Comments on: CRM&CMS Integration: Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge and NetCommunity

By: drydaybydrita

drydaybydrita — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:18:13 +0000

Hi great thread we have going here!

By: Jordan

Jordan — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:35:11 +0000

We are also currently using BBNC, and desperately trying to get rid of it. We have never felt so ignored with issues that cripple the functionality of parts! The events registration is terrible (they require “Billing information” on free events), as well as the blog feature (you can’t comment, and sometimes page frames break). Their solutions for email opt-outs are impractical (people must opt-in to a message, you can’t convert a list or a group of people). Customer service=none. They still have not clarified if they test parts prior to upgrades (which generally take our sites down for at least a day), and issues that started over 3 years ago are still yet to be fixed – http://bbncfeedback.blackbaud.com/forums/905-general

DO NOT USE!!!!!

By: jean

jean — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:33:25 +0000

Also should have added – Blackbaud are tied into using a very limited number of payment gateway providers, so we had to give up our affordable payment provider and sign up to a very expensive one, even further increasing the costs.

By: jean

jean — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:31:03 +0000

I work as a web designer for a medium-sized non-profit which uses Raiser’s Edge and NetCommunity, and NetCommunity is beyond doubt the most horribly designed CMS I’ve ever seen. Workflows are counter-intuitive and slow – you can’t even delete more than one image from the image library at once, if you can believe that. The code that it outputs is hideous and search engines hate it. We have moved an ecommerce shop out of Netcommunity to another software because the shop was performing so badly in search engines and was so clunky to update. We don’t use the CMS function as it would cut my productivity by 90%, no exaggeration. So after a huge investment, the product is unusable for at least three of the five functions we purchased it for, and the remaining two do not work particularly well. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:16:39 +0000

So to sum it up:
Blackbaud = Expensive + Closed System

Competition is what drives integration.

By: Graham Getty

Graham Getty — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:22:35 +0000

Good comments here. We have RE and are currently in the process of converting from a previous content management system to NetCommunity / Online Campus Community with Blackbaud. I agree with the overall sentiments – basically, Blackbaud is good but expensive. I also agree that if you have the talent (but not the cash) you can do equally as well with open source solutions such as Drupal. Anyway, I’m rambling. The only new thing I wanted to mention was Blackbaud’s new, low-cost offering called SPARK. It offers branded email, online giving and online events that all push through to RE without you having to use the full CMS offering of NetCommunity. It is getting some good feedback from what I hear. Thought some here might want to check out SPARK.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:29:45 +0000

No idea. Sorry about that. I do know that Blackbaud has a foothold in the education space, so perhaps that is a product more geared to that audience?

By: JB

JB — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:31:08 +0000

What is the difference between Blackbaud’s NetCommunity and a product I have seen call “Online Campus Community?”

By: admin

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:16:07 +0000

I actually don’t know how much NetCommunity costs – you should talk to a Blackbaud salesperson.

Saving a few thousand dollars in staff salary should only be a small part of why you purchase any new software system, because a new software system always has hidden costs in staff time to learn a new system, etc. A big part is about the positive multiplicatory effect you get with better data analysis and flow – meaning more effective mission achievement.

By: Jennie Marie

Jennie Marie — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:21:48 +0000

So, how much is NetCommunity? Jeffrey says it’s not $10K. Our website currently uses Qgiv to integrate donation and event registration into our existing website. The design consistency is important to us. The main reason we’re looking at NetCommunity to save time on data entry into RE, but the savings would be a few thousand dollars in staff salary at the most….not $10K!!!