CRM - A platform for growth and accountability
February 27, 2019
CRM - A platform for growth and accountability
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM is "the" software for large and complex nonprofits such as universities, hospitals, and national organizations. It is a full-featured CRM that manages everything from mailing lists to planned giving to grant management with deep reporting potential. The major contribution to a well-managed department of philanthropy is transparent accountability for fundraisers, processes and donor communication. That said, it is not a quick, easy or cheap implementation. You get what you pay for, and I believe this is a great product.
Pros
- Managing a large development/fundraising team's goals and outcomes
- Working hand-in-glove with various types of fundraising activities: research, on-line, direct mail, events, grants, and planned giving
- Layers of security that enable user groups to get what they need and nothing more
- Reporting! Reporting! Reporting!
Cons
- The marriage of event registration (on-line) and CRM needs some work.
- Challenges to adapt to organization culture surrounding things like "naming conventions", specialized reporting needs, some bugs in roll-up reporting on couples or families.
- Tribute giving tracking/reporting is awkward.
- Better shared language of function between BBCRM and other BB products like Netcommunity and Raiser's Edge. Can cause some errors in the implementation process.
- Netcommunity functionality pushing data to CRM is messy and fraught with challenges.
- Change is always expensive and painful, but CRM is worth the time and effort. One immediate benefit is improved transparency internally, especially for internal accounting, controls, and compliance departments.
- Cloud hosting helps cut cost and demand on organization staff. Improves access and meets compliance on every level.
- Ability to make global changes to recording donor phone communication makes it a one-stop resource for a well-run development team.
While Salesforce for Nonprofits is great, Blackbaud CRM is built from the bones up for nonprofits. It doesn't borrow from sales-model CRMs yet incorporates many/most of the great features in a standard CRM.
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