Blackbaud NetCommunity vs. Blackbaud Target Analytics

For those using the events module, NetCommunity is great, though if you do a lot of walk/run type of events where individuals sponsor other individuals, something like TeamRaiser might make more sense. If you don't have the staff resources for web developers dedicated to fundraising tasks, then NetCommunity is a great tool. It's not as customisable as an experienced programmer/developer might want, but it still has a lot of options. It also has a lot of nuance, and if you cannot make an investment of time or money into getting staff trained, it's not going to work out well.

Incentivized

Target Analytics is great for organizations that are trying to "mine for gold." There are packages and products that can allow you to clean up your data, append the data, and then finally, score the data to create an increased potential for finding major donors and supportive constituents hiding in your database.

• Email marketing efforts are more targeted and now have a higher response rate. This equates to increased fundraising dollars.
• A/B split testing has allowed us to further tailor content that is preferred by our audience. This targeting allows us to be more successful in gaining conversions, event registrations, etc.

Incentivized

• Address Updates - starting at the basics, the Target Analytics products allow you create a firm foundation for the data in your system.
• Data Hygiene - taking it a step further is creating and updating data on an individualized basis - such as DeceasedRecord Finder, and Email Finder.
• Data Modeling - Once your data has been appended it can be modeled for increased donor interaction, stewardship, and solicitation.

• NetCommunity has very simple analytics. It would be great to be able to see more in depth information on how constituents are reacting to the email they receive.
• Though it is simple to construct an email, making a complex design can be challenging due to the limitations of the design tool.
• Although A/B testing is available within NetCommunity, it is not easy to set up.

Incentivized

• Confirmed relationships needs to be a field that can be synced to The Raiser's Edge
• Philanthropic giving, when synced to the Prospect tab, needs to be able to be sorted by dollar value (like in Excel); this is a change that would need to happen in The Raiser's Edge
• With increasing competition from other wealth screening vendors, it would be useful if data sources were updated more frequently (i.e. real estate and giving).

Incentivized

The only reason for this is due to the fact that we are only using the product for a specific purpose that is not directly tied to the newsletters. There are better products out there for what we are doing with grant processing. We will most likely move to a new software instead of renewing for our purposes

Incentivized

The interface with Raiser's Edge and the many different ways our users can interact with the website are a big plus for us. Event registrations are our most popular transaction type and having this on line makes our lives much easier.

Incentivized

Product is stable is up 99.99% of the time. As a hosted customer, we do experience some minor downtime when routers or switches malfunction. We feel the downtime has been minimal and the communications around these outages has been good.

Blackbaud NetCommunity uses .NET technology. It can be sluggish at times if not optimized, but overall we have been pleased with the performance when handling large volumes of traffic.

Blackbaud NetCommunity and all of the Blackbaud products have a great support system. Blackbaud NetCommunity offers support through phone calls, chats, online, and email. Their response time is very quick and the support analysts work with you to resolve issues in a very timely matter. If they do not personally know the answer they will direct you to another support analyst that will be able to assist in a resolution.

Incentivized

While there is always room for improvement, I have always had good luck with TA support. There are so many ways to get help! Sometimes I can answer my own question by just accessing the vast Knowledgebase directory. I have been able to get quick answers by initiating a live Chat without having to navigate the call center voice mail options, which can be a little overwhelming. Sometimes my question or problem is more involved and I'll submit a case online. Between email conversations or a phone call, the representatives I've worked with have always been super helpful, never condescending, and they often follow up days later to make sure everything is working well

Incentivized

As expected. Courseware was a nice reference guide.

I truly wish that "0" was an option. I never really pin-pointed whether the implementation issues that we had were caused by Blackbaud, or if it was part of a larger issue that began in-house.

Incentivized

We started out with Blackbaud NetCommunity but eventually switched to Blackbaud's Online Express. Online Express offered more features and was included with the upgrade to Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge NXT. Blackbaud NetCommunity did meet most of our needs and was a great starting point for our e-communications and online forms within our website.

Incentivized

No one product can give a complete picture of your prospect. We like to layer products to be sure we get second and sometimes third confirmations that we are looking at the right prospect and accurate assets for that prospect. All these vendors use similar data sources and algorithms, but the unique ways they each present the data along with each using a different data source update timetable really helps to put all the pieces of the puzzle that is our prospect together and ensures we are looking at the the most complete picture possible for our gift officers. ResearchPoint is a key component in this puzzle for us with the icing on the top being its seamless integration with The Raiser's Edge. Being able to qualify real estate, business info, philanthropic and political giving and then sync it to the Prospect tab with one click is a huge gift!

Incentivized

• We are able to manage quick turn-around when needed for Event pages and registration.
• Integration with Raiser's Edge is certainly efficient
• I believe the unsubscribe functionality is potentially removing folks permanently from all of our communications for one small reason, thus eliminating future fundraising opportunities because they cannot be selective.

Incentivized

• ResearchPoint gives us peace of mind that we have the right prospect thru their confidence level scores and just by having accurate information most of the time.
• ResearchPoint often shows us gifts to other orgs or real estate we did not find from other sources.
• I can't really come up with a negative impact on ROI!

Incentivized