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RENXT Downgrade Question

Katherine Solomon

Hi All,

My organization is looking for ways to save money in 2021. We currently have Raiser's Edge NXT and I am considering down grading to eTapestry. I signed up for the 30-day trail it seems comparable to RENXT, maybe missing a few things within the constituent records and the reporting side.

Has anyone done this? If so, do you regret moving away from RENXT? Also, what have you found to be the biggest challenges?

Thank you!

Kate

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Comments

Heather MacKenzie

Interesting to hear that about eTapestry. I haven't seen that software for about 5 years now, so it's obviously gotten some significant upgrades since then if you feel they're comparable. I'll be very interested to hear what you end up doing.

Bill Connors

I am a consultant and I think I'm about to sign a new client who is going to be converting the other way, from eTap to RE NXT. From what I can see, the pricing between the two is not so dramatically different. They hate how what RE calls querying works in eTap. Since BB owns both products, BB's attitude is that the two products are not comparable: eTap is their entry-level system for really small, grassroots type organizations, RE is their product for small and medium sized to pretty big organizations. RE is the flagship product, so it gets more attention. The biggest feedback I can give you, however, is that even if the software price is cheaper it will likely cost you more money to move to eTap in 2021: conversions are expensive and take huge amounts of time. While BB has a package conversion to convert from eTap to RE, I doubt they have a canned conversion package from RE to eTap because that's not what orgs normally do or BB wants to encourage. So you'll probably have to pay for a custom conversion. You'll have to pay for and spend hours and hours taking training classes. You'll have to spend hours and hours redeveloping all your policies and procedures for every single task you use the database for. If you want to do it right, you'll need to hire a consultant. There's no way in converting from RE to eTap that you'll save money in 2021 in my experience. The experts say plan to spend 1-3 times more on services to convert to a product that the cost of the product. Even if you say, "we'll do all the work ourselves," you're talking about hundreds of hours of time -- while there might not be direct costs to a third-party for that time, there is certainly a cost to that time, time you're not spending doing other things, like raising money. If eTap is the best long-term solution for you, and you have the money and time in 2021 to make that transition, so be it: I'm not trying to talk you out of moving to eTap. I would just highly caution you against making the move to save money in year 1. I know things are tough right now for a lot of organizations and I admire your efforts to help your organization save money, I'd just be very careful suggesting this as a possible short-term cost-savings move. My 25 years of experience doing conversions tells me it will end up costing you for more instead. Perhaps there are other ways to save money on RE instead? And talk to your account executive: hopefully BB realizes many organizations are struggling right now and perhaps they will do something to help. Good luck, and let's hope 2021 is better for everyone.

Gracie Schild

I couldn't agree with Bill more, and I know nothing about eTap (is that eTapestry?) and have never used RE NXT. I'm a former RE user who now has to struggle with inferior products for my clients. Most of them said RE was just too expensive or complicated, but I've seen the other side of that. Sure, if you're really small-time, you can use some of the web-based products out there, but don't expect to be able to send a mailing or even an acknowledgement letter on paper without doing it all outside the program. I've worked with Salesforce, Neon, GiftWorks (desktop, which they don't really support anymore), and Versai, and not one of them can do easily what I would consider very basic tasks. And don't get me started on writing queries! If RE is too complicated for the users at these nonprofits, they're going to be lost in any software, I don't care how "easy" or "user friendly" it is.

Penny wise and pound foolish, that's my view of the decision to save money on lame CRM software.

Gracie Schild

Bluebird Business Services

Kristen Noe

My previous organization used eTap and my current one has RE/NXT. NXT has a similar user interface as eTap, so as far as a basic user is concerned, they're comparable. because it's older, of course eTap is much more complete than NXT as far batch gift entry and reporting. It's been a couple years since I've done much work in eTap, but I believe they are very different when it comes to custom fields, querying and reporting. NXT is still very limited in its capabilities compared to eTap or RE. Though I greatly miss eTap's dynamic merge queries, report scheduling and Outlook integration, RE is far more robust in custom fields and reporting. Also for gifts, I believe eTap is also still one "level" short from having Campaign/Fund/Appeal/Package, so you'll have to figure out recoding all your gifts, among plenty of other changes that will take a great deal of time. I agree with Bill, in that this would have be what's best for your in the VERY long-term. I'm not sure of your database size either, but I'm sure the projection is to grow your base so you'd eventually "outgrow" eTap and need RE or something else larger again later. Hope that helps - and good luck!

Judith Youngblood

Hi, Kate! I agree with much of what has been said, especially about reporting, robustness and long-term savings. I am one of the few consultants that does conversions into eTap from RE. A lot of my work is talking through what User Defined Fields (UDFs) you need to create in eTap to accommodate the information in RE that you want to keep. It's all in the translation. If you've been using the Tribute module in RE, that becomes very different in eTapestry, and might become a deal-breaker for you. Similarly, if you have planned gifs already in your system. If you are considering archiving some of your inactive constituents, thereby decreasing the number of your constituents and potentially dropping to a lower subscription band, that is possible with or without conversion.

Another thing to consider before you convert is the training it would take to get your team up to speed in eTapestry. As Bill mentioned, the query/report logic is quite different from that of RE. But it is teachable and learnable. eTap has many terrific tutorials on-line, but they are general information. You would want to have specific training that would translate what you're used to in RE into eTap-speak. You would also need to know how to use the UDFs that would come from conversion.

Feel free to reach out to me directly with specific questions. I'm happy to help.

Judith Youngblood, bCRE, bCET

WIST Data Solutions

j udith@wistdata.com

502-262-1622

Katherine Solomon

Thank you all for insights. Several people mentioned things we did not even consider.

Kate

Valerie Van Selous

I just wanted to put another opinion out there regarding CRM products other than RE. I am a former Donor Perfect user and now a RE user and I can say that with Donor Perfect I could do every task that I can in RE, for less money, and with fewer hassles. The reporting tool is excellent and user-friendly and absolutely I was able to send out mailings and acknowledgment letters at the click of a button, something that I did for years.

I also want to echo the advice about the cost of converting to different software - IT IS HUGE and unless it is absolutely necessary, I would advise against it. Our organization recently switched from Donor Perfect to RE and now 1 year later, we are almost done with the clean-up. To be clear, there are no problems with the conversion, it's a matter of fields not mapping properly for valid reasons.

Good luck, Valerie