Celeste had inquired about my opinion on Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge (RE) in a recent comment (post). It’s a program that has dominated fundraising and one that I’ve worked with quite a bit. However I should clarify, I don’t work with Raiser’s Edge (info) directly. That is: not the database end of it. I do manage the installations, upgrades, maintenance, and troubleshooting, and currently work closely with a very talented in-house DBA. On occasion I do find myself in the development tools, though. Between the DBA’s experience and my own, I find RE to be a well conceived, well supported application. It does exactly what it is meant to do and seems to do so quite competently. More often than not, problems I come across have solutions found in the online knowledgebase. While the DBA has outwitted many of the Blackbaud support staff, I have felt they are all well enough trained for my needs, patient, responsive, and clear. That’s what I need from my complex-application providers.
If you’ve not used RE, be prepared for a couple of things.
1) Complexity. Logically constructed and versatile though it may be, RE requires training for effective use. I would never setup an RE database without help. After training, new functions can be picked up relatively easily. It helps to have a dedicated staff person on RE, but there are plenty of consultants specializing in the product if needs arise.
2) Expensive. Blackbaud has made an industry out of charging non-profits exorbitant prices. Their products seem well worth it though. I would recommend RE if your non-profit can handle the initial and recurring costs.
Due to RE’s costs, I recommend a few things. Speak to other non-profits that use RE to understand the full scope of RE’s deployment into your organization. Don’t limit yourself to just the ones Blackbaud provides as references. An investment of this level shouldn’t just make fundraising and customer management easier. This product should shape the way your development department operates, opening up new roads to money and constituent generation. Have a plan for growth in place before you buy and be willing to change that plan as you experience the strengths and weaknesses of RE.
I would also add that before investing in Raiser’s Edge speak to other similar organizations who use the software; both similar in size and in charitable cause. There may be limitations to what you can achieve because The Raiser’s Edge does not facilitate your specific business requirements. Many organizations will ask Blackbaud or other independant consultants to develop customizations for their Raiser’s Edge implementation so that they can continue to use the same business processes.
Speak to the vendors of your other IT systems. It may be that they have integration software that will enable you to transfer data between The Raiser’s Edge and say your accounting system or your online fundraising system. This can be achieved natively in Raiser’s Edge via file imports and exports but for a more automated approach a customization may be required.
David Zeidman
Zeidman Development
http://www.zeidman.info
My US colleagues would agree with what you say about cost of consultancy. One of them said something along the lines of “in my 25 years in the industry I have never come across (rest of comment deleted, not because of obscenity, but because of possible offence to Blackbaud)”.
I’m a UK RE user, so I have no vested interest in saying this: but there are independant consultants who may be a good alternative to Blackbaud’s own. We’ve never used one, we just try and work out as much as we can ourselves.
In my experience, the trick to getting value out of RE is deciding to get value out of it. There are free resources available, like the RE Users Forum (http://reusers.server-planet.com) that helps users of the software network with and support each other to get the most out of their investment. The best part – Blackbaud has nothing to do with it
Blackbaud and Raiser’s Edge, and all closed source software, counter the philosphies and missions of most non-profits. If only a viable open-source and free non-profit management suite were to be developed., Non-profits could free funds normally earmarked for expense bloat-ware and use them for their missions.
As a past development professional, I think very highly of the Raiser’s Edge and regard it as one of the best fundraising software products on the market.
With that said, I also understand that the product is expensive and because of general maintenance fees for support, that leaves little or no money for training. As we know, fundraising staff turns over ever 18-24 months in most capacities, and finding replacement staff with RE knowledge can be a challenge.
I empathize. That’s why I do what I do now.
Bradford Consulting Group LLC offers customized and affordable training and consulting programs for RE users. Visit them on the web at http://www.bradfordllc.com for more information.
Look at civiCRM.org. It does not have all of the features of RE, but it does offer small nonprofits a viable option.
Convio’s new database product Common Ground will do everything RE does for less and it’s open to other platforms for fundraising, accounting,etc. Worth checking out.
I work for a large non profit in Canada and we are trying to get away from RE. To put it nicely, in my opinion, their customer service is not up to par. It's very hard to get a straight answer out of them – no matter who you talk to.
I've spent a huge amount of time dealing with RE, the organisation I worked for was Blackbauds largest client in our region. We had a full time development team of 5 staff with a total full time database team of 13.
I found Blackbaud to be painful to deal with at best, incompetant at worst. They offered lightweight bandaid solutions that don't actually fix problems (with regards to interesting data corruption). The VBA API is ok if not slightly unstable, but when used with .Net is subject to some strange errors.
I think our database was just far too big for them to cope with. When I spoke to them on the phone and they'd ask me to 'email them a copy of our database', there would be silence on the other end when I told them just how big that file would be.
Technically, they have a problem with bloating the procedure cache on SQL server, something that for us caused a crash every 1.5 weeks without fail until we scheduled a task to flush this cache daily.
This wouldn't be a problem for "normal" users, but if you're a big organisation who has a lot of supporter data, RE is not the way to go.
I've spoken to smaller NGOs who don't drive their system as hard and don't have these problems. They spend all their time training staff to do things that should be configurable more easily without API development though.
Most smaller organisations do not need a system as complex as RE. Its potentially easier to start out with a home written database written in access (provided it is storing the correct data) and then look at upgrading to RE or some other system later on. I have personally written two fundraising database systems in Access, while "on the job" and the current one does automatic thank you letter generation (and email generation) and rotates the letter texts so donors don't get the same one twice. Its also fully relational with relationships settable between donors/campaigns, donor to donor etc.
It took me about a week to do the programming and its all properly annotated so if I leave anyone can use it or reprogram it.
We have Raiser's Edge and are looking for another organization to support in order to offset some of our costs. Approximately 20 hours per week available, telecommute support only. Please contact us at raisersedgesupport@gmail.com.
Has anyone looked at http://www.blue-swarm.com for non-profit fundraising?