RE is the cadillac of fundraising software
Updated June 29, 2017
RE is the cadillac of fundraising software
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Raiser's Edge NXT
We got rid of a financial software package we had for more than 18 years, and the new software did not have donor development/management software. I am the only user right now. We use Raiser's Edge NXT to respond to gifts, for managing donors, and for exporting data for mailings. I have a feeling that we will be using for much more than that as we dive deeper in.
- Lots of data fields for storage of a lot of information about a gift and/or person.
- Protection so that general users cannot delete or change data you don't want them to.
- Saving and organizing export queries so that I can use them again and again, once they are set up.
- Home page with my favorites is easy to find.
- I like the knowledge base, but sometimes it just doesn't have the answers.
- The labels function is extremely limited. I like to format my labels to the center, choose an appropriate font and size, etc. I just don't use it because it doesn't give me the freedom I need. If I can't do it in RE, please let me export the labels to Microsoft Word so that I CAN make the changes I desire.
- Just let Mac users know that it can be a little more difficult to use RE hosting services, to plug into screen sharing, etc. The rep had to call support to get over this hump!
- Operational Efficiency
- Increased revenue from new donors
- Increased revenue from existing donors
There were tasks that I was doing, and records that I was keeping in multiple locations - using Word, Excel, Access and the donor development software to keep different pieces of the fundraising/thank you letter/reporting processes. I now use RE to address all of these together, and where it used to take me a month from gift to response to data entry, it is now gift and data entry within a week, and response immediately upon entry!
Before we purchased RE, we subscribed for YEARS to the address finder service, to comply with the United States Post Office requirements regarding databases. It was reasonable and affordable. Every once in a while we ran a deceased finder which was very helpful to keeping our database current. We also used a feature that gave us the age of people in our database when we needed to send a mailing to persons who had an age qualification. The resulting information appended well to the ACCESS database we were using at the time.
- Addressfinder, age data and deceasedfinder
About 10 years ago we did look at a couple of other products. However, we had decided that if we were going to purchase a fund raiser software, that RE would be the Cadillac that we really wanted. No sense in purchasing an interim system if the Cadillac will do what we want it to do. I don't remember specific names of those other companies. By the time we got ready, we wanted RE.