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RE NXT for everyone!
Updated August 17, 2017

RE NXT for everyone!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Raiser's Edge NXT

It is used by the advancement department. It makes our donor database accessible to all users anywhere they can get to an internet connection, and the interface is friendly enough for even the most hesitant technophobes. It provides basic analytics, easing up the demand for reports from my department. The database behind the NXT interface also integrates with MailChimp, our admissions/registrar's office database, and business office accounting software.
  • It's really great for technophobes or those not familiar with RE7.
  • It's quite user-friendly and intuitive.
  • Simplifies and condenses tasks and information most important to front-line fundraisers.
  • Because it's entirely hosted on Blackbaud's servers, we're always subject to their processing and connection speeds.
  • Blackbaud's Citrix connection doesn't play nice with our internal network, so we're not able to take advantage of certain tools, and exporting data/reports takes 2 additional steps that it shouldn't have to.
  • Certain fields don't sync between RE7 and NXT, and restoring to a back-up means losing everything stored only in NXT.
  • Operational Efficiency
  • Increased revenue from existing donors
  • Reduced IT expenditure due to cloud deployment
I'm sure IT expenditure was reduced as they no longer had to maintain servers/backups/updates/, etc. but I can't say much about operational efficiency or increased revenue. We had our department completely turn over, so I'm just trying to get everyone on the same page at the moment!
Blackbaud's products - while not always perfect - are continuously improving, and this is one of the many reasons I love Blackbaud as a company. I also find great value in their conferences; they work with numerous non-profit organizations in several countries, and I'm always fascinated to see/hear them share their trends/benchmarking and industry-wide analytics. We have benefited directly by taking advantage of plug-ins and other tools offered by Blackbaud partners, as well using some of the information they regularly share to tweak fundraising strategies.
I have used Patron Edge (formerly a Blackbaud product), Education Edge, SalesForce, Tessitura, and Senior Systems. I've also used a few custom CRM's in the Real Estate industry. Some of these other systems have other or multiple purposes, so they may be a better fit depending on your company's priorities, but strictly for a fundraising tool, you can't beat RE.
It's great for fundraising teams with little or no experience with RE7. For teams that do extensive analysis and most/all of their reporting using custom reports or tools outside of RE, the connection to Blackbaud's servers can be chancy, and it may take an enormous amount of time to export all of the data that you need. In that case, you might be better off staying with a version that you can maintain on your own local servers.

Raiser's Edge NXT Reliability

NXT itself is a pretty simple interface, and is great for front-line fundraisers to be able to look up info and run some simple "reports"/analysis. It's very quick and intuitive, but the back-end attached to it (RE 7.96) may have connectivity issues from time to time. NXT itself, though, is simple enough that issues are rare.