Why does Blackbaud hate "Comment" fields? Seriously.. what's the philosophy behind that?

Tom Klimchak
Tom Klimchak
Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
edited October 22 in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

This has been mentioned before, but we keep finding places where we use the "Comments" fields and they're missing from RE NXT, removing critical information for our end users. Blackbaud took away the Comments (and date changed) field from Email/phone records (a small disaster for us) and now we just found that they did not include "Comments" for event pricing levels. I'm sure there are other places I just haven't discovered yet… My question is WHY?

I can get behind ANYTHING if someone explains why a system is better. But I can't for the life of me figure out why you'd purposely remove details from a database… especially from a database used by thousands of organizations over multiple decades.

Are comment fields particularly taxing for programmers to include? Do they use more electrons to transfer to a website? Are Blackbaud shareholders (myself unfortunately included) paid by the fields they REMOVE from RE NXT?

What is going on? WHY would you consciously design a database with LESS DATA?

Any insight into this madness would be helpful. We're really struggling with RE NXT from a user/efficiency standpoint.

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Answers

  • Tatyana Leifman
    Tatyana Leifman
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 4 First Reply Name Dropper

    I don't have any insight either but like you I find it infuriating that Comments fields are either removed or are not editable in WV (gift records are front and center for me as places where Comments field is visible but not editable). What is beyond frustrating to me is that some of these fields have been relatively recently added in dbv, such as the comments & date last changed for emails and phone numbers. And once they were added, at least for me, it was a revelation—how did I live without them before? And now, they are being taken away from us. I feel the result with all these changes in which fields will be retained in WV and which discarded will be messier and messier databases for those of us who have been using RE for decades and will be scrambling to figure out where to preserve the information that is currently residing in these fields.

  • Ange Scott
    Ange Scott
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    Agree, I find the no comment field in the email area of NXT ridiculous. How are we meant to know, say the admin person's name of the company we're contacting?

    To me an updated database should be the old database PLUS improvements, not less than the original database. It's like mobile phones, they now come with all these apps and "improvements" that I automatically disable/delete, and yet they now can't provide a simple ear phone jack?!

  • Tom Klimchak
    Tom Klimchak
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Here's an Idea Bank suggestion for phone comments: https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-7720

    I voted for it 😀

  • Aldera Chisholm
    Aldera Chisholm Community All-Star
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    I wonder if it may be a connection with the move to Power Automate type functions to do a lot of tasks- those "open text" fields are great for looking at in a record, but hard to use for triggers and reports. I do recall them mentioning it at BBCon as something they were looking into, they may talk about it more at the next update.

  • Tatyana Leifman
    Tatyana Leifman
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 4 First Reply Name Dropper
    https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/308344#Comment_308344

    Hmm… I hope they'll reconsider. Those types of actions may be great for regular, "boring" tasks like generating a report on all gifts received last week or sending out a generic "happy birthday" email. But for successful fundraising we need the truly personal touch, and donors expect that from us. If the database will be degraded down from the ability to easily retain this type of personalized information, we'll just end up with more fundraisers keeping their own private contact lists. We've had this issue in the past where donor records showed no contact/actions and had no emails (or phone numbers) on them but the steward assigned to the donor has had an extensive email (or phone) relationship with the donor. We managed to get the actions documenting the interactions into RE but I'm not sure we got the emails and/or phone numbers in….

  • Amy Dana
    Amy Dana Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    I'm 100% with you. Most of my team uses web view exclusively and it's frustrating to get questions about an email when the answers are in the comments, which that user can't see. I understand the original thought was that web view was more for the fundraisers who aren't database savvy but now that we're going to eventually lose database view, they've got to increase the functionality of web view.

    And please please PLEASE prioritize building out web view over creating environmentally damaging AI email agents that none of us asked for in the first place!

  • Crystal Bruce
    Crystal Bruce admin
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 December 2025 Monthly Challenge First Reply

    Hi @Tom Klimchak - I am checking with my team on this. Thanks for posting and sharing your insights!

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