Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
N/A
Bloomerang
Score 9.3 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Bloomerang is a cloud-based donor management platform that is designed to help nonprofit organizations to reach, engage and retain the advocates they depend on to achieve their vision for a better world. The vendor says their donor management application is rooted in principles of philanthropy; simple to use and focused on empowering an organization’s team to achieve remarkable results through enhanced donor loyalty. The vendor’s value proposition is that Bloomerang is…
$79
per month
Pricing
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Bloomerang
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$119
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Bloomerang
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
Optional
Additional Details
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All Plans include: Unlimited users, free email & chat support, free access to Bloomerang Academy, unlimited standard online giving pages & forms, donor engagement scoring, wealth screening, sustainability scorecard, email marketing, nightly address verification & deceased suppression updates, and 1 scholarship to Fundraising Standard (40 pts toward CFRE certification, $599 value)
We used Bloomerang, which is similarly easy to access and view, but has much more limited capability with reporting options and segmenting lists for email marketing
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is superior to both Sage Fundraising 50 and Bloomerang, which are both very different products but combine what I like about both databases. It offers both the online cloud-based database options and ease of use and the database view which offers the …
I was not a decision-maker in selecting either product. Boomerang was an excellent cost-effective option for a smaller nonprofit with less sophisticated needs. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT would not have been a fit in that environment, and Boomerang is not robust enough for my …
We originally selected Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT as it was promised to be a great solution for us. In addition, Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT was supposed to ultimately incorporate many of the features of the database view. Several years later, we have seen very few upgrades …
Companies that built their products with a user-end web-view experience in mind, as opposed to re-imagining the database in the cloud, seem to have a slight advantage with more intuitive interaction for the user. Raiser's Edge, though, has been the gold standard in fundraising …
In 2018, the organization that I work for will be changing donor database platforms. Over the past 6 months I have evaluated several softwares and will be moving on from all Blackbaud products - including NXT.
As I stated before, RE is the most comprehensive and robust CRM and non-profit software solution on the market, yet perhaps out of the reach of smaller non-profits and schools, thus allowing smaller and more generic programs to occupy the ever-changing fundraising world.
I love being able to see when I log in what my donor retention is and what percentage I have achieved in my fundraising goal. It is extremely beneficial to know how engaged each donor and volunteer is with my organization and to have all interactions and notes with those …
Bloomerang was a better choice for this particular nonprofit because their conversion team was thorough and helpful, customer support was good, and the system was easy for staff to learn and implement, especially in comparison with the experience of nonprofits who have used …
I think this product is well-suited for educational institutions, both at the private high school level and the higher education level. It covers a lot of ground in terms of recording information, and you have a lot of ability to tailor the software to your needs. I think there's some room for growth in terms of recording DEI information. Organizations who have very small staff may not want to consider this product because they might not have the time to take advantage of all the capabilities NXT has.
If you are a small organization just getting started, Bloomerang can be a good fit. It is simple and straightforward for development staff who maybe aren’t super savvy with data management or analysis in spreadsheets. In the sales demo they will try to upsell a lot of extras that are ultimately not necessary unless your stuff is very unfamiliar with database software. The base price of the software is something like $300 per year, as long as you mix all of the training and phone support add-ons they initially present you with.
Tracks history of gifts and makes it easy to see giving over time, also good at organizing and accessing complete constituent information around contact information, displaying gifts with date and designations, restrictions etc..
NXT provides easy access to analytics and reports to share for specific dates etc. to support decision making and planning
Display format and organization of analytical information is very intuitive and easy to navigate and helpful in developing reports for presentations.
Reporting: Once I understood the logic behind Bloomerang's reporting tools, I could not believe I'd ever worked a different way. Some of our funders request very complicated reports and getting the relevant data out of Bloomerang is SO much easier than it was with our previous CRM tools.
Website integration: I love the tracking functionality that Bloomerang offers, as well as how easy it is to integrate event ticket, volunteer, and other forms into our existing website.
Intuitive design: I've introduced total novices to Bloomerang and been very impressed with how quickly they've been able to figure out all the top level navigation as well as deeper functionality.
We have a lot invested in NXT and it suits our needs perfectly. There would be no reason for us to consider a needless conversion to a new solution. I do not believe there is any other product on the market that would be worth considering.
#1 - I am very happy with the product and support so far. #2 - With significant data migration costs, I wouldn't even consider another option for at least 3 years no matter how much better it might be.
NXT seems easy to learn on a relatively deep level. There are glitches, like with everything, but it is usually easy to see where they are, most of time. I like that Development staff can choose what they want to see and where they want to see it, and it doesn’t affect my screen.
I have found no difficulty in using any of its features. However, I have been using constituent managementt databases for 10+ years, so I am accustomed to them, and to a great degree, there are a lot of similarities among the various platforms.
The only reason I cannot give a 10 is because like all web based products, internet connection is required and that is not something that can be counted on 100% of the time. When the internet connection is stable, I have had little to no issues using Raiser's Edge.
NXT itself is a pretty simple interface, and is great for front-line fundraisers to be able to look up info and run some simple "reports"/analysis. It's very quick and intuitive, but the back-end attached to it (RE 7.96) may have connectivity issues from time to time. NXT itself, though, is simple enough that issues are rare.
The support hat Blackbaud can be iffy at times. When they are busy they must hire on a large temporary worker pool to help support and often times they are not capable of answering the right questions and delaying the process for your solution to be complete. When it is not the busy time, most things get answered in a normal rate.
Any time i had a problem or question it has been easy to find an answer or tutorial. When I cannot find an answer, it is easy to email or live chat with support and they resolve my problems very quickly.
When you get a good, knowledgeable person for in-person training, you can't beat it! Hands on, real time, questions answered on the spot. And they want to make sure you get what you needed before leaving. To also have dedicated time without other distractions is very important to the learning process in my opinion.
For the most part, the instructors who teach the online courses are very knowledgeable and personable. I will say that the instructor-led classes, which are the only actually helpful form of online training offered by Blackbaud, are likely prohibitively expensive for many, especially if you have multiple team members who need to be trained. One-off classes do not necessarily provide the best return on investment as you may not have selected the best class for the training that you're looking for, or you may sign up for a class that is taught by a poor instructor (which is rare) and you'll find yourself needing or wanting to take it again. The only other option is to sign a multi-year contract which is, again, expensive, and may be more than you need. There are definite gaps in some of the course offerings as Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is relatively new. Most of the classes also require a time commitment of one and a half to three hours, which could be more than your staff can spare.
Blackbaud was with us every step of the way during the migration of our data to the newer version of the software. They made it as easy as possible, and the huge task that it was was made much easier with their help.
There just is no system as robust and capable as Raiser's Edge NXT. It's ability to track anything you'd like, give you space to create custom fields (attributes) and utilize fields in different ways than intended give it the extra advatage that we hadn't seen in other products. It's got a vast network of plug ins that help automation features as well.
We left DonorPerfect for Bloomerang. I had come from an organization that used Raisers Edge and there was no way I was going to stay with DP. RE is great for larger organizations with staff dedicated to the database, but we were a much smaller organization and needed to have something we could all use easily. We demoed Salsa and Neon and liked them both, but Bloomerang had better integration features and seemed to be the most user-friendly.
Pricing really seems to be all over the place, and everything else you need is an extra add-on cost. The biggest issue is training. Options are limited unless you subscribe and pay for it across your contract.
New features are constantly being added to Raiser's Edge NXT that expand its capabilities. Features such as constituent mapping and easily accessible actions allow for more in-depth analysis of existing constituents. The future ability to manipulate soft-credits and customize reporting dashboards will make NXT even more attractive to our fundraisers and executives. It's great to see that the software is evolving.
Because my organization has been using Bloomerang for only one year, we haven't yet studied what impact it has had on our ROI. We have, however, noted that we are able to more efficiently and more rapidly communicate with constituents now than we were able to before we had Bloomerang. We can quickly and efficiently generate acknowledgements and tax receipts - and do so - better than we ever did before.