Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Reviews

Pros

This is definitely a nice product that does everything that it promises, and helps us keep track of all of our donors.

Cons

The price point is high for what you are getting, and customer support for this product is extremely poor at best.

Pros

What I love about RE NXT is that it helps to visualize graphs, such as donor patterns and key financial data, automatically. You no longer have to have endless queries and exports and dashboards to access the data you want the most. This helps facilitate staff meeting discussions, and also keeps all team members informed on the fly. Secondly, the prospect profiles for managers. Gone are the days of exporting travel profiles in plain text. Now a PM can login from the road to see all the details they need in a useful manner -- and what's even better? They can change how the data is displayed so that it is personalized to them. It is clean, well constructed, and yet also flexible enough to be able to dig deeper with a couple of clicks. And if they need to find a new person to visit in their area, the map tools are perfect. Highly recommended for offices with lots of traveling teammates.

Cons

As with both versions of RE, you only get out what you put into it. You need to make sure you have the right policies and procedures in place, for example, to make sure that certain fields in actions are required. You'll also need to work with your team to make sure they understand the updated language from the database view to the NXT view. For example, proposals and opportunities are the same thing. This is a bit of a challenge in offices where the NXT vs. database team may not interact that much and will be speaking slightly different languages about this software. It is not a deal-breaker, just a trainable moment.

Pros

Batch entry. That's it. If ALL you do are massive fundraisers where you bring in a thousand donations of 10 bucks apiece in one day, then RE has the batch entry system for you.

Cons

Blackbaud's contracts all have clauses that prevent users from making derogatory statements or posting negative reviews. The contract allows them to lock you out, kick you off, charge for the remainder of the contract, blah blah blah. And they enforce it. Ask yourself why a decent software would need something like that? This is NOT a relational database, and if you understand anything about software file structure, then that explains why RE is so flawed: If someone hits all of those categories, they will appear three times. Ask for their phone or email and they are now listed six times. Process to get rid of dupe listings of the same name loses all of the field access with the exception of addresses - because it's not relational that's the only way they can do it. Raisers Edge NXT has been designed to hide the 'background' so you have less access to work-arounds, but in order to do that they have had to 'assume' what fields are really important to us to be able to export from a specific query. RE is designed to archive a ton of information, it is simply not designed to use it or get it out. Support is dismal, and most support staff have never been users; not customizable; clunky, slow; embedded Word is out-of-date and difficult to update; proprietary e-mail communication tool extremely limited; nothing is intuitive; research analytics and events modules are extremely weak. A waste of money.

Pros

There is so much you can do with Raiser's Edge, it's a robust and powerful tool. It works "out of the box" without need for programming or customization per se (other than settings and configuration etc.) so you don't need to be a coder to set up and use. I particularly love queries to pull together lists of donors who meet certain criteria, which can then be used for mailing lists, reports, exports, etc. The acknowledgement letters are incredibly valuable, allowing variable data and personalized language, e.g. when a gift is designated to a particular program we pull in a paragraph about that program without our gift entry staff having to do any manual or extra work.

Cons

Can be a bit clunky, and not always intuitive (NXT web view is a huge improvement in those areas). The reports aren't pretty (again NXT is astronomically better there) and sometimes there isn't a report that will work for our needs so I have to set up with queries and exports. There is almost always a way to do what I need to do, but I sometimes have to go through some complicated digital acrobatics to get there.

Pros

Integration with onsite systems made it easy to use.

Cons

Hard to train other users on how to use with our systems.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Reasons for Switching to Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Pros

I love the user interface and the ability to "drag and drop" objects within constituent records to customize how I want to see information. The dashboard design is lovely and, after a bit of a learning curve, can be used to display some really helpful information for fundraisers.

Cons

This is not yet a completed product and shouldn't be used without the RE 7 database view. RE NXT has all the basic functionality needed for fundraisers to use exclusively, but not database admin staff. A lot of gift processing functionality, and even reporting fields, have not been moved over from RE 7. For any detailed reporting using OR or NOT, custom attributes, or gift amounts requires one to go back into database view to use queries/exports/canned reports.

Pros

I love web-based software that gives more freedom in filtering and report setup. I get to decide what columns I do and don't want to see. RE NXT makes searching so much easier than the desktop software, as there are fewer steps to take for searching. It's intuitive in the search box, and you don't have to enter in all information to get a list of possible answers.

Cons

The pages are aesthetically bland. I wish the categories inside a search result were differently colored to quickly navigate where one category ends and another begins.

Pros

Data entry is easy and reports are dependable. Versatility in the type of information that can be stored in each constituent record.

Cons

the software programmers I know say the set up is very 'old school.' I use batches a lot in RE - and the setting up of each is not as intuitive as some software programs out there.

Pros

It’s a robust software with many add-ons.

Cons

Very expensive, especially for smaller organizations.

Pros

I really like the access that we get to donor and constituent profiles. We can easily see all of the history we have with an a donor at our organization.

Cons

I wish that there were smoother transfers of constituents between fundraisers.

Pros

The Raiser's Edge is a very powerful database that can provide great insight into your organization's fundraising. It has the capability to track and report on anything you would ever need to look at for fundraising. The template reports are customizable, which is very helpful. My favorite feature is the query and export combo - I can pull out any piece of information I need to analyze and Raiser's Edge does a good job of getting rid of duplicate information for me. The dashboard feature is also good - you can create multiple dashboards to compare fiscal years, appeals, funds, recent gifts list, summaries, etc. You can also share your dashboard with other users so that everyone can be looking at the same thing.

Cons

Building custom reports from scratch (not using a template) can be challenging to create through Crystal Reports. However, you can usually find a template that you can customize to create a similar report, if not the exact report you want to write.

Duplicate records can also be challenging in Raiser's Edge. When Constituents are uploaded to the database from a list or entered manually, Raiser's Edge will not identify duplicates if the name or address is not an exact match. This can be frustrating - for example, it won't recognize a duplicate address if the only difference is between "Street" and "St." in the database. Cleaning up the duplicates is even more challenging. I have needed to export lists of constituents, identify duplicates in Excel, and then go back into Raiser's Edge to merge and delete the duplicate constituent records.

Pros

I use Raiser's Edge as our donor database and the data entry, reporting features are really updated. However, when they came out with NXT, it was a game changer. NXT is amazing! It has a very attractive interface and super user friendly. As soon as you search for a record, consecutive years and all information on the donor is clear to see and it lets you know which donors you should be reaching out to. You could assign donors to others to initiate contact. You could easily access information on your mobile device. It takes the Raiser's Edge data entry interface and completely gives it a makeover. You are easily able to review giving history and all donor information on one page and very clearly.

Cons

The only thing I don't like about NXT is that the consecutive years aren't always the same as in the donor records in the database version.

Pros

Queries are what we use to create lists of constituents with particular behaviors or similarities that we can use for creating mailings, invitations or actions. An amazing tool with endless possibilities.
Raisers Edge is a beast of a program. It can do just about anything you could want for a donor database and Blackbaud offers several supplemental solutions that seamlessly integrate.
Donor stewardship, from first contact, to donation, to acknowledgement letter, is a process that is handled particularly well with Raisers Edge

Cons

The program is quite complicated and if data is not entered correctly than the program just won't work well. "bad in, bad out'. But that is not unique to this program.
That some of the features that I like to use like global changes for adding appeals is pretty buried and the way of finding it convoluted.
Attributes could be more flexible: like I would prefer to have all events under one table (which it can do now) but then there is no step further where I can then say whether they RSVP and then also whether they attended and their name for easy export for nametags.

Pros

My biggest likes for the Raiser's Edge are the various modules: Events, Membership and Online Express. I can organize the information and pull it back out in queries so easily. The canned reporting is not bad either. They pretty much have every kind of basic report you could need. You can pull some pretty decent reports that track actions, solicitors, giving and profiles. The key is making sure your data is clean and organized.

Speaking of which, Raiser's Edge has done a great job of improving it's data clean up functions. They have improved duplicate removals. They have added e-mail and phone clean ups. And they are always on top of making sure their clients are heard (even if it takes them a little while to deliver).

Cons

The reports have aged out at this point in the desktop version (non-cloud). Development departments are looking for different ways to report their money and we are now depending on Crystal Reports to constantly fill that void. I wished the reports were more malleable and you could really build out the layouts to accommodate what staff wants to see. The biggest thing I hear in terms of complaints from my staff are the number of clicks to get a process done, whether entering an event on a record to recording a membership. Sure we can set up default settings for many of the procedures, but there is still that need sometimes to have to go through and enter manually.

Pros

NXT is easier to use than the traditional, back end with Raisers Edge when viewing records and can be accessed on your phone.

Cons

The ease of use is still light years behind other cloud-based CRMs. You only have limited access to the data and many fields are blocked (meaning you can't make changes unless you go into the more complicated back end). The biggest problem we have had has been with online gifts. We purchased Everyday Hero (which is Blackbaud's online giving module), and every time a gift comes in by a spouse, it overrides the current gift with that person's name, and only shows that they gave that one gift. There is no flag or warning that the address is a duplicate. So now that we purchased something that was supposed to expedite our online giving, we have to go back and do hours of clean up in our database. Also, they have "automatic upgrades" when your records reach another tier. The customer service is awful - takes hours on the phone or weeks to respond. It is exceptionally expensive for what it is offering. Also, doesn't integrate well at all with Financial Edge.

Pros

RaisersEdge 7 has tremendous capabilities - perhaps too many. Although an industry leader in market share, for a small organization, we don't use the majority of functions available. Service from our sales support contacts has been very good.

Cons

The overall solution is very clunky and difficult to use. While Blackbaud is in the (multi-year) process of migrating functions to their cloud NXT platform, this process is slow and leaves users straddled between an old clunky solution and the functions that have been migrated to their cloud platform. The solution is expensive compared to other simpler solutions that can be better suited to small organizations. The mobile app, while useful, is very limited in its capabilities and seems to be a v1 mobile app.

Pros

I enjoyed the upgrades from the old school dinasaur program that was available until NXT. The features were comparable to other software on the market.

Cons

THE PRICE!! They were very proud of their product and ultimately did not try to keep our business. They offered their product to us for $30,000 a year for a database with less than 10,000 constituents. I believe they have since lowered their price, but their security breach has had a huge impact on many of our fellow nonprofits. Their customer service is some of the worst I have ever endured and you will have 5+ people contact about the same issue. You're lucky if you get a respose, so I mostly didn't even ask a question.

Pros

Ease of use, integration with The Raiser's Edge database, easy to access via mobile devices, has a pleasant look and feel to the application. Overall, an excellent product!

Cons

Attachments do not integrate with RE when loaded through NXT, and there is no way to pull a report or query of attachments made in NXT. A little more integration development so the two systems can talk to one another is probably needed.

Cons

The pros of their software are outweighed by there incompetent and dishonest staff. This is true all the way from the sales level, customer service, billing and deceitful renewal tactics. This company used to be the best in the business but got too big and stopped caring about their customer and focuses only on their bottom line. Once you commit to a contract it's a miserable process after that. Guarantee.

Pros

The modern interface is intuitive, robust and incredibly mobile-responsive. The reporting options are great for CEOs, board members, and Development departments. The 360-degree view of each constituent is insightful and helpful. Love the ability to log in from anywhere with no additional downloads needed. Real-time constituent updates keep everyone in the loop. Blackbaud is continuing to develop and push out additional features that will make this more and more useful and relevant.

Cons

Honestly, for what I use it for, it's hard to find anything missing that Blackbaud isn't addressing and planning for future releases.

Pros

- So many features, reports, queries, and fields.
- Highly customizable.
- Basic functions are fairly intuitive and easy-to-use.
- Scalable, with lots of optional add-on features.

Cons

- Complex. If you want to "go deep" with this software, be prepared to invest a lot of time into the process.
- Very expensive, and pricing is not dependent upon things like constituent counts (like marketing automation software is doing).

Pros

It has made coordinating with our satellite staff and fundraisers much easier. I like that it's interface is easy enough for everyone from novice to pro.

Cons

I really would like for the gift entry in NXT to be more robust. I see how having everything in one place would be beneficial, but, there's some things that we do in the database view that we simply cannot do in NXT yet.

Pros

RE NXT is very easy to navigate and colleagues who have little or no experience with the database view are able to find the information they need without a hassle. I like that NXT offers suggestions and specially prepared reports that provide useful information for reigniting lapsed donors and gauging capacity for future asks. I also love the visual analytics offered, as they help to segment and illustrate the entire scope of our constituent base rather than just looking at spreadsheets.

Cons

There are some limitations as to how much information can be added to lists in NXT, making it easier to generate more complex lists in the database view. I also think it would be beneficial to offer a complete guide of all of the training and webinars available as a benefit of NXT, as our team has not taken advantage of many useful resources because we have not been aware of them.

Pros

It provides a comprehensive, detailed account of all interactions, donations, and potential contacts among our donor base. Whenever I've had to call customer support, they have been incredibly knowledgeable and friendly, and typically have gotten to the bottom of whatever issue I'm having.

Cons

There are SO many functions and features that it is hard to utilize them successfully at any given time. Reports can be complicated to produce, and creating queries to generate the specific sets of donor groups you are looking for is difficult at best.

Pros

Very extensive options
Long-standing company so they are not a fly-by-night operation
Extensive training solutions (but necessary with level of complexity)

Cons

Clunky user interface
NXT platform is slow to migrate full functionality (still does not have gift entry)
More expensive than many other solutions now on the market