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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

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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 61)
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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.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our whole organization uses Blackbaud Education Management Solutions. We use it for class management, grades management, and scheduling. It also releases our report cards and transcripts to students and parents, including grade calculations. Students, parents, faculty, and staff are all users. We have a brother school on the same system and sometimes these two systems sync well, but sometimes small differences pose problems.
  • Master rollover saves time
  • Calendar adjusts well for rotating schedules
  • Email communication with built-in groups (such as advisories or classes) is easy
  • The new transcript builder is essentially unusable for us - it won't include transfer classes, which is a tremendous gap
  • I feel that they need to streamline their site. Every function takes multiple pathways to reach and as a result, many functions are hidden from the average user
  • We are K-12 and our middle school teachers can't recommend classes for 8th graders going into 9th grade - this should be a basic function
In my opinion, their customer service is almost useless. I usually wait at least 24 hours for a response after opening a "ticket", and often the answers are incomplete. I recently inquired about allowing our 8th grade teachers to recommend students for grade 9 classes, and I feel the responder clearly did not test any of her suggested solutions before emailing them back to me, because I immediately realized the "solutions" didn't solve the problem. This is a common customer service experience. Then, after a full week of going back and forth, she told me she agreed the solution was impractical and complicated but that I should suggest it on the website.
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 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our whole school, PK-12, uses Blackbaud Education Management solutions. It provided a more robust alternative to the previous education management software. Users have more access and security, and the teachers who are actively using it for their class materials generally prefer it to what was in place previously. It allows for greater options in flexibility and delivery of material.
  • Users can update their contact information within the system
  • All educational processes within one system
  • Responsive design that can be accessed securely from anywhere
  • User driven reports and analysis require a working knowledge of SQL
  • Steep learning curve for those utilizing multiple areas of the software
  • Several functions lack nuance or the ability to customize between divisions
A good, and constantly improving solution for private schools. I don't know that a lot of its functionality would be well suited to public schools, but maybe? The integration with other Blackbaud software is a huge plus for us, as we have several of their other products including their flagship Raiser's Edge. Smaller schools may not need the sophistication of Blackbaud solutions, and it is not an inexpensive option.
February 02, 2022

A Solid Product Overall

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is using the Blackbaud K-12 LMS and CMS. We are not using the Fundraising/Advancement products or the Admission products.
  • Creating and generating built-in and custom reports
  • Managing curriculum and course information
  • The Platform Managers have many options for customization
  • E-Newsletter software is very out of date with very limited functionality
  • The website CMS provides limited access to styles
A great feature is the built-in Intranet options. It's easy to use and customize. All of our constituents find it helpful.
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 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 jobs. Currently platform manager and user of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions, Enrollment Management, and School Website. Multiple problems have been discovered throughout this school year and it seems that the people who coded and work on the production of this product perhaps don't actually use it. There are some very simple problems I have come across with lists and the learning profile that, in my opinion, would not exist if the creators actually had to use them./
  • For the most part, user friendly
  • Content is accessible through all platforms; desktop, mobile
  • Training/webinars/product information easily accessible
  • Lists -unable to just create a simple list of say 100 students of varying grade levels. Need to export, then whittle the list down. Super time-consuming. Not possible to run a list and then click the students needed from there.
  • Reports - [I feel there is] not enough of a selection of "canned reports" and no ability to create your own reports
  • Advanced lists - [in my experience] THE WORST - again creating more work - I spent over 3 hours trying to make an advanced list of all NHS eligible students, that included email addresses for the students AND the parents. Way too difficult and needs to be simplified
  • Learning Profile: [I feel] Fields for the person creating a learning profile for a student are too small. It would seem like the developers creating this have literally no idea how complex some accommodations are. Many accommodations come directly from a physician.
  • Checklists: Should be in Academics not just Enrollment Management
  • Ideas: [I feel it's a] good concept, poor execution. Many of the people who are actively using BB do not have the time needed to submit an idea, know it even exists or have time to search and vote.
  • Some aspects of Enrollment management should follow a student into Education Management. For example, [I feel]The Candidate Summary should be viewable once the student is enrolled. Converting a process from all paper to electronic-only works if the information is accessible to all pertinent staff
  • [I feel] There are many more - do better!!!
Well suited: Grading in real-time, locating students in real-time, communication with staff/advisees
Brian Walker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is being used for all aspects of our school, from Prekindergarten 3 to Grade 12 and in all departments across the organization from teachers to administrators to business office to development office and athletics. Blackbaud Education Management Solutions helps us more effectively communicate with our constituents, manage the educational records aspects of the school, and helps educators with organizing their classes.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions provides a centralized place for students and parents to find all the information they need for their day-to-day lives from assignments to schedules to athletics and more.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions allows for prospective families to progress logically through an admissions process and gives admissions managers the ability to track all aspects of the process.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions allows constituents to quickly update their own contact information, putting them into control of how they are communicated with.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions has a very antiquated method for sending out email communications/newsletters (called Pushpages). Many other systems provide a more robust system.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions has been working towards an all-in-one scheduling system, but the current system does not work for all school setups, especially those with complex structures.
  • Blackbaud Education Management Solutions forward facing/public website solution works well but does not have the "flashiest" of feature sets that other solutions provide.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions would be best for medium to large schools, mostly located in one centralized location. If you were going from a largely paper-based records/admissions management system, you would see great gains in efficiency with a product like this. Small schools would not see as much benefit to the services offered compared to the price point of the software.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
By the entire organization. It's the data management system of our school, the backbone of our data systems.
  • Easy to use, simple and clear interface.
  • Logic and data flow designed to suit needs of educational institutes.
  • User-friendly interface and functions for administrators and developers.
  • Some features in the system are outdated and difficult to navigate.
  • Poor integration with certain reporting system required by the ministry.
  • The learning management part is not considered to the ideal one by our school.
Good for independent schools in the US, probably not so good in Canada due to lacking reporting support.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently migrating from Education Edge to the new Blackbaud Education Management Solutions. We will use it across the entire organization. Currently we do still use Canvas but may eventually use the LMS. We are using it across the Lower, Middle and Upper School. We also use the Enrollment Management System for the Admissions Department.
  • Ease of use is great. Easy to view the information by parent and student and easy to schedule. Very intuitive to use.
  • Great user interface. The parents are enjoying being able to get the information in an easy format. They can easily log on and see what class their student is in and their daily attendance.
  • As Registrar, I enjoy how easy it is to update a room change or enter in new comments or notes on a student's records.
  • Reporting - Hard to print out a schedule matrix like we did in Education Edge. The new K-12 system needs a report similar to the Master Schedule in Education Edge. They have one named that, but it is nothing like the old option. The ability to print a room matrix would be great.
  • Reporting - printing out actual student schedules. Improve the ability to print an A/B schedule for students.
  • Ability to query data like in Education Edge. This is absolutely a must. The ability to get data out of the system is horrible compared to the previous Education Edge product we used from Blackbaud.
  • The biggest problem we have run into is that the new system does not support a student changing sections from 1st term to 2nd term. We use final grades, so the terms must be combined into a single Final Course Grade. This is something that Education Edge easily supported. It should have been discovered and brought up before we converted to K-12. Blackbaud should have a list of functionality that will go away when you migrate to the new system. These are both Blackbaud owned systems and they should be more responsible.
Needs improvement in reporting and the ability to query. The reporting leaves a lot to be desired. If it could be half as good as Education Edge that would be a huge improvement. I need the ability to print a report that has the master schedule and fits on one page. We need this by room number and by teacher - similar to what was offered in Education Edge. The current version crosses pages and does not keep the header rows of the matrix - making it impossible to read.
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 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire school is using Blackbaud Education Management, including administrators, teachers, parents, and students. It is keeping most of our data in one place, although we do still have a few different databases for various things.
  • Data Management - Family data is organized easily and it is very user-friendly.
  • Attendance - This is easy to manage for all involved.
  • Enrollment - online contracts are convenient for school and families.
  • The "new" report card builder is archaic - not easy to format and not very intelligent.
  • Financial aid awards can be difficult to manage unless you use Smart Tuition.
  • Scheduling of school tours is frustratingly difficult.
If you don't have any sort of system in place already, this might be a good option. If you are coming from another system, you may be frustrated that a lot of what you are used to doing is now more difficult.
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.
April 27, 2021

Blackbaud K-12

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use all of the ON products in our school. It is used on the admission/enrollment side, the academic side, and for communications. It meets one of our goals of having a single sign-on system, and we also use several ecosystem partners (Pic A Time, Magnus Health, etc.) for the same reason.
  • Single sign-on system for users (parents, students, faculty/staff)
  • One database to manage
  • Streamlined communications (Messages, Notifications, Pushpage)
  • "Holding tank" for posterity/evergreen documents
  • CMS - lots of weak areas that are just not up to par with competitors for website features
  • onBoard - lots of features that are lacking, especially in terms of lead conversion/tracking, drip campaigns through enrollment funnel, and reporting
  • Too often get support answers like "that's just the way it is" or "we know that doesn't work well, and it's on our HOT list" (meaning MAYBE it will get addressed in a couple of years
Probably better suited for smaller schools with less complexity and need for additional customization. Too often we are told that something can't be changed/enhanced because it would affect all users, but then we are left with an inadequate solution for our situation, or, worse, no solution at all to meet that specific need.
Brendan Haney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we use Blackbaud on a daily basis for attendance, class pages, development, and website management. We are very excited to start using the schedule feature for students. This will allow us to track students and classes at any given time during the school day. This is a great feature, but not very easy to get set up.
  • Development database management through RE.
  • User end experience.
  • Online access to student documents.
  • The admin side of the education products section can be cumbersome to navigate.
  • Everything is built in a very visible block-like structure.
  • Hard to get customize information in and out of BB, most of the time it requires paying for consulting hours.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a very specific type of solution and if your school is very dynamic or has custom needs, the software can be somewhat restrictive. When we went to BB On Products we ran into several situations of a "round hole and square peg" so to speak.
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.
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 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are an academy, educating students from 1 year old through seniors in high school. We use [Blackbaud Education Management Solutions] to manage student data, maintain academic records, process communication with parents, and connect to our fundraising solutions. Teachers use the gradebook portion on a day to day basis for daily grading, and those grades are processed to be printed on custom report cards for our academy.
  • Versatility in product options -many components are customizable to meet the needs of the individual school.
  • Customer support - options between email, chat, and phone provide access to a knowledgeable and friendly associate when needed (during business hours).
  • All areas of school life seem to be covered - space to work with athletics, clubs/activities, academics, counseling, business office, advancement, etc.
  • It takes a long time to learn to navigate the interface. It's not always very intuitive
  • While the knowledgebase and support are generally helpful, when you are looking for a quick answer to something it's not always easy to access quickly. Knowledgebase takes a lot of time to navigate to find just what you want.
  • Report building is a skill that takes time to learn and there aren't a lot of training options to learn it. I've had to learn by trial and error.
I love the program. After diving head first into it for 2 years I've become really accustomed to speaking the lingo and navigating the various areas. It is a major expense though for a school our size. In that vain it's not well suited to smaller schools on a smaller budget. And it takes a team of dedicated individuals really diving in to learn it all. If school admins think it will be an easy transition and they don't need to take the training seriously they are mistaken.
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 09, 2020

Blackbaud works for us

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management for scheduling, attendance, reports, report cards, transcripts.
  • Keeps track of attendance.
  • Scheduling.
  • Keeping web pages for teachers to post assignments.
  • I have not had any problems - it is a big improvement from other systems I have used.
It is very good for what we need in the education field at our school.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management - Raiser's Edge is used by the Development Office. It addresses our fundraising record management systems.
  • Wealth rating information which guides us with constituent management moves.
  • Links and tracks relationships within the database.
  • Reports - I'm able to report on anything imaginable with the options available.
  • Online access to data from anywhere - incredibly important given the current climate.
  • Report results depend upon how information is queried - that could be made better so that new users are confident they are returning the data they are looking for.
  • NXT reports should look identical to the traditional database for ease of use.
  • Automatic email and address updates regularly, rather than having to run the work manually.
Raiser's Edge is a fantastic fundraising solution. I have heard the business office solution is much less robust and actually not the best choice compared to other solutions on the market. This information is from our business office as they researched solutions best suited for their needs.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the admissions piece of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions. I am the primary user, and use it for collecting applications and required documents, scheduling school tours (Open Houses), and student interviews. I track each applicant's progress through the system, with the final step being issuing a contract where families confirm their enrollment and set up their Smart Tuition account.
  • Applications are easy to submit, and save / remember information for families to come back.
  • Documents can be directly uploaded, and then are saved if we ever need to go back and refer to it.
  • Issuing contracts to new applicants electronically is great.
  • Creating reports is not as user friendly as it could / should be.
  • Some parts of the system still have a "back end" user look and feel as opposed to a more front end user look and ease of use.
  • There is no way for users (applicants) to reach customer support for issues that they are having, so I have to try to play middle man to rectify any issues - that can be frustrating.
I have been very happy with Blackbaud Education Management for our admissions solution. The online application and all electronic submission of documents, decisions and contracts, etc is seamless, effective and efficient. Exporting the data that is captured through the application can be difficult to export and manipulate for other purposes. I often struggle with finding ways to easily see details of the applicants, their progress or status in report format.
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