Raisers Edge is too expensive for the functionality

The UX is very old and outdated looking.

There are several usability issues like you can't copy certain fields like the ID since it isn't text. You also can't use some of the standard keyboard shortcuts like Ctr+A to select all. These small things can really slow you down when you are working.

In order to search you have to select what you are searching for gift, fund, constituent. In other more modern databases like Salesforce you can search across all objects at once which is very helpful. Furthermore, when you are searching certain data can’t be searched on. For example you can’t search on an email address if the individual is logged as a relationship of an organization record

When you are querying RE it will often pull duplicate results. If a certain gift or constituent meets more than one criterion it will appear in the query twice. As such, in order to get deduped results you have to run a query through an export or a report so most data sets that you need have to be found in a two step process.

You can't add custom fields to RE. Instead you have to rely on attributes in order to add additional information. This works relatively well but it keeps the data segregated onto the attributes tab rather than appearing immediately where you need the information.

It is annoying that you can't upload documents and attachments to gifts. Instead, you have to put gift backup onto the media area of the constituent record. This makes it much harder to identify the correct backup document(s) for gifts.

This database is extremely expensive. As a nonprofit it's hard to justify the costs.

The old versions are not hosted so you have to host them yourself which can be costly and updates are not rolled out automatically. Instead you have to manually update the tool. If there are compatibility issues with the data you have to fix that before upgrading.