School App for Communications

Victoria Little

Hi All, I'd love to hear from any schools that have found an app that works well for their school communications. We've come across Digistorm in the Blackbaud Marketplace and have booked a demo, but would love to hear what apps other schools are using for communications with their parent community. Ideally, we would love if there was a Blackbaud connection but are open to other suggestions as well.

Thanks!

Kathy Hannon

@Victoria Little we use Bright Arrow - we've had it for 4 years and have been pleased with it. It syncs with BB creating parent group and student group - then on their portal you can create groups using the “synced” main groups. We have also created athletic team groups for messaging within the team roster for coaches - works well!

Jennifer Welch

@Victoria Little I am very interested as well!

Jennifer Welch

@Kathy Hannonis there a two way intergration with Blackbaud and Brightarrow so messages sent out through Bright Arrow can be integrated with a user's Communication tab?

Kathy Hannon

@Jennifer Welch no, but there are reports per message/email sent in BrightArrow that give you a log of who was included in the message/email and it also gives bad email. However, if we want the communication on the “record” we do push page or message within BB. BTW Bright Arrow syncs nightly so the contact information is always up to date

Susan Hemingway

@Victoria Little
Hi. We've been using BrightArrow for over four years now and are very happy with it. It syncs with Blackbaud every night so the lists are always current, although you can also create lists manually. You can send emails, text, and voice messages. The interface was very clunky but has recently been updated as is much easier to use. Highly recommend.

Bernadette Shilliam

@Victoria Little we are in the same boat looking for a communication tool outside of the Blackbaud platform due to many failures. I had a demo with Bright Arrow a few times and I love the integration with Blackbaud but the others who were at the demo weren't overly excited by the outdated interface - they want to easily send pictures in messages, for example, and could not send multiples. We also did a demo with Parent Square - much more expensive, but nicer interface, intuitive and easy to use, but they do not integrate with Blackbaud. We'd have to export .csv files for them to upload on our behalf, or enter the information ourselves person by person. To their credit they said they'd upload within 24 hours. If it was left to me, we'd go with Bright Arrow for the integration alone!

Suzan Moffett

@Victoria Little If you are looking for text, email, and/or voice notifications, we use Ruvna which integrates with Blackbaud. It offers several other functions besides the notifications which makes it very useful. The software is some of the best I've worked with, and the company is very responsive.

Kristin Heard

@Kathy Hannon Are you able to do the two-way chats?

Kathy Hannon

@Kristin Heard - Bright Arrow is not 2-way

Kristin Heard

@Kathy Hannon They have Bright Chat that is. I tried playing with it before, but it wasn't very user friendly. I'm going to circle back with it. That is what we really need for our teams, otherwise they are all using something like GroupMe or TeamSnap. We do Announcements on teams to communicate TO students and parents, but sometimes we need them to be able to respond.

Kim Feniuk

@Susan Hemingway Can I ask if BrightArrow syncs with Groups in Blackbaud? Not just All Parents / All Staff, etc. I'm specifically looking at the ability to port over groups like Advisory / Activity / Athletic groups. Thank you.

Susan Hemingway

@Kim FeniukWe haven't asked BrightArrow if that's possible. They have mapped some of our custom fields and we are using those for some specific lists. They have been extremely responsive to our requests, so I suggest you ask them directly.

Kristin Heard

@Kim Feniuk it does, though we haven't used the group options. We pretty much just use the all school. You can send to specific groups or create custom groups.