Good bang for your buck for a small college
July 29, 2022
Good bang for your buck for a small college
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Queue
- Event
- Prospect
- Membership
Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is our record of truth regarding the advancement shop. We follow the mantra, "If it's not in RE, it didn't happen." While the College has used Blackbaud Raiser's Edge for years, the addition of NXT was a welcome upgrade. It provided much easier access to those who do not regularly use the database, as well as a much more modern interface with add-ins that make the entry of actions, for example, much easier. In the past several years, as the DBM, I have appreciated the ability to extend and customize the database in ways you could not before, such as creating automation with Power Automate and the ability to add things like tiles or full-page reports to the database. Additionally, while there are quite a few processes that still need to be done in the database view it is nice to know that in general you are not losing functionality.
- Links for everything make it easy to click through for more detail or share with others
- The tiled profile view is great because each user can customize their view for their needs and hide information they are not as concerned with
- The Work Center is a great launching point for front line fundraisers
- While there are some basic reports that come with the product, for any robust reporting you need to use an external reporting tool as they no longer support Crystal Reports.
- Tags could be more effective if they came with the defaults but were customizable by each organization to fit their needs (same for lifetime giving rollup).
- While we have created a workaround for reporting on "time in status," and you can see that information, it needs to be exportable.
- More customization is available in the Work Center. Just looking at one week of actions for example is usually not enough of a lead time for upcoming activities if something needs to be prepared.
- It would be great if there were a more modern import tool in the webview that allowed for direct mapping to fields and did not need a million import IDs.
- Gift processing
- Event Management
- Proposal tracking
- General data storage
- The integration with Power Automate has saved me several hours a week where I do not have to manually kick off processes such as gift notifications or adding necessary data to the database that can then be used by reporting.
- When we upgraded to NXT we were able to add the event, membership, and volunteer modules as well as gain unlimited users. Because we are a small organization with under 50K records, this has saved us several thousand dollars a year, and we have more functionality.
We purchased a higher level of subscription to ResearchPoint, and that has provided additional data for us to use when we are looking to determine who are the top prospects and for those that might be on the edges, who we should focus on first, and who we might be able to wait a bit to engage on an individual level.
- No Training
Do you think Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT's feature set?
Yes
Did Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT live up to sales and marketing promises?
No
Did implementation of Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT again?
Yes
Using Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
10 - Advancement Services, Major Gifts, Alumni Relations, and Annual Giving in the fundraising office, and we are the primary users of the database. Limited use by communications, business office, and other departments on campus. Most of those departments are just looking up class years to specific contact information about an alumnus.
1 - At our College, I, as the Director of Advancement Services, have really been the main area of support. If someone calls our IT department with a Raiser's Edge question, they send that person to me as they are not involved with the access or support aspects of the database. While I did not come with any formal technical training, over the years of using the product I have learned the skills that I need to make sure people have access to what they need, but not everything they do not need to see.
- Gift recording
- Proposal entry and tracking
- General data collection and storage
- We are looking to create event records to represent art pieces that are for sale to ensure only one person can purchase the piece.
- Using actions and action attributes/custom fields to track and report on time in status.
- Extending the webview to include Power BI reports and other custom add-ins with Power Automate.
- Use it as a launch pad. We plan to add a Power BI report to the home page which is just a set of links to other reports or documents making RENXT the place to begin your work.