FundSvcs Community

Hello AASP Community,

My organization is considering switching from our highly customized Salesforce instance (pre-NPSP) to the Blackbaud Raisers Edge. I am wondering if anyone would be willing to speak with me and my team about your advice and pro's and con's to Blackbaud. Our directive is to make the decision by the end of December, so if anyone can speak with us in the next two weeks I would really appreciate it!

Some of the things we are considering:

Our Salesforce instance:

Pros: highly customized to our unique circumstances, has grown with our organization as we got more complex, anything you can dream you can do

Cons: in use for 15 years, has a lot of tech debt (archaic fields, reporting, etc.), was not built specifically for fundraising, so we have to build out all of the features we want, such as moves management/ engagement processes. 

Thank you!

~Leslie

@Zoe Carr

Hi Isaac,

Thanks so much for that response, I really appreciate it. Just to be clear, does your message refer to the newest version of Blackbaud, i.e. NXT?

Could you elaborate on this: "The RE style of querying and reporting is very old-school, and not suited to on-the-fly query construction or exploration of data. There are MANY quirks to RE's data model. Larger institutions tend to invest in data warehousing to be able to use PowerBI or other reporting tools instead of relying only on RE's internal reporting engine. " 

~Leslie

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for that input. It's really valuable to hear from other professionals about their experience with similar situations.

Some of the points I've found most valuable to consider:

• RE NXT is not customizable like Salesforce, has limitations and quirks, and reporting is not very intuitive and usually must be handled by experts
• Alternatives include migrating to one of Salesforce's pre built systems like NPSP or re-implementing our Salesforce (our programs + fundraising are integrated currently)
• The Blackbaud Ideas Community shares some of the limitations which users want to be fixed, which gave me a good under-the-hood look at the system since I have never used it myself before https://community.blackbaud.com/products/raisersedgenxt/ideas 
• We should strongly consider hiring an expert to help guide us through this data migration
• and
• We need to include our users and make sure they are on board with such a major decision

Wish me luck with this process, and thank you!
Leslie

Hi Leslie,

I agree with everything others have said. Switching from a SalesForce based system feels like a step back. You'll go from a very flexible system to one that locks you down, forcing you to be creative with how you store data. 

If it isn't too late, you might consider Slate. I'm in my second conversion to Slate, one from RE at Northfield Mount Hermon and now one from Advance at Williams College. Slate is a great and flexible system. I can't say enough about it.

Victor

Hello everyone,

Wow, the AASP community has really come through for us! We have gotten some great insights on Raiser's Edge and Blackbaud in general, why a database migration might or might not be a good idea, and also some really good insights about how to make a database migration successful if we do go through with it. 

I've talked with a number of folks who have used Blackbaud. Would anyone be willing to speak with me about Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack? Since we use Salesforce pre-NPSP I would love to learn more about how NPSP actually functions.

Thanks again,

Leslie