To help you learn about new and updated features that complement your use of Raiser’s Edge NXT, we regularly feature highlights of new and updated Blackbaud Marketplace applications. Over the past three months we saw incredibly valuable additions in many categories.

New and Updated Apps by Category

• Communications & Engagement: Mongoose Cadence text and chat; Letter Box + DocuSign; SmartLETTERS by SmartTHING; EasyREmerge acknowledgement letters
• Business Intelligence and Reporting: Aqueduct Data Warehouse for RENXT and FENXT and ActiveEcho Azure Reporting Databases for RENXT and FENXT
• Integration & Automation Platforms: Omatic Cloud and SmartSYNC by SmartTHING
• Productivity: Audit Trail Cloud and PaperSave by PairSoft
• Membership: Cuseum Digital Membership
• Volunteer Management: CivicChamps – New!

Read on to learn how you can extend Raiser’s Edge NXT to meet your unique productivity, workflow, and mission delivery needs. You can view and explore all of these applications in the Blackbaud Marketplace.

Communications & Engagement

Cadence – New!

Mongoose’s Cadence is trusted by over 750 schools to deliver easy-to-manage, personalized communications to their audiences at mass scale using text and chat solutions. Partner schools sent nearly 9 million texts in 2021 and reported outcomes like increased enrollment, higher retention rates, higher event attendance rates, reduced summer melt, and increased fundraising dollars after adopting Cadence to engage students and families across their educational journey.

• The new two-way Cadence – RENXT integration maximizes productivity of advancement teams by ensuring contact records in Cadence have the most up-to-date information from RENXT and that constituent records in RENXT display message history in real time along with opt-out status.
• Users save time as the integration eliminates the need to flip between two systems to get a full picture of engagement with a contact. The integration helps optimize team performance during high-pressure giving days and alumni regional giving campaigns, as users can update and refresh data in Cadence throughout the day so that the correct contacts always receive the right messages.
• Automated data transfers ensure no manual steps are required post-configuration. An informational dashboard allows users to monitor the overall health of the integration and proactively identify any issues.

Letter Box – Updated!


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SmartLETTERS by SmartTHING – updated!

It’s now even easier to send emails and letters from right inside Raiser’s Edge NXT. Released this week, a major update to SmartLETTERS brings a host of new features as-well as a totally redesigned, easy to use interface. Just a few of the major updates:

• Edit letter templates from inside RENXT
• Independent editing of print and email letter content
• Ability to connect Microsoft or Google accounts to send emails from your organization.

Learn more in this news post HERE which includes a video!

EasyREmerge – New!
EasyREmerge provides simple, conditional mail merge functionality for RE and RENXT Acknowledgement letters. EasyREmerge was developed by a veteran RE/RENXT instructor to replicate closely the process familiar to users of the "Send to Mail Merge” function prior to 2022. It uses an Excel Add-in to process Conditional Donor Acknowledgement Letters using Gift Letter Codes from RE Mail > Donor Acknowledgement Letters. It allows you to use RE Mail for your letters as before, with the one change of clicking the Export button instead of Send to Mail Merge.


Key EasyREmerge features include:

• Generates letters in Microsoft Word.
• Utilizes a single shared folder containing all mail merge letter templates to simplify adding or editing letters.
• Allows for letters with different margins, images, headers, and footers.
• Allows for letters with bold, italics, and underlining.
• Generates conditional letters for hard and soft credits if required.
• Simple placement and management of Mail Merge Fields.
• Developed by a 25-year veteran Raiser's Edge Instructor

This app will be available very soon through the Blackbaud Marketplace. In the meantime you can visit the website to unlock an EasyREMerge 7 day free trial.

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Business Intelligence / Reporting

Aqueduct – New!
Zuri Group Aqueduct is a data warehouse solution for Raisers Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT. It creates a secure, local or Azure-hosted, data warehouse allowing for reports to be built within Power BI, Tableau, or other tool of choice.


Aqueduct uses the Blackbaud SKY APls and custom exports to move data from the cloud to your data warehouse and can be updated nightly or more often if needed. Lastly, Aqueduct can import from additional data sources to provide greater context to your reports and dashboards.

ActiveEcho Azure Reporting Databases for NXT – New!
Mission BI has completely redeveloped their ActiveEcho Reporting Databases for Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT on the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. Enable near real-time connections to your Blackbaud NXT data from virtually any reporting or business intelligence platform, including Power BI, Crystal Reports, Tableau, and SQL Server Management Studio.


This application helps ensure your key staff and business units always have critical, up-to-date business intelligence only a few clicks away. With ActiveEcho, your reporting is always connected and always reflects your current NXT data. ActiveEcho also provides direct connectivity for report distribution options commonly available within Power BI, Tableau, Crystal Reports and many other reporting platforms.


ActiveEcho creates a mirror of your NXT data on 'Azure SQL' (SQL Server) databases that is simple to connect to built-in data connectors in your advanced reporting platform. Near real time updates ensure your reporting always reflects your current NXT data.


This hands-free service is powered by Blackbaud's SKY API and hosted in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Your data is continually updated by the ActiveEcho ETL Data Pipeline Platform in near-real time, 24/7/365; the service is 100% managed by the Mission BI Operations Team.

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Integration & Automation Platforms

Omatic Cloud – New!

For over 20 years, Omatic’s ImportOmatic has helped nonprofits streamline their data processes. Now, Omatic Cloud couples the best of that experience with the most advanced, secure cloud technology. Purpose-built for nonprofits, Omatic Cloud seamlessly integrates third-party applications and data with Blackbaud databases. What can organizations expect from Omatic Cloud?

• Enhanced data quality – By automating data processes, Omatic Cloud eliminates the risk of manual data entry errors. Further, it can fix errors such as misspellings or mis-casings during import. Organizations remain in control, as they are alerted to data that needs review, for example potential duplicates matched based on name, address, or email.
• Time-savings – Removing manual process for data entry, review, and clean-up, Omatic Cloud frees up time for staff to focus on initiatives that drive mission impact.
• Improved supporter communication – With combined data from all an organization’s systems, Omatic Cloud enables a complete view of supporters. With this information, nonprofits can better communicate with constituents for more effective acquisition, retention, and long-term support.

SmartSYNC by SmartTHING – Updated!

SmartTHING continues to enhance SmartSYNC, their fully-managed integration and automation platform for Raiser’s Edge NXT. It helps you unlock the power of your RENXT database by integrating it to the applications that you use every day. The latest enhancement brings much-requested features, including the ability to:

• Automate imports and exports.
• Access every field in your Raiser’ Edge (RE7) database, including all the fields only available via database view – in addition to connecting to your RENXT database fields.

Check out the details in this news post, which includes a video!

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Productivity

Audit Trail Cloud – Updated!

The Audit Trail Cloud application by Zeidman allows organizations to track changes made in Raiser’s Edge NXT (web view and database view). In response to customer feedback, they’ve recently added the option to host Audit Trail on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering organizations a choice of infrastructure. Many RENXT customers already used Azure internally or are familiar with it because Blackbaud hosts their Raiser’s Edge on it. Zeidman has always offered Audit Trail Cloud on AWS but we have received more and more requests to port the application over to Azure.


The application works the same way whether it’s hosted on AWS or Azure. When a change is made in Raiser's Edge, web view or database view, the app on the cloud server captures that change, processes it (looks up the previous value, and, where possible, who made the change) and stores it in a database with the all the other changes for the user to review later.


Zeidman is still assessing how your costs will differ on the two platforms. Both AWS and Azure have free credits for non-profits which will certainly help but the price per usage is yet to be compared in detail.

PaperSave by PairSoft – Updated!

Pairsoft creates powerful tools for RENXT and FENXT to automate gift batching and streamline donor management. PairSoft recently launched a mobile app for PaperSave, its natively integrated RENXT automation solution. They’ve made other recent enhancements to PaperSave based on user feedback, including:

• New OCR fields for ‘Check Number’ and ‘Reference,’ giving you even more detail for your gift and donor documents.
• Gift split specification to allocate funds to more than one source.
• Intuitive ID lookup for gift splits, making it easier to find where you can input the record ID number.

In 2023, look for more updates for PaperSave’s out-of-the-box fundraising workflows and fully encrypted donor record management. The PairSoft team wishes a happy holiday season to the Blackbaud community, and says they can’t wait to share more in the new year!

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Membership

Cuseum Digital Membership – Updated!

Streamline the membership process and reduce the costs associated with physical card creation and distribution with Cuseum’s Digital Membership solution. The product team at Cuseum continues to transform membership for the digital age with these recent enhancements to their solution:

• Guest Pass Improvement: more flexibility, support for expiring guest passes, the ability to display Guest Pass invite form on the Member Portal & more barcode options.
• Reporting (Export button)
• The ability to make edits on records for CSV customers
• New CSV Formatting Guide
• The ability to add photos to Digital Membership Cards
• Improvement to Google Wallet passes through support of extra images (e.g. photo ID)
• Supporting security animation on Google Wallet Passes
• Self-serve printable Digital Membership Cards
• Customization of New Members email
• Card Installation Reminder email & Renewal Confirmation email

In Progress / Shipping Soon: Automatic re-delivery of cards upon renewal and for members who have not installed their card.

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Volunteer Management

CivicChamps – New!
Civic Champs is an intuitive volunteer management platform with features that help nonprofits of all sizes track, manage, and engage volunteers with accuracy and ease. A mobile app and web-based dashboards centralize volunteer data in one place, making reports quick and simple. An award-winning Micro-donation tool helps nonprofits streamline the volunteer to donor pipeline. Civic Champs' platform helps volunteer management leaders minimize their workload while improving volunteer experience and satisfaction.

The integration with Raiser's Edge NXT allows the rich information that Civic Champs collects on volunteers to flow directly and automatically to Raiser's Edge. Volunteer activity appears on custom tiles on the home dashboard and constituent profiles.

• Easily view donors’ volunteer contributions directly in RENXT including total time given, group membership, financial impact, and more
• View donor volunteer history and volunteer experience satisfaction
• Import existing volunteers from RENXT to Civic Champs in just one click.

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Blackbaud Marketplace Updates

Recent Updates

If you haven’t visited the Blackbaud Marketplace in a little while, here’s a snapshot of recent improvements we’ve made!

• App collections – Collections are a way to sort through the Marketplace applications by key features, such as recently added, most popular, By Blackbaud, and more. When you select a collection, you then sort the list alphabetically or by popularity. By default, we only show a portion of the collection on the home page so that it’s easier to navigate. However, we’ve also added a new link that enables you to View all. Select this when you want to dig in more thoroughly to a collection.
• Categories – We’ve recently begun adding categories to the Marketplace. Categories are a way to filter available apps by their function or service provided. We’re starting with three categories: Document management, Integration platforms, and Volunteer management. However, we’ll continue to add new categories over time.
• Search – We moved the search to the top of the page, so it’s more easily accessible when you know what you’re looking for or when you want to search by keyword.
• Copy link – On the details page for an application, we added a new Copy link that enables you to copy a direct link to the application. This makes it easy for you to share apps you are interested in with those in your organization
• Blackbaud solutions – You can still filter the available list of Marketplace applications by ones that are compatible with your solution. The solutions filter also works with the collections. Using both together will help you narrow down your results.

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Security Enhancements –

See recent update: How Do Blackbaud Marketplace Apps Use My Data?

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What’s coming next?

Speaking of making the Marketplace more enticing to explore, while we have many new features in the works, we can spill the beans on one we’re pretty darn excited about… Reviews! We know that when it comes to evaluating applications there’s no one you trust more outside of your organization than your peers in the social good space. We wanted to provide a way for customers who’ve connected and used an application to provide feedback on how that experience went for them. And, we’ll provide a way for application publishers to respond publicly to that feedback.



More coming soon, so we hope you’ll bookmark and visit the Blackbaud Marketplace often to see the new apps that are added regularly and the new ways we’re making the experience better for you and your organization.