BlackBaud does not support non-English alphabets in products

Alex Day

We had a donor from Japan donate through our NXT form, and while the donation confirmation email shows the name and mailing address they entered using Japanese characters, the donor record that was created for them recorded their name as “?? ??” and I am unable to change that to their actual name in database view or web view. I contacted support and learned that no non-English alphabets are supported by BlackBaud currently. They told me: "you will have to ask the client to provide their name with the normal US language characters or keep it as is with the question marks." This seems problematic since not all donors will have an English name. Has anyone else run into this, and how have you solved it so you're not sending mail addressed to “??” or pulling that in exports?

I've also created an Idea to add the ability to enter and capture donor information using non-English alphabets, which you can vote on here:

Christine Robertson

@Alex Day I know that some non-English characters are allowed in the database view (though I am not sure if this would help with your specific situation). See this knowledgebase article for more information: How do I add accent marks or special characters in Raiser's Edge? (blackbaud.com)

Alex Day

@Christine Robertson thanks! Support did provide that link but let me know non-English alphabet characters are not supported - basically anything that requires a different keyboard (from what I understood).

Christine Robertson

@Alex Day I'm not entirely sure what they meant by not supported. For reference - I've worked with RE databases containing those characters (especially with clients in Europe). I was able to import them into RE (from an Excel file using Importacular - not sure if that would work with a .csv) and they were visible in RE7. I did find that exporting them out of RE could be problematic in some formats.

Alex Day

@Christine Robertson so for example, when I enter a donor's name or address with Japanese characters in a donor record in NXT (i.e., according to Google translate my name, Alex, is this in Japanese characters: アレックス) BlackBaud reverts it to ?????. In database view, it changes it to a different placeholder: „Ç¢„ɨ„ÉÉ„ÇØ„Çπ

Those placeholders are what is exported when I try to pull a mailing list. And this has also impacted the donor's mailing address, with certain characters changing to placeholders. I would love to know if you've found a work-around for this!

Rachel Cavalier

Gosh what a way to phrase a technological lacking on Blackbaud's part, particularly with an international userbase who are supported by equally international donors - “normal US language characters"!

So far I've only seen Western European language characters supported e.g. those umlauts and other accents above letters - though this is something we will have to watch out for, since we do have some supporters who may use non-Latin alphabets.

Christine Robertson

@Alex Day Unfortunately, it seems that RE allows for European characters, but not other non-English characters. I wish I had a tested workaround for that to offer you, but I don't.

Alex Day

@Christine Robertson the best I can come up with is changing the donor name to something generic like “Friend” or “Supporter” (so any mass emails/mailings aren't addressed to “???”) and adding a business rule indicating that their actual name/mailing address is not what's reflected in their record, for fundraisers who are doing individual outreach. Not ideal but hopefully someone in the community has figured out a better work-around!

Christine Robertson

@Alex Day You may be able to add the characters to a notepad. In database view, those have always been able to store images, etc. They won't export out, but they could at least be on the record in some capacity.

If you haven't already, I would definitely search the Idea bank for RE NXT (if it isn't already there, it's certainly worth adding). Once you do, please post the link for that idea to this thread so that I (and others) can vote for it.

Alex Day

@Christine Robertson good to know! Right now I have a PDF of the donation confirmation email which has the donor's name/address saved in media but that might work better for fundraisers. I have this in the idea bank here - thank you for voting!:

Austen Brown

@Alex Day - Voted! Thanks for adding this to the idea bank! I hope we see resolution with this.