Looking to speak with current RE NXT users (Mission to Seafarers)

Sam & Sharon,

I’ve worked with Raiser’s Edge for over 30 years across a range of institutions, including faith‑based organizations, and now serve as a consultant supporting a variety of clients. I’d be glad to connect with your team and share insights from my experience.

This won’t be a sales pitch — my goal is simply to provide practical, real‑world perspective. I’m deeply familiar with both RE Classic and NXT, and I’m passionate about helping organizations make informed decisions about their software so they can maximize its impact.

Please feel free to reach me directly at Carlene @ nxtlvlsvcs .com to arrange a time to talk.

Best regards,
Carlene

Haha well, I can only really speak on the side of things that I'm involved in (mainly data entry, general thank you letters and DB admin only-flavoured things like imports etc) as we've tried to empower our users to do things like their own reporting as much as possible.

We're still using database view for gift entry because Gift Aid status on the gifts isn't available in Gift Batch in web (as far as I know) and this is something that's important for us along with a few other features currently available in DB view batch. It's also slower than using DB view gift batch too. We have required fields on gifts in DB view and unfortunately none of these are respected in DB view. Having seen the recent Product Update Briefings however, I know that a faster gift batch along with GA status in batch for gifts is on it's way - so hopefully we can start to make the switch on that side.

For constituent management, we're using both web and DB views - web view doesn't respect many of the business rules that we have set up in DB view, so something like marking a constituent as deceased has to be done in DB view if that person has a surviving spouse (please vote on my 1, 2, 3, ideas bank ideas). The lack of required fields I mentioned for gifts is also a problem that comes up with relationships in that you can add a relationship without putting in the relation/reciprocal fields to say what exactly that relation ship is (ideas bank).

Consent is also kind of hit and miss - some design choices really don't work for us (consent is surfaced in the tile base on what was added most recently, rather than the actual date the consent was given - pls vote on this too) and there's some weird behaviour that I heard at bbcon London will be addressed - you can't add the same consent again (e.g. email opt-in) when that consent is given again, so we have to pop into DB view to add some consents (please vote on this also). I'd like to be able to add consent from the Consent History page but that's not currently available (I have an ideas bank for this too).

Gift Aid claims - these are fully in web view now anyway so there's no going back to DB view for it, and while there have been teething problems for everyone who uses it (e.g. unable to claim on constituents who just have a first initial and not a whole first name), Blackbaud know how vital it is that this works according the HMRC's rules properly so that's being handled.

However, while this does read a little bit like a huge downer about RENXT, I think that's really on the DB admin side of things where features aren't fully fleshed out yet. RENXT's interface is fantastic for my fundraising colleagues in our philanthropy, events, and legacy/in memory teams. Actions are easy to add which helps to ensure that those actions do get added in the first place! It's easy for them to search for supporters too and the constituent record tiles give them a good overview of anyone they are communicating with.

Query in webview is also a big hit - they've said that it feels easier to use and to get what they want out of query. Export isn't available in webview yet but that's due in the not too distant future.

Events - they're easy for my events colleagues to set up in webview and while there are things that still need to be done in DB view (mostly importing that I do for them), I believe we are mostly switched to webview for that.

We switched to RENXT from ThankQ back at the beginning of 2019 because the version of ThankQ we were using couldn't handle consent and having assessed what was on offer at the time, decided that Raiser's Edge NXT then was the best option for us. I don't feel like there was anything that we know now that we would have liked to know before making our decision - the main thing that was important was something I knew with coming from a software engineering background which is that you really need to get your whole team invested in embracing the new software and actually doing the training, while also managing their perception of the kind of learning curve there is with it.

Blackbaud have really picked up the pace on delivering the promised Unified View over the last couple of years so I feel optimistic that the webview flavour of RE will be able to fully handle our needs and we won't have to keep visiting DB view too much. I was a bit sceptical that being able to add a Gift Aid Declaration in webview would ever arrive because it had felt like there was no significant movement in new features for the first few years that we used RE (though of course, I have a Gift Aid related ideas bank too) but things got visibly moving and there it was!

I am extremely excited at the prospect of automated Direct Debit collection coming to RENXT in the first half of next year as I've been eagerly awaiting it since it was first gently dangled in a PUB probably two years ago.

Hopefully, that's given you a flavour of our experience. We try our best to use the webview versions of features where we can and as evident in my many, many ideas bank entries (and also engaging with support, town halls, sending emails to friendly, neighbourhood, product managers etc), try to give feedback about where things work well or need improvement and like I mentioned earlier, I'm pretty optimistic about the progress being made for webview.

Definitely get in touch with @Carlene Johnson for her insight!!