Blackbaud NetCommunity

Score3.8 out of 10

70 Reviews and Ratings

What is Blackbaud NetCommunity?

The Blackbaud NetCommunity online alumni management system helps users to gain a deeper understanding of alumni relationships, execute multichannel engagement strategies, and eliminate tedious back-office tasks.

Blackbaud NetCommunity provides tools to engage alumni and supporters, wherever they may be, helping users:

Connect in person and create memorable alumni engagement events with online alumni management system tools to help foster a personal connection between alumni and a school
Share the right message to the right constituent with personalized website content that's dynamically customized to alumni
Make every email count with donor insight and personalization tools to help reach the right audience with the right message

Categories & Use Cases

Nonprofit Fundraising

Darcy Turner View profile

Senior Director of Advancement Services at University of New Haven (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use BBNC to host our donation pages, for event registrations and for blast e-mail communications. The integration with Raiser's Edge and the gift queue and to load communication lists from queries helps to limit the number of products we need and keep tight integration.

Pros

To have some web design for our giving pages within our departmental control has been helpful.
The integration between Query and BBNC for loading communication lists works very well.
Customer support for this product, via chat, has always been great.

Cons

When we have carding attacks on our payment gateway it is always a struggle to get all the players to work together and determine how to get us back up and running. ReCAPTCHA at the highest level is not supported, for example.
From experience, the product has not been stable in the last couple years and all signs have been pointing towards a sunsetting of this product for years.

Return on Investment

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.

Other Software Used

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT, GiveCampus, ThankView, EverTrue Raise

Linda Behrman View profile

Director of Membership in Marketing at The Peregrine Fund (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

Ease of donation forms online--secure donation pages are very important to our constituents.
Broadcast emails to our constituents

Cons

Better capabilities of creating forms within our website's design

Return on Investment

The secure online donation forms provided a big boost to our online donations
Ease of importing data into Raiser's Edge was a time saving feature over having to enter the data manually

Alternatives Considered

Blackbaud Online Express

Other Software Used

Blackbaud Online Express, Blackbaud CRM

Lena Trubnikova View profile

Operations Director in Finance and Accounting at Autism Speaks Canada (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

Donation forms can be set up for each specific campaign and linked to specific funds and appeals in Raiser's Edge
Event registrations/ticket sales are also lined directly to the event records in Raiser's Edge
NC pulls data needed for sending out e-blasts directly from Raiser's Edge which makes it possible not to have to recreate email lists all the time because you can send it using Raiser's Edge queries. We also like the tracking feature where we know how many emails were opened and resulted in donations

Cons

The E-Card functionality is not perfect. We had difficulty sending out e-cards with multiple recipients as all the selected recipients ended up getting emails with the first name of the first recipient used for all of them in the addressee sections. Blackbaud has been unable to fix it for us so we are forced to continue using the limited Ecards function
It is not mobile friendly
It needs to have multiple unsubscribe levels - right now it only gives an option to unsubscribe but we would like to add different levels of subscription
The emails look different in preview vs the final version

Return on Investment

NC allows us to create multiple fundraising initiatives and reconcile the funds accordingly
It allows us to quickly set up event pages
The Ecard solution has had a negative effect when multiple gift card recipients got an email addressing them with someone else's name
The unsubscribe function precludes constituents from possibly choosing an option to not unsubscribe completely from all of our communication but make a selection of what they want to continue receiving emails about.

Alternatives Considered

Luminate Online and DonorDrive

Other Software Used

Luminate

Sean Pomory View profile

Digital Media Specialist in Marketing at Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

Ease of use
Large community
Certificates available

Cons

Online forms could integrate better with CMS (other than iframe)
Better API to sync with other CRMs
Lower price

Return on Investment

Easily collect online donations

Alternatives Considered

GitHub, HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Sales

Other Software Used

HubSpot, Typeform, Zapier

Lily Barger View profile

Business Systems Analyst in Information Technology at University of California, Riverside (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

NetCommunity integrates with Raiser's Edge well.
It is fairly simple to construct an email.

Cons

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.

Return on Investment

It has had a positive impact because 99% of the fundraising dollars that we get from email appeals come from emails sent through NetCommunity.

Alternatives Considered

i-modules and MailChimp

Other Software Used

Blackbaud Online Express, Raiser's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT

Apricot

Almabase

Hivebrite

Blackbaud NetCommunity

What is Blackbaud NetCommunity?

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

NetCommunity For Now...

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used