Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Pros and Cons

RE NXT covers a lot of areas of donor management. It integrates reasonably well with Financial Edge (if the organization uses it). Their payment processing system is good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Blackbaud still requires users to split their attention between their old, unintuitve "Database view" and newer "Web View" if they want full functionality. Blackbaud has been promising a full shift to the newer version for years and has not delivered. One finds the limits of functionality constantly (for instance in email marketing, API's, reporting, events. volunteer managment... it can go on) despite this functionality existing in less expensive CRMs.

Customer Success Managers are notoriously hard to contact, particularly when wanting to discuss contracts, despite over-promising and under-delivering. Blackbaud will lock you into three year contracts for the lackluster base product and expensive modules. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find Raiser's Edge NXT easy to use and navigate and can do MOST of my job in Webview. Event set-ups are a breeze in my opinion. Gift manangement, while it does have some shortcomings, has improved dramatically since we began using it. The ability to send lists to our fundraisers is one of my favorite options - no more weekly spreadsheets! There are still some tasks that I can only perform in Database view, but I am using Webview more every day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are still a lot of options that are not available in Webview. Membership is one of them and we are big users of the Membership Module. Donation and Event forms still need some work. My current issue is with duplicate management in online event registration. While a duplicate search is perfprmed for the original registrant/donor, that is not the case for guests added in the form, who are automatically added as constituents with no additional information. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have been using Raiser's Edge NXT (RE NXT) for the past three months now and I will say this is one of the better development platforms that I have used in my career. The best part apart RE besides the formatting and ease of use for development officers and administrators is how much you can customize this system to fit your individual use case. Through the use of Sky API and Power automate I have been able to customize buttons on the platform to automatically pull data from RE NXT to populate custom formatted prospect profiles to send to members of our organizations. Getting these profiles to auto format has been a huge timesaver in day to day operations as documents that could take hours to create now only takes 1-3 minutes. This would not have been possible with the support Blackbaud has implemented into their program and the amazing members of the RE NXT community. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only thing that I could say that I'm not thrilled by RE NXT is the fact that not all the features from database view are available through webview. Having to switch back and forth can be a hassle but is manageable. Updates are frequent though and the company does say they will have all features available in webview by 2025. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's the most expansive and detailed CRM on the market. The donor and gift details you can track, report on, and analyze come second to none. Our finance department uses Financial Edge NXT, making reconciliation a breeze. With the new webview, NXT uses open KPIs to allow you to integrate automation and app making to really personalize your organization's experience; quite literally any function you need NXT to have for your organization's individual business processes, you can now create it. Chat support is always very quick and helpful in a pinch. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The webview functionality is still rolling out, so it's hard to be able to praise all of it's functionality. Everything still exists in the database view until the webview is fully entirely functional on it's own. Blackbaud's slowness to incorporate new technology into the database view functionality used to be something we disliked about it, but once webview is fully functional later this year, we see no problem with that any longer. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the modernized UI for RE NXT. It looks very clear, concise, and easy to use compared to their database view counterpart, which was RE7. It also allows functionality to use a lot of third-party apps to achieve some goals that the database view can achieve, without using the database view. RE NXT has a huge advantage with the CRM being cloud-based which automatically updates the system periodically with new features and quality-of-life functions. It's also future-proof by allowing the use of AI for gift acknowledgement, workflows, reports, and so much more with Power Automate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are lots of missing features in NXT that are present in the database view, such as managing tributes and tribute gifts, mailing module for donor acknowledgement letters and tribute acknowledgees, as well as having batch templates in RE NXT. These are the primary reasons for why I still use database view. Lists is also not that very helpful compared to Query in database view. Lists does not allow you to get very specific as you need for certain reports. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

RENXT is very accessible to everyone. Everyone in our Advancement office likes it and understands how to use it. As the DBA I still work quite a bit in the database view, but I find that I'm using the web view more and more. Most of our reports now live in the web view and we like the functionality of the dashboards and insights. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't use the web view to process gifts and event registrations. It creates a lot of duplicate records. I still use the database view for those things and will continue to do that until they fix this. You also aren't able to work with tribute gifts and pledges in the web view. This is changing and I look forward to moving to the web view to do this work sometime this year.

Losing the Microsoft integration tools early this year created extra work. I had to make a complicated conditional merge outside of the database. This is still an issue. I miss using the conditional merge in Mail in database view. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Accessing content in webview is very convenient, such as sharing links to Constiuent records or queries

More user friendly for people who are not familiar with database tools or RE7 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Core features I use regularly for my role are not available in web view such as Exports, Segmentation, detailed Queries, customizable Dashboards

Tools availalble in web view like Reporting and Analysis don't have as much customization as in webview and users need to pay additional costs to access them

Workflow designer is a helpful tool but is not always reliable and will sometimes not create actions when its supposed to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NXT has several different views that are beneficial for every member of our philanthropy tea from officer to gift processing to research. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Cost can be high. Plug Ins do not always talk as expected. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NXT is a great way for fundraisers to manage their portfolios. Dasbhoards provide good information and I love having the ability to easily click a category and create a list. I like being able to easily add and exclude people from lists and create workflows. Online giving forms are easy to set up. And it has some great features such as maps, ratings and tags. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NXT is still very much a work in progres. We still do most of our data entry and reporting from the database and use a different system for emails. Many items have been promised for years and still haven't been implemented yet the price continues to climb. Fields that we are able to require in the database can't be required in NXT so extra clean up for us to do. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the dual-platform experience we get with having the option to choose between working in database view or web view. In web view, my Gift Officers have access to a modernized, streamlined user experience while I, as the database manager, still have the ability to see the nitty gritty in database view. From technologically challenged to tech expert - everyone has the ability to use Raiser's Edge the way they want and customize their view - from Work Center to the order of tiles they see - in a way that makes the most sense for their role. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Lists in web view are not functional in the way I or my Gift Officers need as of right now. The criteria we can select is quite limited. Additionally, the capabilities of the email tool leave something to be desired. While emails are functional, our more marketing-minded team members have expressed frustration with the lack of tools and abilities the tool currently offers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.