Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
N/A
Kindful, a Bloomerang product
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Kindful aims to help nonprofit organizations across the world fundraise more effectively. Kindful includes fundraising tools, reporting, and analytics all in one CRM. Kindful was acquired by Bloomerang in January, 2021. It is now a Bloomerang product.
$119
per month
Pricing
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Kindful, a Bloomerang product
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$119
per month
Standard
$239
per month
Standard
$349
per month
Standard
$459
per month
Standard
$579
per month
Standard
$699
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Kindful, a Bloomerang product
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
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All plans include: unlimited admin users, unlimited donation pages with peer-to-peer fundraising, built-in integrations, and automated reporting. Pricing also includes comprehensive web-based training upon signup and ongoing online support at no additional cost.
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.
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.
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.
We particularly love the flexibility of Kindful's donation pages and donation plug-ins. They make it possible for us to accept donations on our website, without having donors have to leave the website.
Kindful effectively streamlines back-office functions including acknowledgements for gifts - which saves our small 2-person team vital hours each week.
Kindful integrates to a variety of valuable platforms, allowing us to manage all of our data in one place. Currently, we integrate with MailChimp [so all email recipients are segmented in Kindful, emails are sent from MailChimp], Fundraising Report Card, and several custom integrations through Kindful's open API [including one that tracks volunteer events and another that connects to CauseVox].
Kindful's basic metrics and "dashboard" give us instant access to live fundraising results that are shown against historical information - giving us the ability to see how we're doing at all times.
Detailed custom email campaigns and reports can be confusing to navigate. However, Kindful provides excellent customer support and training to make it as easy as possible.
The price can be a turn off for many people, but if you have an aggressive plan to increase funding, Kindful pricing is scalable based on the size of your database.
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.
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.
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.
I have not utilized the support for Kindful very often but the one time I have was fantastic. It was quick, courteous and thorough. Kindful consistently offers Webinars that outline the best way to utilize their product and get the most out of it. I think Kindful does a pretty solid job with support.
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 recently added HarnessApp to our software tools. Harness has a strong donor interface but not the backbone that Kindful has to offer. We find them a good match. I looked at dozens of other platforms that compare to Kindful but we always find ourselves sticking with Kindful as our primary CRM.
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.
It is great to be able to quickly tell a prospective sponsor how we are doing financially in each fundraiser along with repeat donors that are helping to keep us going.
I love that it sends a receipt to the donor immediately (if the email address is included in the profile) without me having to do anything! I am sure our donors love it too.