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Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM

Score7.6 out of 10

115 Reviews and Ratings

What is Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM?

Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.

BB e-CRM - Investigated, selected, installed and rewarded!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use BBCRM to track all gifts by Alumni, Donors and friends to the University. This includes actual cash gifts, pledges, matching gifts, planned gifts etc. We populate the system with in depth bio, personal and financial data and then use the system to sort and highlight potential prospects. The system is available to all staff at the University although access to certain data is restricted by use case. Currently we have about 500 active users across campus. The system is available 24/7 and is reachable via any internet connection through a series of secure firewalls and MFA. It is also available on IOS devices.

Pros

  • Accessing in-depth data for a single constituent is easily done and customizable by user working with "tiles" on the home screen
  • Generating lists of possible prospects with specific similarities can be done with a few clicks and then stored for more research later
  • well designed relationship options allow for a a look at specific constituents and how they might relate to other constituents in the system leading to more effective prospecting
  • Screens can be easily customized by user or user group eliminating irrelevant data and presenting only truly relevant information

Cons

  • Tighter integration with other BB products like Award Management would be nice
  • Better emailing and event modules within BBIS would allow us to do more within CRM and not have to support extra software
  • More and better API will allow users to build more sophisticated interface to external products

Return on Investment

  • Our ability to provide consistent accurate performance numbers has improved dramatically. Anyone, at any time, can hit a single button and know what our fundraising goals are and how we are performing against those goals. Very popular with upper management
  • Implementing different modules within the system has save us time and cost using outside options. NCOA is a good example. We run t quarterly for all records. Any school or subunit can then send mailing out at any time without dealing with another cleanse and the associated cost. We've saved over $200,000 doing it once for all instead of piecemeal.
  • The system provides more accurate data faster for major gift research and solicitation. Our staffing levels have dropped (not recommended) but our actual funds raised and gifts processed have increased by 25%

Other Software Used

Anthology Encompass, EverTrue Engage, OnBase

Blackbaud

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it to look up data on constituents I work with and keep others in the loop by recording my interactions with constituents. It is helpful to have one place to look for all information about a constituent.

Pros

  • Allows me to link my email interactions directly into the system
  • Has areas to store all information about a person
  • Easy to pull just the information I need

Return on Investment

  • I do not have access to the costs, but I know finding info in Blackbaud is MUCH easier than it was in our last CRM.
  • It is an efficient platform.
  • I can run reports myself rather than having to requesting information from another department.

Great tool needs more support to carry into the future

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize it for donor records, prospect management, bbis, wealth screening, donor information

Pros

  • Analytics
  • Wealth screening
  • Sophisticated functionality

Cons

  • Customer service
  • New development

Return on Investment

  • Ability to store a lot of details… historical accuracy

Other Software Used

WealthEngine, iWave, Lexis Advance Quicklaw

Review from fundraising professional

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Blackbaud CRM to house the data on all of our donors and constituents. It tracks information on them such as giving history, contact information, education info, events attended, and employment information. I use many data points when pulling in constituents to mass communication efforts. I also use data points to do prospect research and refer major gift prospects to major gift officers.

Pros

  • Easy to edit data points (address, etc.)
  • When viewing a constituent you can see a lot of data points at once
  • Giving history is fairly easy to navigate and understand

Cons

  • When querying data, it will double count gifts (self credit and spouse credit)
  • Unable to delete prior contact info, can only end date it
  • Unable to list preferred pronouns

Return on Investment

  • The easier we can update personal data the easier we can reach people
  • We have streamlined our workflows of who can edit what areas
  • Our data is secure

Other Software Used

Smartsheet, Trello, Atlassian Confluence

Adequate but not Exceptional

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization uses Blackbaud to capture constituent (alumni, faculty/staff, current students, friends) information, including biographical, education, involvements, interactions, and revenue; and query this information based on fundraiser needs.

Pros

  • Blackbaud constituent profiles are easy to navigate to find basic information (address, phone, email, prospect manager, documentation).
  • The constituent summary at the top of the constituent page is useful for quickly seeing pertinent information.
  • Links embedded within the constituent summary make it easy to quickly navigate a constituent's profile.

Cons

  • Certain aspects of Blackbaud are oddly non-customizable.
  • Blackbaud updates/support is slow and often ineffective - our organization switched to Microsoft 365, which is apparently incompatible with Blackbaud. Help/support recommended clunky workarounds that don't actually work, rather than proactively enhancing compatibility
  • There should be a flag in constituent search to show which people in the results list are deceased.
  • Query isn't very user friendly. It should be simple to locate the information that you want to pull, and add parameters to that information. Instead you have to write multiple queries to set parameters, then write a query that looks at those other queries. It's time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and the knowledge/proficiency is difficult to explain or transfer to new staff.
  • Blackbaud generally just feels like its technology is outdated. It wasn't built for the needs of a modern organization, and its developers have failed to make the necessary improvements over time to stay competitive.

Return on Investment

  • Our organization adopted Blackbaud mid-fundraising campaign and completed successfully completed our campaign, raising over $1 billion.
  • We were able to identify the wealth capacity of a targeted population of nearly 1,000 incoming parents, 87% of which had major gift level capacity.

Alternatives Considered

Slate for Admissions, Cvent Event Management, Ellucian Banner, Simplify, PeopleSoft Campus Solutions and Salesforce.org Education Cloud

Other Software Used

Perceptive Content, PeopleSoft Campus Solutions