Pros and Cons of Raiser's Edge
We use Raiser's Edge to track donors, alumni, parents, and all constituents with a relationship to our school. It's used to record gifts, …
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Salesforce for Nonprofits: Migrating From Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce
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Product Details
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What is Raiser's Edge?
Raiser's Edge Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
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(213)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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January 16, 2020
The Raisers Edge as the core software in our integrated solution for fundraising and gift processing.
RE is being used by the Fundraising department to keep records of all constituents, gifts and events, track relationships, volunteers. The fundraisers use the proposals to track major gift prospects. We record all donations in it, import donations from Luminate Online and other online platforms into Raisers Edge using either RE import tool, RELO plugin or other plugins. The programming department uses it to record constituents. Marketing uses it to pull queries to communicate with constituents.
- Records various aspects of constituent involvement with the organization.
- Keeps record of all gifts.
- Data posting to Financial Edge (FE) is limited and complicated to understand (took us time to adjust). The posting report does not have enough info: Appeal, campaign and who posted to FE. In genereral, RE/FE integration is not explained by Blackbaud properly, we had to figure out everything on the go.
- Volunteer module is a bit cumbersome; some fields have duplicate fields in the event module; the identical information ends up being recorded in two different places.
- Our constituents are better organized.
- The fundraising structure is more streamlined and logical.
We made a transition to Raisers Edge from Donor drive 6 years ago and considered a Salesforce solution at the time. We found RE to be the most suitable for our overall needs.
Fundraising team, event organizers
gift processing, data analysis, finance and accounting
marketing
gift processing, data analysis, finance and accounting
marketing
2
one person is processing gifts
one person is responsible for the overall database management
sometimes we get volunteers for simple data entry
one person is responsible for the overall database management
sometimes we get volunteers for simple data entry
- constituent management
- gift processing and prospecting
- our integration with Financial Edge is specific to our organization use
- not sure, we are using almost all the segments
- possibly utilize actions more
Yes
Donor Drive
- Product Features
- Product Usability
we needed a better way to segment our database and allow recording a more intricate fundraising structure. RE allowed us to do that as opposed to just event management in Donor Drive
we are constantly re-evaluating our options and still believe that RE is the best CRM for our needs.
- Implemented in-house
Yes
it was more than 6 years ago but i think it was creating the structure, data conversion, training, going live.
Change management was a major issue with the implementation
we ended up with a better fundraising structure, overall constituent management and better understanding of our base.
- data conversion
- integration of RE with FE - the biggest challenge
No
Yes
sometimes the integration with LO and FE causes issues. Usually we get them resolved to our satisfaction
we recently had an issue with BBMS/LO. A donor approached us with request to refund 2 out of 3 credit card charges. we discovered that 2 of these donations had been entered in LO as offline unconfirmed gifts and then confirmed by using the same credit cart. It took a while to figure out how it happened. Blackbaud customer service found the reasons and explained everything to us within a week.
- gift processing
- queries
- Events Module and Volunteer module overlap and I was not sure which of them to use for recording volunteer participation
- volunteer module is pretty cumbersome (while you can record a lot of information, it requires a lot of time and effort)
Yes, but I don't use it
We use RE for all departments. It is very functional for events, donations, grants, membership and volunteers. We use it to manage our annual Gala donations, as well as prospects and moves management for our Development Office. It allows accurate data information to
be stored for all our departments, so when it comes time to report on Grants we have the information needed at our fingertips.
It solves the problem of who-what-when-where-why. RE is GREAT at allowing the database to be rigid enough for database quality/integrity but fluid and flexible enough to allow all our different department to use it as the CENTRAL (and only) location for all our information needed to not only do our daily jobs, but to leave a good legacy for those who come after us to continue our mission.
be stored for all our departments, so when it comes time to report on Grants we have the information needed at our fingertips.
It solves the problem of who-what-when-where-why. RE is GREAT at allowing the database to be rigid enough for database quality/integrity but fluid and flexible enough to allow all our different department to use it as the CENTRAL (and only) location for all our information needed to not only do our daily jobs, but to leave a good legacy for those who come after us to continue our mission.
- RE is a wonderful donation/fundraising software. You can handle many different types of fund raising with ease. Cash gifts, Deferred Gifts, Recurring gifts, pledges, proposals and legacy gifts are all easily managed within RE.
- RE is flexible with customization fields with attributes for almost every kind of record, constituent, gift, action, event, participant etc. These attributes allow you to add fields and information specific to your department or organization. We currently have attributes for schools, events and volunteers just to name a FEW.
- RE is a relational database, so everything is based on relationships - which is the heart and soul of friend raising. I just love that "it's all connected"
- The membership module works ok, but there is some missed functionality - especially in regards to shared memberships and organizational memberships. Currently if someone is on a shared membership they are there for the ENTIRE membership term. There are no "to and from" dates for secondary members on a membership. While this is not a deal breaker for us, it would be helpful if this additional piece of information was available. Also the database structure forces you to code upgrade or downgrade anytime the program changes. Our upgrades and downgrades are within the category level, not necessarily the program level so some of the upgrade/downgrade codes can be mis leading
- You can search relationships for non-constituents, but event attendees are NOT included in the search, just other relationship records.
- We need increased functionality between RE and NEtcommunity - some of the fields in RE are not available as merge fields in NetCommunity. This limits us on some of the functionality and targeted marketing/outreach that we would like to do
- We have increased our staff productivity because RE "does some of the work for us"
- Our objective to grow membership has panned out because we use Raiser's Edge prospect module to move and track our prospects and potential donors/members. Since moving to Raiser's Edge 10 years ago we have grown our membership by over 3,000 members
In a previous position, I have used an in house database written for a higher education environment. Raiser's Edge WAY out performed that system. We selected RE for the increased relationship management, gift management, and historical accuracy and ease of reporting. The old system was easy go get information in but not out.
Development, Membership, Events, Volunteers, Education, Interns, Marketing & Communications, Protocol
1
We have a database manager who is the full time support person. They manage RE and the integration between RE, FE and
Netcommunity. Our member relations person assists with coding and gift entry.
Netcommunity. Our member relations person assists with coding and gift entry.
- Fundraising - this is a robust product that allows not only for bookkeeping on the donation and gift side of the house, it also works great for the Relationship management and stewardship portions of the fundraising arm.
- Our programs department puts on over 85 events per year. The amount of information we keep about our events and the registrants is sometimes staggering. That said it is EASY to maintain all the data because of the relationships between events, gifts/fees and participant records.
- Our education department can manage the interns that come in every semester, as well as track the impact we are having on local schools. Our grants require that we report by Title 1, by County and by age. Raiser's Edge allows us to track ALL of this.
- Our volunteers are able to sign up for opportunities to assist where needed
- Grant management for our speakers to schools program
- We have used the attributes in RE to really tailor the information needs of each department.
- Using the Volunteer module we are able to see how much of an impact our interns are having each semester
- We currently use most of the modules associated with Raiser's Edge
Not Sure
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Vendor Reputation
Our CEO had previous experience with the software, so when he came he knew what could do and how the increased functionality would help us grow.
We may look at other membership modules and event vendors, but the fact that RE does both for us is almost a no brainer
- Don't know
Change management was a major issue with the implementation
The implementation took place before I was here so in this regard I am not sure.
- I was not here for this
Yes
Increased phone support and additional support for Custom Report writing needs.
No
We were having issue with query, and when I spoke to the analyst, she not only took the call, we did a screen share. When that did not resolve the case she took our data and did extensive testing of the issue to resolve the problem. I'm a 20 year user of the software, so when I found this, I appreciated her taking the extra time and effort to troubleshoot.
- Relationship management
- Donations and gift processing
- event management
- Details within the membership module
- guest records in events can sometimes be cumbersome if you have lots of "name unknown" guests attending
- The volunteer module is pretty rigid in the set up - and is written to be used for ANNUAL events like walk-a-thons etc. We have volunteer needs every month so we had to work around these limitations to get it to work.
Yes, but I don't use it
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use The Raiser's Edge (RE) as a solution for our CRM as well as to process Gifts/Donations. We use it across multiple departments throughout the organizations. We have also integrated RE with NetCommunity and The Financial Edge to facilitate our Online Giving Platform. We are a bit unique in the sense that don't use RE to process Gifts to directly to our organization, however we use it to process Gifts made to other Churches. Our use of the product would be similar of a Community Foundation.
- I believe that RE's queries are excellent. Your information if very to easy to access and recall. If the data exist in a field in RE then you are able to extract the data. Once you run query, you actually have the option to double click on a record from your results and drill down into the actually record!
- RE has a tool that's called "Default Sets". This allows you to basically build templates for certain types of records. For example, if you have to input 20 fields to create a new constituent record and 10 of those fields are the same for everyone, you can create defaults to auto populate those fields.
- RE's integration with NetCommunity really simplifies online donations. For instance, if you receive 100 donations through your website, rather than have to create 100 individual gift records, RE will enable you to the pull the 100 donations into a batch and process the gifts in minutes.
- It would be nice to see RE put additional emphasis on Community Foundations. The software is written primary for an organization to manage and facilitate their direct contacts and gifts made to them, or said differently, a one-to-many relationship. We would like to see more options to facilitate a one-to-many-to-many relationships. For example, Community Foundation (one) supports numerous non-profit organizations (many) and the donors who contribute to those organizations (many), rather than the Community Foundation simply administering gifts made to itself.
- We would like to see RE have the ability to "link" their Action Records (todo's) directly to Gifts or Funds rather than just constituents.
- Fund Records are not as tightly linked to constituent records via queries as we would like to see them.
- With The Raiser's Edge we have been able to significantly reduce (30% or more) our processing time for new gifts.
- The integration with NetCommunity has allowed us to have a new presence for Online Giving. This has generated several thousand new donations for our organization.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled