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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 80)
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September 13, 2022

I'm a fan!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use EMS daily in Admission for intake of inquiries and applications to our school, running lists and data, and management of the current student population.
  • Runs lists based on information entered into the system.
  • Offer knowledge-based assistance/links.
  • Offer knowledge-based chat opportunities to dive into unique problems.
  • They are always improving on how to create easier workarounds and solutions when it comes to "marrying" systems with another system.
I love all of the things BB has available though I don't think we use some things to the best that we can. We're all still learning and I appreciate the numerous training opportunities to help with that!
September 13, 2022

Blackbaud makes LMS Easy.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud serves as our Learning Management Software. It allows us to have a place to record student grades, assignments, attendance, and learning profiles that is easily accessible across our organization.
  • The customer support is phenomenal.
  • The ease of access for both students and parents makes it extremely easy to use.
  • Constantly incorporating user feedback to enhance the site.
  • The ability to differentiate assignments.
  • The need for a positive reward system feature.
  • Ways to use the conduct to support a PBIS.
It's been great to have grades in a singular location. It's also made finding student information extremely easy. The conduct section could use some work to incorporate more of a positive behavior reward system model.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Education Management is the core of our education technology systems. We use it for our Student Information System (SIS), Learning Management System (LMS), Enrollment Management System (EMS), and information is integrated seamlessly from one part of the system to another. Because it's robust enough, we can require teachers to use it and then can tell parents how it is used in all classes by all teachers. Our community can depend on it and the technology just fades into the background, with learning becoming the focus.
  • Seamless integration between the LMS, EMS and SIS modules
  • Real-time, effective chat support helps me not only with urgent needs but also to work through possibilities for increasing how we use the product.
  • Feature upgrades monthly that respond to voiced needs from users
  • Assessments are somewhat buggy and don't have enough question types
  • Advanced lists could be more user-friendly and need to be updated to be in line with new features (but support is really helpful to work through making these work!)
  • In the enrollment module, some of the features that are still podium-based need an upgrade
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well-suited for schools who are interested in having it as the central piece to their student suite. I've heard that it does integrate with some other Learning Management systems but we've found that having it all in one place has made communication, dependability, and transparency greater. We appreciate that the views are the same for parents, students and teachers so when teachers make up a bulletin board, they know that what the parent is seeing is the same as them.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions across our school, for all students and teachers.
  • Fully integrated from Enrollment through Graduation
  • Great API to access data
  • Constantly being improved
  • Requires a fairly sophisticated user
  • Nomenclature constantly changing - hard to figure out sometimes
  • Requires a lot of clicking
Private schools where having a fully integrated solution is desirable.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Enrollment Management on a daily basis. This is one product of the larger [Blackbaud Education Management Solutions] being used across the school.
  • User friendly for parents
  • Clean look
  • Good customer service
  • Customization
  • Better email options
  • Better graphic usage
Great for families when using Enrollment Management, but some parts are still a little makeshift on the back end.
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.
Rick Geyer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud's Education Management Solution is used across our entire organization. It is the main database that drives our organizational activities. Admissions, Registrar, Billing Office, Teachers, Administrators, everyone uses the system is some way to help carry out their job functions. The main problem this system solves is providing access to key stakeholder data without the need to duplicate data or update data in multiple locations. It also acts as our primary communication tool to our families.
  • The Enrollment Management solution works well in providing a user friendly experience for potential students, and also does a good job of tracking candidates through the various phases of the application process.
  • The parent portal and the use of community groups works well for getting accurate communications out to the appropriates constituents. As a larger school, it was challenging making sure everyone was informed about the upcoming events and information that was pertinent to them. With the use of the various groups in Blackbaud's solution, we have been able to tailor our communication so that everyone gets the right communication without having to send everything to everybody.
  • Blackbaud has several modules, but they all connect back to a Core database, that way common biographical information is shared between the various modules, and if it is updated, it updates everywhere.
  • Their system has an Open API and is OneRoster and LTI compliant. This allows their system to easily connect to other learning tools and systems to share information without having to perform numerous exports and imports to keep information in sync.
  • I would like to see a wider array of fields available to their User Lists and Insight Designer. Currently, some information is only available through Advanced Lists, which is an older platform for querying data and is much more difficult for standard users to work with. Making more fields available to the User Lists would make it easier for standard users to gain access to the data they need without having to involve a data administrator or power user. Making all the fields available to the insight designer would allow me to build custom Dashboard for Administrators, which would make KPI data very accessible to those individuals and reduce my overhead to provide it.
  • I would like to see some workflow changes and enhancements made to their attendance module. While there are many great features, some of the workflows put in place make the use of this module hard to manage for larger schools.
  • I would like to see the user roles/permission module revamped to allow for more granularity when granting access to parts of the system. I know they are actively working on revamping this, but it is still currently an opportunity for improvement.
If you want to provide a more tailored user experience for your families, then I would recommend the Blackbaud solution. It is flexible enough to allow you to use the system in a way that best suits your school, and the seamless integration between the various modules provides a cohesive user experience. If you are a smaller school that does not have anyone with advanced technical expertise on your campus, it could be a challenge to get the system set up to meet your needs, but this can also be overcome with user training that Blackbaud can provide.
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.
Jim Maier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used school-wide by faculty/staff, students, parents/guardians. It is our student information system. It replaced Blackbaud's Education Edge program. It has a very friendly user web interface for all users. The business problems it addresses is that the old Education Edge web portal was not as user-friendly and it was complicated to develop page content.
  • Very user-friendly for "non-tech" parents/guardians.
  • It covers all areas of school daily life. Academics, activities, athletics and community groups involving parents/guardians.
  • It is constantly improving in all areas of the user interface.
  • Some of the functionality of advanced lists require extra clicks to perform steps.
  • SKY lists are constantly improving, but have a ways to go. They are so easy to build and use but are limited to what can be displayed or filtered.
  • Bulk deleting of rosters would be a nice improvement.
It has been a great product for our parents/guardians. I have had very few of them contact me to say that they cannot figure out how to navigate and use the program. It would be nice to be able to build some "open to all users" front end web pages without having to purchase onMessage.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it in all departments. The main advantage for us to have data integration across departments.
  • The availability of data to all constituents anywhere that you have internet access is vital.
  • The ability to view online data easily on every device is crucial. (responsive views).
  • Ease of use for Parents and Students has been critical. Students figure it out on their own. Written "how to" documents were hardly used by students.
  • Blackbaud is committing resources to always evaluate and improve their product. It is comforting to know that if there is functionality that you wish was better, it is only a matter of time and it will likely be improved.
  • We need personal profile data updates for parents to update their record in Tuition Management automatically.
  • We need to be able to view the feeder school on the student's academic record and not have to go to Enrollment Management to see this.
  • More scheduling rules like, "do not schedule X in the same semester as Y."
It is perfect for schools with students and parents who are always connected to a device. I am not sure if it exists, but it would not be great for a school with students and parents who do not have easy access to the internet.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud EMS as our SIS and LMS across our two divisions (middle and upper schools). It is our main data hub that serves us well when we acquire additional solutions. The BB user ID that is automatically assigned within EMS is used across multiple platforms and allows for easy cross-referencing of constituent records.
  • Customer Support: Overall, the majority of analysts are knowledgeable and helpful. If they are not able to directly help with an issue they will escalate to appropriate departments and keep you informed of progress.
  • Partnerships: While the EMS can act as the whole solution, not all schools fit that mold. K12 Partnerships allow institutions to find the best individual fit while remaining connected via API/SSO, etc.
  • Roles and Security: I know this is currently under development, but at present, it is difficult to make sure users have the appropriate permissions. Cloning roles to customize doesn't always work as it can allow for users to have access to information they do not need.
  • Wednesday Releases: I have personally found that there can be larger-scale issues that occur as a result of the Wednesday releases.
You can't beat the full portfolio of EMS, FE/FENXT, RE/RENXT. Blackbaud has become the standard for independent schools. The complaint I most frequently receive from constituents is the lack of customization. However, they don't fully realize it is a canned database and not a custom database built from scratch.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire K-12 school community uses Blackbaud. It is seamless, intuitive and easy to use. I love the Idea Bank, where users can post and vote on ideas. Blackbaud will then work on these requests and make adjustments to their system. Customer service is on point and you can request one on one appointments for help.
  • Intuitive
  • Nice looking interface
  • Family friendly
  • More bulk complete options, we are a huge school.
  • A separate Q&A option in training sessions.
  • Perhaps have people on hand during sessions for individual help.
It is great for worklists, data management, and student tracking. Its admission review process can be fleshed out a bit more. A more customized program would be more helpful because of the different needs of different schools. Overall, it is a robust program, but it's the biggest strength is that it continues to be updated.
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 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We currently use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions across our entire school. We use RE NXT in our development office, FE NXT in our business office, and the tuition management and education management software for our parents and students.
  • Integrated systems making it easier to manage multiple places of data.
  • Ease of use--intuitive and quick to pick up how to use the software.
  • Great support--knowledgeable support to help when issues arise.
  • The tuition management system has room for improvement to deal with tuition discounts.
  • Better advanced training for the solutions.
  • Access for certain users (like teachers or managers) to see what parents and students see without having to grant too much access to the system.
Blackbaud Education Management has worked very well for our school. It is easy to navigate, requires little training, and is very intuitive. The system would work great for smaller schools with employees who wear many hats because of this. I also like that Blackbaud tries to listen to their customers and bring needed updates to the software.
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.
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