With Blackbaud Online Express' online fundraising & donation software, users can create unlimited donation forms and send and track email communications. Plus, this simple, smart, cloud-based tool is integrated with the Fundraising and CRM solution, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®. Blackbaud Online Express enables users to create and send mobile-responsive emails. Reach constituents quickly with pre-designed, mobile-friendly email templates created specifically for…
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Boardable
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Boardable headquartered in Indianapolis offers their eponymous board portal and board management application.
For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.
Boardable is definitely worth the cost. It’s extremely valuable and there are new tools and updates being released all the time. Their staff reaches out for feedback and is easy to reach. It is a great resource for managing our board meetings and being effective, supportive, and interactive for our Trustees. I never want to waste our board members' time and Boardable helps us deliver an outstanding and engaging board experience.
Online donation forms are easy to create and place within our existing website. The donations received are easily transferred into our Raiser's Edge database.
Creating email communications for our constituents is very simple to achieve in Online Express and the statistics provided are very helpful to see what our constituents are clicking on.
Organize and execute Board & Committee meetings through the "Meetings" which allows you to build your agenda, attach documents, create minutes, and send out a summary of the meeting once completed.
Provide a very versatile Document Center where you can archive all types of documents for current and future use.
Polls, Tasks, & Decision-making features. These tools allow for broadcasting to members at large or to committees important information to be acted upon. It also keeps a record of responses.
Reports--this is an area we are just beginning to appreciate since it provides overviews of board member engagement and progress made within committees and the board at large.
People Directory--an invaluable tool for orienting new board members to current members as well as allowing for board members to contact each other.
Goal Setting: this is a tool we are just starting to use. It allows for the tracking of progress for board projects and/or fundraising.
It does have some "quirks." It can be a little tricky to process the batch until you have done it a few times.
I had a problem finding a constituent yesterday - he was purchasing a program ad for an event - that I knew was in the database. It turned out that he had been marked inactive, and so apparently wasn't included in the search results.
Customer service for all of Blackbaud's products has really lacked over the years. They are starting to get better in the last year but it can very frustrating. The online knowledge base community is the best resource for information. At times it can take hours for a customer sect even rep to help with questions or problems which is not at all ideal in this industry.
Boardable provides ample videos, information, and support to enable new members to learn how to navigate the platform. However, not all members are motivated to learn a new software system. Lessons learned with onboarding new members is to do a Spotlight meeting with them that utilizes as many of the popular features our board uses so that they shorten their learning curve. As with anything new, "practice makes permanent!"
Blackbaud Online Express is mainly used strictly because of its integration with Raiser's Edge. If a client uses Salesforce for constituent/lead management, other products can offer more flexibility in designing donation forms, email templates, etc. However, they all have their own negatives in Salesforce integration -- that is a whole other can of worms. While the Raiser's Edge integration of Online Express isn't perfect, it is relatively painless compared to the competition's Salesforce integration. Also, for NFP's, Blackbaud's NFP focused business model is a plus.
The main issue is this platform is designed and geared toward nonprofits vs. adapting a for-profit board portal. The second is the price point, while it has gone up significantly, is still in line with nonprofit budgets.
