Raisers Edge is old, but powerful!
November 21, 2017

Raisers Edge is old, but powerful!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with The Raisers Edge

We use Raisers Edge in our Development and Membership departments to track all donations and memberships. It allows us to track these transactions as well as our interactions with our donors and members that help us determine how to move people to higher levels of engagement and deeper levels of investment in our mission.
  • Gift recording: gift tab gives you detailed information about where gift is coming from, why, and if the donor was thanked or not.
  • Relationship Management: Action/Prospect tabs allow you to record phone conversations, emails, and mailings and integrates with Outlook to set future meetings, solicitations, and grant application and report deadlines.
  • Query/export: We are able to segment our 100,000+ constituents to send targeted communications.
  • Interface: the system isn't very 'pretty.' Other databases are more user friendly, but may not be as powerful.
  • Online support: the online interface is embarrassingly old.
  • With Raisers Edge, we're able to get more donations through sponsorships, special events, tributes and the annual fund.
  • With Raisers Edge, we're able to maintain accurate data with our membership base to empower other departments.
  • Raisers Edge is expensive, diverting some money from the mission that is not used with other alternatives.
Raisers Edge was the system used when I started at the organization. We recently explored other software solutions to allow the entire institution (gift shop, cafe, guest services, hospitality, education) to use the same database, but none of the alternatives had the same kind of fundraising support that Raisers Edge has.
With large organizations, Raisers Edge may be the only option for one to consider unless you have the ability to have a custom database made for you in the case of higher education institutions and hospitals. Many people have used the product so it's really easy to find answers to questions you have online without having to get in touch with Blackbaud, which can be time-consuming.