RE NXT - Not being maximized in use

Jackie Cuevas

Hello, I just started in my organization as the new RE Database Manager a few months ago and am realizing the team in my department isn't fully maximizing the use of it. Do you have any tips in how to train/encourage the use of the RE NXT platform more?

It is a very small team and unfortunately they do not have time to sit in long training sessions/tutorials.

Any tips will be helpful! Thank you!

Karen Stuhlfeier

@Jackie Cuevas We think that the web view is great in our small office and the non-technical people here work on it exclusively. I also use it a lot more than I used to and most of our reports live there. We started by writing a short training manual that just included what our users needed to know. So much of the Blackbaud training doesn't' apply to them. We also did a couple of training sessions where we just presented it as the way they were going to do things now. That was 7 years ago and most of our office doesn't know how to access the database view and don't want to.

Lee Grisham

@Jackie Cuevas it should be your source of truth for the development team. If it isn't in NXT, it doesn't exist. (Well except if you can only see it in database view…?) Did you have a meeting with X donor? It doesn't show that in NXT, so how was I supposed to know?

The expectations need to be there that this is what we use to do our work and if there is no documentation to back that up, we can't record said gift or prepare that report correctly. NXT is user friendly compared to RE 7 and should be accessible enough for anyone to pick up as long as they know what information they need to capture and how it impacts your organization.

Faith Murray

@Jackie Cuevas
You may consider what you define as “maximizing NXT use” and how that relates to data integrity.

Because of its structural limitations, we do not use NXT for events, forms, mailing lists, financial reports, or data updates. While Blackbaud has made numerous improvements over the years, there are just so many little things, like its inefficiency at linking online donors, to the way webview attachments are not backed up, to the way it updates ALL the phone “date last changed” field when only one phone number is edited in a donor record. So for gift entry, data updates, FE integration, and database maintenance, we rarely use NXT. One could claim we “do not maximize” our NXT usage.

That being said, I am SO glad that we have NXT, because our non-development Fundraisers who don't have time to learn a database use it – people like our CEO, Communications Director, Alumni Coordinator, who just need to enter Actions and Notes, see an instant snapshot of our year-to-date revenue, benchmark our retention stats, or plan a geographically-focused donor visit. The automated Ratings and wealth estimations in NXT are also awesome when translated into database view for prospect filtering.

So … are we maximizing NXT? If by that you mean using NXT as much as possible instead of database view because we're convinced that's the only way we're getting our money's worth – then, an emphatic and glad “no”. If you mean using NXT's strengths to their ultimate potential while also using database view's strengths for a holistic work process – then, absolutely yes.