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Two for one but careful what you wish for
March 10, 2020

Two for one but careful what you wish for

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with The Raisers Edge

The Raisers Edge is used primarily by our fundraising department to track gifts, memberships, event participation, (paid and free), pipelined cultivation. It addresses the needs of major gift cultivation, patron groups, membership programs, institutional giving (from foundations, corporations, government agencies). However, there are other departments outside of fundraising that also use RE, under our guidance for their relationship management needs which typically involve tracking lists and other populations.
  • The latest version is cloud-based and has unlimited users
  • Very extensive functionality, almost anything that one could ever want to track, could be traced in The Raisers Edge.
  • There is a lot of documentation and a robust user community
  • In the new version, there are two ways to access your data, The Raisers Edge 7 database view and The Raisers Edge nxt, which is browser-based. This means DBAs have to manage two systems whose interfaces are distinctly different
  • The Raisers Edge 7 handicaps are that it is very old looking and its reporting capabilities are some very old looking and minimally insightful dashboards, exporting into Excel or publishing Crystal Reports thru a very old embedded version
  • The Raisers Edge nxt handicaps are that the system is not fully built and there is a lot of functionality missing
  • This is one of the most opaque areas of The Raisers Edge; different organizations measure this differently.
  • Because the system is cloud-based, there is no easy way of leaving them, because they "have' your data
  • Extensive research (outside of Blackbaud) resources it is needed before making this move to investing in The Raisers Edge - best to attend the conference and ask other users very specific questions
In the non- profit sector, there aren't many other options aside from The Raisers Edge.
For most users, only chat support is available. There is a phone number, but it is very labor-intensive to get someone on the phone, and the chat does not include an easy way to screen share. Those sessions need to be scheduled in advance and almost begged for; the chat line always has a long wait time, and sometimes it seems their support personnel is chatting with more than one client at a time.

Do you think Raiser's Edge delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Raiser's Edge's feature set?

No

Did Raiser's Edge live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Raiser's Edge go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Raiser's Edge again?

Yes

Suited for tracking donors, attributes, interactions, contact information, memberships
  • Suited for organizations that can hire a database admin
  • Suited for front line fundraising and management of small to medium donor portfolios
  • Not very well suited for dynamic reporting, most reports need to be massaged by a database administrator
  • Not very user-friendly, not at all plug and play
  • Not suitable for quickly reporting performance or AB testing