I give up... what is the RENXT "Online Portal" ?

Tom Klimchak

The 2/14/23 “What's New” update in RE NXT mentions that a “new online portal” is now generally available, but I don't see any links or expanded explanation of what that means. It says it is for Constituents to “stay connected”…

Sooo.. What is the “new online portal” ?

Lee Grisham

@Tom Klimchak it is for Donors to go in to modify their contact information to stay in contact with your org. They can also get donation information for their taxes and update automatic recurring gifts and make new donations. They have to login using the email address that is primary on their account in order for it to find them. There is a tile on each Constituent record with the information gathered from Portal.

You can also do some light branding by customizing colors and such. All in all, one of the nicest things they have released for NXT in a long time.

Faith Murray

@Tom Klimchak
I'm going to play devil's advocate and reply that it's supposed to be a back-end access were donors can view and update their recurring gifts, view giving history for tax purposes, and update their contact info. You have to send them an email invite and then they can log in from there.

Here is BB's user guide, and here is the handout for introducing it to donors.

In reality, it has so many undeveloped areas that it is almost useless for many orgs at this point. Hopefully as it continues to be built out it will become a dream come true.

• It does not show direct debits, according to one user
• It does not show recurring gifts made in OLX or database view, only the ones that live in NXT. And since NXT currently does not allow you a number of important management tools like changing recurring gift amounts or funds, or skip a transaction, many users won't want to switch to NXT recurring gifts at this point.
• You can't select what types of gifts to allow donors to view. So soft credits, in kind gifts, $0 gifts, planned gifts with an assumed amount, or other “internal” gift records might prevent users from opening this feature up to donors.
• Previously, the list only showed gift amount, not receipt amount, so it didn't really work as a tax statement. I believe BB is trying to fix this feature.
• Since an email address alone opens up access to a donor's entire giving history and payment methods, you have to be so careful that your email address is correct for the donor. Do NOT use emails from append services, and you will want to call or mail your donor to verify the accuracy of the address. I'm sure all of us ave at some point gotten a message from a donor saying “That's not my email address.” Because of this, you can really only invite a limited number of donors.

I was excited about Portal, but right now it's on my list of things I'm hoping will be built out in the next 3-5 years.

Bobby Steurer

@Faith Murray
Agreed. Seems like something to look forward to re: further development, but for now, kind of limiting. And if you're a larger org, or you're constantly using workarounds for RE's quirks/shortcomings (aren't we all?), I imagine you'd have to be reeeeeeeally careful letting a major donor see all their giving in your records. Seems like it could lead to a lot of confused donors - “Why isn't this posted this way?;" “What's with this?;" etc. etc.

Tom Klimchak

@Faith Murray Huh.. thank you! I honestly have looked right past this so far but.. I can kinda see why I would look past it.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in almost all the RE and RE/NXT updates as of late: They're all designed to be things they can “advertise” to get new customers in the door, but these features are almost always half-baked and so limited in use that they really aren't practical for everyday use. And about half the time those features are later totally abandoned cough tags cough.

JoAnn Strommen

Nice idea but not jumping on board either.

Our recently hired alumni director thought she had found the solution to all if we let alums directly update their own records. I told her no. Told her about all the typos we experience with incoming registrations and alumni updates.
What was really ironic was that she updated her husband's alumni info and then the next day registered herself for an event and both had wrong info - her email for him and transposed digits in the phone #. Sent her screen shots and said this is why all data is reviewed before records are changed.

Faith Murray

@Tom Klimchak
I read something on a nonprofit blog recently that mentioned one of Mastercard's less-advertized requirements was allowing donors direct access to manage their subscriptions. So I think that Portal was released rather speedily to try to accommodate Mastercard (my theory). However, since Mastercard has since exempted nonprofits from its subscription requirements, I suspect that development of this will be de-prioritized a bit.

Lee Grisham

@Tom Klimchak right there with you on that. Does seem nice until you take into account all that @Faith Murray brought up and then it leads to more confusion and headaches for admins to buy more pain relievers for. Like most of the releases, the potential is there, just not there yet.

Hopefully we can look forward to more downloadable QR codes directly from donor records in the future so we can add them to database view and then print them on their donor profiles to bring to meetings for our fundraisers! "Scan this link to access all our records on you!" ?

Christine Unruh

@Tom Klimchak et al in this discussion. I am new to an org using the NetCommunity portal for donors with memberships and am adding to my learning to troubleshoot issues. Two questions for anyone with time to point me in the right direction.

1. Best quick source for learning on troubleshooting data not linking for users and login issues for users
2. Are orgs that use the NetCommunity Portal moving to the NXT portal yet? Appears much more user-friendly but the 2023 discussion below pointed to limitations and issues.