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Great capabilities if you know how to use it.
December 24, 2022

Great capabilities if you know how to use it.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

We use Raiser's Edge NXT (RENXT) for donor management, gift management, acknowledgment letters, and moves management. In addition to being the Director of our fundraising program, I also responsible for managing the database and acknowledgment letters. We have a very small shop of three fundraisers. To help manage the database, we have hired an independent to help with issues, coding, and pull lists.
  • Relationship management.
  • Gift tracking.
  • Portfolio management.
  • Moves management.
  • Pulling lists.
  • Gift acknowledgements.
  • Training and ease of use.
  • Online donation forms.
  • Duplicate management.
  • Gift Tracking.
  • Relationship Tracking.
  • Being able to pull mailing lists based on constituent data.
  • Gift Acknowledgements.
  • We do not have any metrics from before Raiser's Edge to be able to pull an ROI.
I have been able to use the gift ratings from ResearchPoint to help me identify prospects for cultivation. In one example, a volunteer for our organization turned out to have a very high net worth. We decided to include all volunteers in an appeal, and she sent a substantial gift without any personal contact. This opened a door for us to start building a different kind of relationship with her.
  • Online Training
I am not happy with the online training platform or process. When I first joined the team, I had to take 30+ hours of training to just be able to take other training that I actually needed. There was no test to demonstrate your current skill with Raiser's Edge so you could skip ahead. I am in charge of my entire fundraising department and I didn't have time to learn everything in our database. I needed to learn the most important basics quickly so I could continue learning other aspects of my position. Each time I experienced an issue with the database, I would spend hours working with customer service to figure it out. A few times, they didn't figure it out. I ended up hiring an expert to consult on our database part-time, so I could focus on the larger aspects of fundraising. I have tried taking interesting, one-off training with BlackBaud, and I cannot sign up because I didn't complete the initial courses. Nothing is accessible to you until you take the lower courses and tests. The best training I have received has been from our consultant or from the Raiser's Edge User Group on Facebook.
Unfortunately I don't know any other databases. I don't know if it is good in comparison to others.

Do you think Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT again?

No

Raiser's Edge is a great program, but it is difficult to use, especially for a small shop like mine. If a friend of mine had a large team with a couple of database administrators, I would 100% recommend Raiser's Edge. For a small shop, I would recommend software with fewer capabilities and less expensive. For my 5,000-person database, we pay $20,000/annually. I enjoy managing my portfolio in web-based software. The user interface is very pretty. I often run into issues with gift batching and have several times committed gifts with mistakes that we have to live with for the rest of our lives. It is hard to use - especially for someone who isn't well-versed in software management like myself.