A powerful database for a powerful institution
December 11, 2015

A powerful database for a powerful institution

Catie Boehmer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with The Raisers Edge

Raisers Edge is used by the museum's fundraising department, including membership. It allows us to keep track of donors, members, foundations, and corporations, as well as their giving and the communications they receive from us; manage events; supplement prospect research and pipeline management; and analyze fundraising trends across all levels of support. We have a data team who does much of the work (gift entry, acknowledgement, imports/exports/reports), but individuals also use it to maintain records of individuals in their portfolios and manage events.

Pros

  • Multiple ways to provide detailed accounts of donor's giving history and membership, as well as special attributes and interactions they have with the museum.
  • Robust events record keeping.
  • Powerful export results - input and output criteria are not limited by "foundational" categories (such as donor, donation, event) as in some less agile databases.

Cons

  • Clean exports - we get massive lists and reports that require substantial cleaning before the data is reliable. This is issue stems in part from previous mismanagement of The Raisers Edge, but the database itself doesn't have any straightforward solutions at this time.
  • Substantial data cleanup typically requires outside consultation for a constituency of our size (500,000+ records).
  • Because exports can pull out so much information, with unlimited criteria for output, massive amounts of data can be pulled out for all kinds of constituent groups. This allows for in-depth analysis of donor groups, giving over time, event participation, appeal performance, and more.
  • Because Raisers Edge does not communicate with our online giving platform, or our ticketing system, there is substantial information that has to be manually crossed over. The time we save with powerful reporting capabilities, we lose on data entry from these other avenues.

NeonCRM and GiftWorks both severely limit reporting capabilities by mandating a foundational criteria. For example, your report must be based on a very broad category, such as donor or donation: if you select donor, you cannot see certain criteria attached to donation (last gift appeal, last gift fund, etc); if you select donation, you cannot see criteria attached to donor (giving history, event participation).

NeonCRM and eTapestry are both web-based platforms, which allow users to access the database remotely without a VPN - a bonus. Neon can also directly communicate with its own online giving platform, so all gifts made online are automatically entered into the database.

GiftWorks's events module is completely separate from the fundraising module. When a donor with a record attends an event, that event is not linked to their record and vice versa. Terrible flaw.

Neon or eTapestry could work for smaller organizations that are entirely membership-based or entirely donor-based. Trying to accommodate those different constituencies within the same database does not work well for either.

Ultimately, only Raisers Edge can handle the sheer volume of data we have AND give us thorough, complex reports on that data.


The Raisers Edge is well suited for an organization with a complex fundraising setup and a substantial donor base. I think it's complexity and power might be wasted on a smaller organization with fewer constituent records, which would require less intense analysis/reporting, etc. An organization that received most of its donations through an online platform might also consider a database that can directly communicate with the gift processor.

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