FundSvcs Community

Hi Shelby,

We are also exploring Almabase in conjunction with RE NXT. This is part of an overarching CRM evaluation project here. I'd love to hear these insights on Almabase as well!

My best,
Leah

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Leah Richards
St. John Fisher University
lrichards@sjf.edu
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Original Message:
Sent: 1/10/2025 8:35:00 AM
From: Leah Richards
Subject: RE: Experience with Almabase

Hi Shelby,

We are also exploring Almabase in conjunction with RE NXT. This is part of an overarching CRM evaluation project here. I'd love to hear these insights on Almabase as well!

My best,
Leah

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Leah Richards
St. John Fisher University
lrichards@sjf.edu
------------------------------

Hi Shelby,

I hope you're doing well. My name is Rob Odoardi, and I am the Director of Advancement Data Services at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I wanted to take a moment to share some insights about our experience with Almabase, which we began using last fall.

Prior to partnering with Almabase, we were using Blackbaud NetCommunity (BBNC), but we found the platform increasingly inflexible and lacked the level of investment and innovation we were hoping for. After evaluating a dozen vendors and conducting numerous demos, Almabase consistently stood out as the solution that best aligned with our needs. What impressed us most was not only the team's transparency about the platform's capabilities, but also their commitment to listening to user feedback and implementing real-time improvements. This was a significant departure from our previous experience with Blackbaud and other software solutions, where such responsiveness was lacking.

One of our first major milestones was launching Almabase for one of our largest events-Families Weekend, which hosted over 1,000 attendees. The event management functionality worked seamlessly, and we were particularly impressed with Almabase's ability to allow guests to edit or cancel their registrations in real-time. This immediate synchronization of data was something we had struggled with before. Additionally, the ability to print itineraries for attendees who prefer paper copies has been an invaluable feature.

In our post-event survey, we included questions specifically about the registration process. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and we were thrilled to see a 4.7/5 rating from over 700 responses. Since then, we've continued to receive excellent feedback from our community and haven't looked back.

Before Almabase, we were manually transferring data between systems, which often resulted in duplicate records and mismatched information due to name variations. This process was both time-consuming and led to data quality issues. Now, with Almabase's direct integration with Raiser's Edge, we can sync data effortlessly and have been able to capture an expanded range of data points as our community engages with the platform.

Most recently, we've implemented Almabase's event workflow, which has revolutionized our invitation and RSVP process. The platform now automatically sends initial and reminder invitations to invitees, saving us significant time and reducing manual effort. This automation has not only streamlined our operations but also allowed us to allocate staff resources more efficiently.

Looking back over the past year, it's been remarkable to see how much Almabase has evolved in response to user input. The solution has grown substantially since we first started, and we are excited about the future of our partnership.

This fall, marking one year since we first began using Almabase, we've fully embraced the platform. We now have all the modules in place-Giving, Communications, Forms, Communities, and Events-and while we're still in the process of onboarding the Giving and Communities modules, we are already seeing tremendous benefits. We're excited about the opportunities these new features will bring to our community.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to continuing our collaboration with Almabase.

Best regards,
Rob Odoardi
Director of Advancement Data Services
Rhode Island School of Design

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Rob Odoardi
Rhode Island School of Design
rodoardi@risd.edu
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-10-2025 07:35 AM
From: Leah Richards
Subject: Experience with Almabase

Hi Shelby,

We are also exploring Almabase in conjunction with RE NXT. This is part of an overarching CRM evaluation project here. I'd love to hear these insights on Almabase as well!

My best,
Leah

------------------------------
Leah Richards
St. John Fisher University
lrichards@sjf.edu
------------------------------

HI Leah and Shelby,

We are also exploring Almabase in conjunction with RX NXT and I would like to hear what  others experiences utalizieng Almabase. More specifically the back end of the process as it relates to Matching event registrants to RE constituents what that  entail's and processing gifts and fees tied to events. 

Beth Unruh-Arnold

Senior Gift and Data Records Specialist

Division of Advancement

Ithaca College

eunruh@ithaca.edu

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Beth Unruh-Arnold
Ithaca College
eunruh@ithaca.edu
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Hi Shelby,

We made the shift from CVENT to Almabase for event management this past fall, so we don't yet have a ton of experience (grain of salt recommended!). Our primary reasons for making the switch were cost (we're paying about 1/2 of what we are paying), desire for a more modern look/feel, better user interface for Alumni Relations staff who are doing the work of setting up event registration sites.

I'm not personally using Almabase on a daily basis, but here's what I've gleaned through meetings and conversations...

PROS:

• About 1/2 the cost.
• Much more modern look/feel for our event pages (from event manager and event participant perspective).
• Easier and more intuitive event set-up for Alumni Relations staff.
• Events set up in Almabase are automatically created in RE, and registration data flows across.
• Event registration fees now simpler to process/reconcile for our administrative and financial services staff.
• Customer support is smart/friendly, and they are eager to work on improving their product based on customer feedback. 

CONS: 

• Things get a little glitchy with multi-session events (e.g. a reunion weekend with RSVPs for more than one activity). This was kind of true with CVENT, too, but it was more about the less friendly user interface.
• There is sometimes a delay with customer support because the majority of the staff seem to be located in India/Europe (but they do have a ChatBot, and if the ChatBot can't answer to your satisfaction, the kick your question to a support rep, and they get back to you pretty quickly). CVENT was more accessible by phone.

NOT SURE YET:

• We are still early in our adoption of this product, so we have not yet tried to incorporate giving into an event registration page.
• Our Alumni Records person is fairly new, and he is just now sorting out the details about how to update contact information in RE based on new/different information entered in an Almabase registration. Seems like it will be pretty straightforward.
• We did not purchase the Alumni Online Community yet. One thing at a time.

All in all, it's only been a few months, but no big regrets so far. I'll check in with the Alumni Relations group and let you know if they have anything else to add.

Let me know if you want someone from our team to talk with someone from your team, and I'll see what I can do.

Erin

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Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
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Hey there, Shelby,

We've gone all in with Almabase for our peer-to-peer, some donation pages, some event registration pages and Alumni directory. I say some because we also use Blackbaud's Online Express wherever we can.   I would agree with what others are saying as far as end-user satisfaction with the pages, etc...  On the back end donation pages and the directory are great.  We currently import the donations into Raiser's Edge, though we could choose to have them feed into an NXT gift batch (which we may do so in the future).  For event registrations, it's more messy and labor intensive.  We have those feeding into the NXT gift batch because an import is not easily done.  But, NXT gift batches are still a work in progress for Blackbaud so not all fields are accessible in the batch (though I guess that will change soon) requiring additional work post commitment of the batch. This become a problem during Homecoming weekend where we have so many events and so many moving parts.  It gets to be very time-consuming.

Customer service, in my opinion, is great.  If the concern is urgent you can indicate that in the chat and they are fairly quick.  If you need something changed/fixed/modified about how things work they are less likely to suggest you put it in their "suggestion" box. Instead, I've had them do some programming and fix our concerns within a couple of days.  I think they are working to improve the product and get more customers.

I'm happy to answer any question if you want to reach out to me directly.

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Lisa Geiersbach
Northwood University
geiersl@northwood.edu
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Hi Shelby, we moved to Almabase for our events and communications platform. Our main database is Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT. We moved away from Blackbaud Net Community. We couldn't be happier with Almabase! We took the decision very serious and went through a year project to interview other higher education Advancement Services teams on their products as well as choose our top three platform choices and do demos. We ultimately chose Almabase. Wow on pricing compared to other products and they have been the only product that fully integrates with NXT. The Almabase team is great to work with, and were crucial in the implementation process. If there is any information you would like me to share I am happy to schedule a meeting time to talk with you! 

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Colleen Jones
McDaniel College
cfjones@mcdaniel.edu
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