users using those products.
Parth Patel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Many of our platforms like WordPress, Raiser's Edge, Team Raiser, Luminate Online, NXT are being used by us. It's very expensive, but the price is worth it. We love our new website and creating online forms is fast. Videos can also be played on our website. We can monitor donors, provide reports and generate inquiries quickly. It manages consumer information and processes of different types. Also, It is nice to have one place for the details because we all know it is up-to-date and compatible with what those across campus are doing. We are the University where our voters may be in many categories and thus part of several different organizations.
  • Integration with many other third party apps or software
  • Very impressive reporting
  • Donation collection made easy with Blackbaud
  • Multi user access available
  • Donor gifts tracking system
  • Unable to customize RENXT reporting
  • Quirky interface
  • Forms customization
Blackbaud Education Management Solution is the best tool or platform for those who are consistently work related to Manage student data, donor data, etc. It is a very good and effective CRM solution for managing data and records. It well suited if you want to make the system remind donors that when donors may have to lapse and need to revisit.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the entire "On" suite. It is being used across our entire school. We are able to have our teachers use it for their teacher web pages, parents use it for the directory and to see student information, we use it for events and for prospective parents. We send out pushpages or e-communications to all our constituencies. We also integrate other databases for our nurses database through Schooldoc and Titan HST.
  • The "front end" marketing side of the site is great with its mobile-friendly platform. The site looks very professional, yet student-centered.
  • Behind the password, class pages are informative and students can have access to their homework and schedules.
  • The site is there for parents to login and access information that they need from the school at their fingertips.
  • Parents have access to a school online directory and can assess parent-related links, resources, photos, and class inforation
  • The entire On record module needs immense improvement. It's extremely clunky and hasn't been updated in ages. It's an afterthought.
  • The event registration piece is not mobile friendly. We have had tons of issues with people having problems signing up for events on their phones.
  • The reporting and lists functions can be clunky and difficult to execute.
I really feel that if I took my business somewhere else I would have other issues that I would need to address. Ever since Whipplehill was acquired by Blackbaud, it has been less than a pleasing experience. Long wait times for support - not enough support. My account rep takes days to return my emails. It's really not a great way to run a business. They are trying to be cutting edge but they are behind with product development. I feel that is something Finalsite has done a lot better than Blackbaud.
April 30, 2021

One Stop Shopping!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management is used across our entire school. Fantastic support and knowledge base.
In the Business Office - FENXT
Enrollment Management: Admissions - All aspects of Onboarding Enrollment Management, Records, Reporting
Academics: Registrar & Faculty - Academics, Class Scheduling, Grading, Attendance, Reporting, Parent Portal - Communication with parents, School Forms.
School Website: Communication, Events etc.
Core: All aspects of Core


  • Complete package from enrollment through to Smart Tuition billing.
  • Excellent support via chat. Very informative and responsive at all times.
  • Great reporting abilities.
  • Would love to be able to archive events.
  • Additional Fields in Applications (Enrollment Management).
Very well suited for all aspects for TK - 12 Schools.
April 27, 2021

On Products review

Jennifer Cleary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the "on" products as a (somewhat) all-in-one web and database solution for the school. Currently we're using the full functionality of onMessage for our front end site, onRecord as the SIS, onBoard for Admissions, but are not using the full functionality of onCampus. We are still using Haiku as our LMS, and though we intend to explore fully using onCampus—i doubt we'll make the switch as it's user interface for teachers (i.e. posting assignments, classroom, etc) is not as streamlined. Also unable to use the Raiser's Edge sync tool (Connect RE) to streamline workflow as planned prior to purchase.
  • High level of customization (from the user's end) for onMessage pages
  • Nice user interface for several parts of the "back-end"/ portals
  • The chat help function is convenient
  • School forms (for online permission slips) - really awesome, and were a huge hit with parents. Except there is no way to organize prior years' forms, so I think they will be less than thrilled this year.
  • "Thinking through" features seems to be a problem, so most of them feel somewhat "incomplete." For example: School Forms are great, but without the ability to organize the dozens of prior years' permission forms for parents (i.e., re-order, or hide, or even change button color) the feature is going to go from great to terrible pretty quickly for parents. Same with SmartTuition integration, or the ConnectRE tool (which is perfect for maybe 40% of scenarios and requires manual exceptions for the rest,) Adding News is annoying (no WYSIWYG option for Header styles; can't enlarge the dialog box). Photo galleries are a problem when it comes to the responsive design. (No "lightbox" viewer, so any portrait images not only stretch to fill left to right, but also push content way down the page.) Navigation on the mobile display is ok, but requires an extra tap to get to a certain page. (i.e. Tap Admissions, then have to tap Admissions again, and then you see L2) I could go on about things that look/work great at first glance but still end up causing a headache. Still, by and large, the benefits are mostly worth the annoyances, though everything takes longer on my end to find workable solutions—including changing our own work practices to fit the website/database's demands.
  • The fact that the online event registration function isn't responsive is just plain ridiculous.
  • I'd love to see more ability to integrate, or even SSO, with other 3rd party solutions.
Workable when you have staff that can spend dedicated time with the products; troubleshooting, updating, managing, helping users, and finding creative work arounds.

Difficult to implement fully for the (natural) competing priorities of a school—i.e., should we use the onCampus LMS since there are benefit to our parents in seeing schedules/homework/etc, but more complicated to use for our faculty/students?
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The platform is being used to manage all aspects of the school. Our goal is to have all staff use it - from teachers to all administrative staff. It is keeping all the pertinent data in one place for the school and is being used to help digitize past records for alumni whose info we would be using fundraising.
  • It helps the staff easily keep track of records.
  • Enrollment is up to date.
  • Communication with constituents is more frequent.
  • I am unable to find easy tutorials to provide to parents and teachers.
  • Finding workarounds to implement.
  • Sometimes the customer support does not know the answer to a question.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is great for younger parents since they are usually on their phones and check their emails throughout the workday. The older crowd has a hard time integrating and still require information to be printed out and delivered or to receive phone calls. Some school staff have a harder time catching up with the program.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire organization, from our senior administration, to our faculty and staff, to our parents, and even to our middle school students use Blackbaud and access On Solutions. There is a core team of staff - myself and one to two other individuals - who use the On suite on the back end and help manage our internal resources. The program allows our community to stay connected, to gain access to incredibly important resources and information, and helps our admission team manage students.
  • All-in-one service
  • Linking to external programs to help manage the different databases an organization uses
  • Drag and drop user experience
  • Limited capabilities on back end design/templates
  • Downtime in OnMessage/Pushpages
  • Downed pages/URLs not working
I think that Blackbaud On Solutions work really well for smaller elementary school organizations, like mine. Something bigger would probably outgrow what BB has to offer and wouldn't enjoy the experience as much. BB helps our admission team take families from inquiry to admitted, and then helps our development office manage event registrations, registrar functions/class enrollment, and is the way through which I manage all communications to our community. I also use it to reach out to alumni and new families (and appreciate the way you can break out distribution groups in OnMessage).
April 27, 2021

Integration!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire school uses the Blackbaud K-12 “ON” Solutions. It is great having a fully integrated system and integrated with Raisers Edge. We also use the SMART Tuition system. Blackbaud has made some great improvements over the years. Our Entire school from Admissions to Development to Business Office uses the Blackbaud systems. Our new website throught the ON Products has been a great improvement and the log in access has been much more organized then our old site. We have simplified a lot using the new system.
  • Integration with our Website
  • Email broadcast fully integrated so no more uploading data to a third party system
  • Resource boards are very handy in organizing important information
  • Enrollment Contracts are integrated with Blackbaud Tuition Management which has made the parent process and Admissions /Business Office much easier
  • Clicking thru from record to record no next or back button
  • Advanced lists are not so user friendly to an average user
Blackbaud Education Management is a great tool for a K-12 school. Everything is integrated from students biographical information to family information onto Academics, Website and much more. We have truly become a paperless school and no longer take in school payments with all the forms that can be used with online payments.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for both our Preschool and Elementary/Middle School campus. It is used for admissions, enrollment, scheduling of classes, assignments, grade books, report cards our website and events such as our summer programs. We also use it to push our our weekly newsletter to parents We also track attendance and we now use it to send out required forms. It has streamlined our processes for students moving from preschool to elementary, collecting forms and giving parents visibility into students assignments. Parents can communicate with teachers through the tools available. Teachers love the easy of processing grades for report cards.
  • Report cards are quicker to complete with the calculate functionality.
  • Recording grades for assignments and comments is better, no lost papers.
  • Collecting back to school forms is more efficient.
  • Website
  • Events and registrations
  • Pushpage
  • The ability to assign checklist to preschool transfers.
  • It is not always easy to find the report you need due to naming of reports.
  • Contracts for Preschool students because they change constantly
Once you get familiar with the tools it is great and is a time saver.
The training classes are long and not always convenient to take 3 hours out of your schedule to do.
Glen Renzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions in our digital marketing school. I am a programming teacher and this tool has allowed me to automate my day-to-day activities allowing me to be better organized and have all the student data I need in the cloud. Blackbaud is a tool that integrates almost all aspects of administrative management and data storage that an educational institution needs. Our work with the application starts from the moment a student enters until the end of his or her studies. We give the application a good rating even though it requires a lot of training for its use since it is complicated in some aspects.
  • The application has provided us with a complete management of the administrative processes in our institution, from providing us with an enrollment form to the billing process through Smart Tuition.
  • We can send pre-established contracts to our educators online.
  • It also allows us to open documents containing student information in case we need to consult or edit any data.
  • We have problems with the customer service that integrates the application, users who need support to solve a problem we have to manage them in person or through other channels.
  • Also, when creating and configuring an admission or billing form for the first time, we consider that it requires an advanced and prolonged level of knowledge and time.
We consider that the program is an indispensable tool to automate and digitalize all the administrative processes that an institution needs. With this application we have the opportunity to put aside the use of paper and manage information and store data digitally. Therefore we recommend it 100%.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used for our Admission office, the LMS platform is used across all divisions, Smart Tuition is linked in for our Business Office, and we also use the Blackbaud platforms for our Advancement and Marketing departments.
  • Incredibly easy to use interface for the User (parents, applicants, etc.).
  • Ease of gathering data - Helpful lists, formulas, and reports.
  • Time saver - Especially in the Admission office. Since everything is done digitally from the user through the employee, there is no need to hand-enter data; you just click the button, and everything imports or exports as needed!
  • In EMS, we would love for custom fields to show on the Contact Card and be able to pull into our linked platforms (Raiser's Edge, Finalsite).
  • We would love to be able to delete old contracts, instead of just archiving them. Archiving only helps in certain areas, but full lists of contracts exist in some of the dropdown menus, which can be confusing for the employee if they are not familiar with all of the various contract types, titles, and years.
For any tuition-paying school that uses an Admission process, the Blackbaud EMS platform has been a lifesaver! It is streamlined, user-friendly, and allows up to gather and share data in clean and efficient ways. If your school does not use an Admission process, the LMS platform is still valuable for class scheduling, attendance, course comments, etc. Having a digital platform is easy and convenient for families.

Scenarios, where it would be less appropriate, would perhaps be very small schools. Not that the software wouldn't be helpful or useful, but for schools with limited enrollment and staff, it just may not be necessary or the cost may not be justified.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management is used across our entire school particularly for constituent data, admissions tracking, student portal, and for teachers to track their classes and grades/report cards.
  • Design is aesthetically pleasing to look at.
  • User friendly layout.
  • Cloud based
  • Easy to update constituent profiles.
  • Wish there was a version of Address Finder for Education Management where the addresses can automatically be updated like in Raiser's Edge.
  • It would be nice for the analysis dashboard to include other groups of constituents in addition to "Students."
It is well suited in the areas of admissions, teacher's management of classes and students, and students to be able to keep track of their educational life.

Online forms could use some improvements. We use the Online Express form from Raiser's Edge and it looks much better than what the Education Management forms have to offer. Whether it's for donations, t-shirt sales, registrations, etc., online forms could use a bit of a make-over.
November 10, 2020

A one stop shop!!!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud is currently being used across the board in our school. The admissions department starts the ball rolling & then it gets passed to the administration department, nurse & teachers. Having all departments use the same system makes it easier to tract everything. This year will be the first year of us using the system for grades but looking forward to everything in one spot. Eventually we are going to be teaching the student to use it so their teachers can post the assignments on it instead of Google Classroom. Again it makes it easier for a one-stop shop.
  • It keeps all of the students information in one place. Contact information, medical information, schedule, calendar, forms, resource boards & grades.
  • Saves on paper, you have the parents fill out the forms & important information & it's done.
  • The more you utilize all the sections the more you get out of it.
  • Sometimes trying to find a section is a bit difficult & when you go to the help you have to make sure you word it correctly.
I feel it is well suited for any size school. You are able to have all the students information in one place. Parents have access, students have access, staff have access & during this time you can access everything whether home or office.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our school utilizes Blackbaud's product as a complete database. It serves our entire organization, including faculty, staff, students, and parents. It is also responsible for generating our external content through our website. My department heavily relies on this product as our tool for admission and enrollment management. Blackbaud Education Management provides a full software solution to multiple constituencies, and allows us to simplify our admission process internally and for our prospective families.
  • From the admission side, Blackbaud streamlines the process, allowing for templates that look and feel personalized.
  • The product is easy to use from the back end and for our parents.
  • Data is easily accessible in the form of lists and reports.
  • Our Business Office would like for the software to work more seamlessly with our billing system.
  • We would love the option to create surveys through the software.
  • Creating and setting up templates for the first time is very time-consuming and requires advanced knowledge.
Our Admission department finds the Education Management product to be very well-suited to our line of work. Our Business Office prefers other systems, as there is more capability than currently provided through Blackbaud's solutions.
November 07, 2020

Blackbaud to the rescue!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions across the whole organization for education management, Raiser's Edge, admissions, academics, etc. It is our database management, donor database management, platform for all academics (including database, online posting and submission of work, report cards), and all admissions and enrollment work including admissions profiles, enrollment, and reenrollment contracts.
  • The help chat is amazingly efficient, professional, and helpful.
  • The structure and management of data for candidates for admission is superb and saves our admissions team a huge amount of time, enabling us to focus more on interactions with prospective families.
  • Core links all of our databases so that admissions, academics, and development share information efficiently.
  • In the Enrollment management portion, once a candidate has a profile and then registers for an event, there are too many required questions in event registration forms. In addition, each time a candidate registers for an event, I am asked to assign a checklist, which makes no sense since the checklist has already been assigned. This leads to many errors on the part of the admissions associate, who unknowingly reassigns the wrong checklist. This creates extra work because it generates duplicate candidates.
  • I still struggle with efficient and effective reporting. There is the analysis area, but then there are lists and advanced lists, and after more than three years I still have not come up with a smooth means of creating reports that have consistent information.
  • I wish there were an option in Enrollment Management for creating an event registration form intended for parents of candidates. When we host events aimed at parents, they have to register using the candidate's information, but they often do not understand that and register as themselves. If we don't catch that and go in and manually edit their registration forms, we end up with parents in the system as candidates. It can be a mess when many parents do this.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well suited for any school, particularly if the school has more than 100 students. For a school smaller than that, I am not sure Blackbaud Education Management Solutions would be worth the investment. The switch over to Blackbaud Education Management Solutions was difficult, as is any change from one database management system to another, but the training along the way was excellent and the chat support has been superb. I find myself on the help chat at least once a week, and am routinely satisfied with the quick and effective response.
November 23, 2019

Overall good solution

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions in our finance, admissions, athletics, advancement, and communications departments.
  • We like being able to use this database system for many of the school's needs.
  • Our students and parents find the interface easy to use.
  • The content management side is easy to use and train others.
  • The giving forms, registration forms, and push page options (newsletters) are limited and needs improvement.
  • There is not much offered in terms of in-house analytics for web content.
  • User management settings are very limited and very clunky to limit permission settings for different administrative roles.
If your budget allows having many of the Blackbaud products, it is a good solution overall - a one-stop-shop is always convenient. We use Financial Edge, Education Edge, and Raiser's Edge so to have the Education products have been beneficial overall. As with any product, you must keep in mind some of the limitations that will not be mentioned when they are selling the product to you.
November 18, 2019

So Far, So Good!

Stella Limuel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across the whole organization. Advancement Department and Executives use it to check students information (current, incoming or alumni) and to send out parent communications. Business office uses it for enrollment process and payment, and also extracurricular enrollment and payment. Admission uses it for enrollment management. Teachers use it to post grades and keep progress. Human Resources department uploads all employees to it.
  • Easily keep information up-to-date
  • Easily contact families
  • Easily accessible and user-friendly
  • Integration with Blackbaud's other programs
  • Alumni relations
  • Customization for schools with non-standard grades/levels
It's easy for us to send out contracts, communications, and to have a parent directory now. Our business office is especially pleased since they can request payment through it, although they did say they don't like how they can only have one payment method. We have eliminated most paper enrollment forms thanks to the ability to create a digital form on BB EMS. We're still trying to implement integration between RE and BB EMS.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it across all 3 divisions for enrollment, scheduling, grading, attendance, and communication.
  • Technical support is fantastic. Very well informed about the product and often go the extra mile to help find an immediate solution or guide you.
  • Grading has greatly improved over the years and is becoming easier to create and manage.
  • Scheduling students is uncomplicated and intuitive.
  • Attendance could be improved if it could be specific for a division and not across the board for all. A PreK's reason for absences are very different from a high schooler.
  • List building is anything but intuitive; terms used not clear.
  • Forms need to be updated so a parent doesn't have to reenter information each year if it's already in our database especially on the medical forms.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it across our private, independent school environment. It assists us with admissions, academics, marketing/website, and some advancement. It makes it a seamless process for the user whether they are employees or potential candidates.
  • The solution definitely is user friendly for our families and potential applicants.
  • The enrollment management solution is very user-friendly for the admission office and we are very excited about the new candidate recommendation form.
  • Core's new look is very easy to navigate! Thank you for changing this design.
  • The integration between the contract and smart tuition. There are too many errors that occur.
  • Once a student is withdrawn from the school, their grade history should not be removed entirely from a class history. We should be able to recall this in the future should a parent have questions.
  • Transcripts - We'd like the ability to write on individual students transcripts. For example, if they have a language exemption, etc.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well suited for an educational environment. It is very user-friendly for the parents and students in our community. It could be more user-friendly in the set-up process as it can be very tedious if you do not check the right box, etc. I especially like this product for the progress detail for the parent/student to visually see how one is progressing. In addition, the enrollment management process is very seamless for both internal and external parties (i.e. application, checklist, etc.). Where I feel the program needs to improve is when you withdraw a student. Their gradebook historical data should not be removed from the student/parent view, only the teacher view. Parents tend to dispute the grade and if they can see this detail then we do not have to re-enroll the student, add them to the course, print the historical data and the withdraw them again.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solution throughout our K-12 school. It allows us to integrate our solution across our Tuition Office and Admissions Office. It also allows integration between our Tuition Office and our Business Office. Using all of the Blackbaud products has really streamlined many of our school administrative processes.
  • We love the new Sky Lists. They allow the average user to access data that they previously had to come to our IT department to get.
  • Our HS faculty use the class bulletin boards and topics to keep students informed regarding class assignments and expectations.
  • The integrated contracts allow enrollment data to flow seamlessly between the Enrollment Management system and the Tuition Management system.
  • Registration forms for summer camps could be improved. It would be nice it they worked more like school forms.
It works well for K-12 independent schools.
Joshua Blice | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud's education management to support our 6-12 school. Our teachers/staff, students, and parents use this product. We use this product across the entire school and it helps us maintain data in one place for everyone to access.
  • Parent/student access to grades and report cards because it helps cut down on the number of questions/requests for this data.
  • Directory information is available to families and they can update it any time.
  • Athletic management is a great feature for all of the teams we have on our campus.
  • GPA calculations are not very easy to setup/maintain if you are excluding courses from the calculation.
  • There is not an easy to setup group for our theater shows and I would love to see something implemented like we have for athletics.
  • Customization of a student schedule report. Currently, there is no easy way for a student to see their entire list of courses in a report form without having extra information included.
  • It would be great if the attendance count on the student progress screen could be removed. It causes a lot of confusion for parents/students.
I think the system is great for parents and students accessing information about courses, grades, attendance, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire school uses Blackbaud Education Management. It has helped improve our paperless environment with student records, directories, storing information and uploading files. It is our website and we were able to launch a new and improved website. Our school forms are much better. It is a great communication tool.It has improved our enrollment and admissions process.
  • The Resource area is a great place to upload documents and have forms and lots of information to communicate with parents, students and alumni.
  • We no longer have a paper directory, the online directory is great and very useful and being online it is up to date as soon as information is entered.
  • Enrollment Management is great. The contracts are easy to make and integrate with SMART tuition. Parents can easily find them.
  • School forms are fabulous and parents have mentioned how easy they are now to complete.
  • The new and old report card builder aren't so great for a lower school report card with using skills to evaluate.
  • It would be really great if we can lock parents and students from seeing grades and report cards if tuition isn't up to date but allow them to see homework being assigned.
  • If a parent fills out a form it would be great to then have it submit to the SMART tuition account so everything is paid in one place.
The support with Blackbaud is by far the best. During our transition year the consultants trained us very well and were very helpful and even had ideas for school best practices. Having the support made the transition less stressful. Coming from Education Edge and other Blackbaud products this system is a great improvement with only having to log into one system.
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