Raisers Edge

I''ve used Raiser''s Edge and a few other United Way focused databases over the past several years. No matter what program, I end up exporting my data to Excel and manipulating it the way I want it. For that reason and ease of support, we are building an access database and customizing it to our needs.

Has anyone had experience with Raisers Edge version 7? Positive or negative feedback?... we are currently looking at upgrading to version 7.

We switched from Raiser's Edge to eTapestry while ago, and part of the reason was because of the extra costs on top of the program. For instance, if we wanted to train new staff members on the program, we had to pay to send them out to South Carolina. Great for the staff member, but not so good for our budget. It is a massive program that requires a truly dedicated staff member, or a whole staff willing to pitch in. Having said that, there is really no limit to the abilites of RE. If you are looking for a program that can cover a range of possibilities or handle large numbers, RE definitely is worth a look.

You also might want to check out FundRaiser Software. I've used it for about 10 years in my community and business work as a donor manager and it does everything I've needed and more. Personally my work is more grass roots and I like the user friendly feel of FundRaiser.

There are three levels to the program, and the Basic level does good donor management and if very affordable. From there, it is easy to upgrade to the next levels that add more sophistication and options for managing volunteers, pledges, etc. etc.

I've started doing some writing for the company and I continue to be impressed as I get to know the program better.

You can see the web site at www.FundRaiserSoftware.com

Sasha

Hello, My name is Matt and I work extensively with Raisers Edge 7.5. Overall, the program provides a nice interface with our constituent database.

The program is very customizable for individual users needs and security requirements. For instance you can specify if a user just does data entry and not see any credit card information.

For basic search and data entry, the learning curve is not very large. The curve gets much larger when you enter into complex queries and mail merge operations.

The program does have its faults. It comes with many canned reports where you are not able to change the format of the output. I have had to create crystal reports to satisfy report requirements. But for most things such as gift and membership detail reports, the ones they provide are sufficient.

The events module for us had been basically useless. My recommendation is that you thoroughly research the software compared to your project and organizations requirements before you commit to the software. Overall I would recommend the software.

Hopefully this helped.

ALL systems have strengths and weaknesses. I can find you fans and foes for every system on the market. The challenge is to find a system with strengths that meet your needs and weaknesses that won't get in your way. Here's how I approach this type of project:

1) Convene a selection committee with representation from throughout the user community. They will select the system.

2) Determine your requirements and distinguish mandatory needs from wishes. Be sure to consider all of your needs. Is this primarily to support any particular type of fundraising, (direct mail, telemarketing, major gifts, special events, or capital campaign management?) What, other than donations, do you need to track? Do you need any special functionality (like a Web front end, or support for Macintoshes) or interfaces? Also, does your current system have features that you can't live without?

3) Identify a group of vendors who can generally meet your needs. Find vendors who are serving organizations that are comparable to you in staff size, donor base, operating budget, fundraising income, number of fundraisers, and the complexity of the fundraising process.

4) Develop a set of scenarios that every vendor must demonstrate. That gives you the best chance of comparing "apples to apples." Make sure the vendors show what you need to see so you can compare their strengths and weaknesses.

5) Invite all interested staff members (not just the selection committee) to the demos. Use an evaluation form to collect their input.

6) Get full proposals with prices from the finalists. Be sure you're comparing apples to apples on price. Make sure the price includes any optional modules you'll need as well as professional services like conversion support and training. You also need to cost out any additional items that you'll need, like servers, desktop computer upgrades, third-party software, network upgrades, printers, and additional staff.

7) Conduct thorough reference checks. Call several references for every finalist. Treat this like a staff recruitment. Ask every reference the same basic set of questions, plus other questions raised by their answers. Be sure to ask about the product's functionality, the vendor's support and training, and the conversion experience. If possible, visit sites where the product is in use.

8) The selection committee from step 1 should have participated in all of these steps. Now they get to make the decision. This can be the hardest part. It may need to be facilitated by a neutral party.

FYI, I wrote a chapter on this topic for 2000 edition of the "CASE Handbook of Institutional Advancement". It's on my web site at http://www.rlweiner.com/case_handbook_chapter.pdf

__________________________
Providing Strategic Technology Consulting to Nonprofits and Education
San Francisco, CA

robert@rlweiner.com
415/643-8955

www.rlweiner.com

We are very pleased with FundRaiser Jr. from Professional Support Software. It does not need an extensive formal training program to use it (though training is provided on-line and by tech support on call). Speaking of tech support and calling them--you either get a live person first time (and not after a 15 minute wait on hold) or your call gets returned in 10 minutes or less, in my experience. And the tech support people speak English and don't expect you to already be an expert. Jr. seems like a program we can use for a long time, and if we need more capacity, we can move up to the Professional version. They also have a basic model, which is essentially freeware, but a very powerful program in its own right.

Glena

I've been using RE for about 2 years now. I have been asked to investigate alternatives to it due to price and the recent "forced upgrade" path Blackbaud seems to have adopted a la Microsoft. We're currently using version 7.5 after upgrading from 6 almost a year ago. BB will stop offering tech support for 7.5 in March for any technical problems; the new version, 7.6, requires SQL Server 2000 if your DB or user count is big enough--in other words, more $$.

The learning curve for this software is steep for the involved users. However, once you've reached the point where your primary users are comfortable and good with the software, it performs rather well. It is sometimes too complicated, some of the defaults don't make sense (e.g., automatically displaying soft credits in reports), and initial customization is rather time consuming and involved. I agree with the others who suggest that you verify that you need things that only RE can deliver. If not, I'd suggest looking at less expensive solutions that are highly customizable and easy to do so--today and tomorrow.

Emmet O'Conlon

I am with a relatively small non-profit that uses FileMaker Pro. We use it for all of our client information systems and also for our fund raising needs. The beauty of FMPRO is that you can develop systems without the expense of programming and can modify databases on the fly without incurring costs. It easily grows with you, without the hassles of having to have IT staff or paid programmers. Our "developer" is a social worker with little to no training in IT. We run our system on a 25 user network and have had no problems related to FMPRO on the network. And we are running a very early version.

The Fund Raising system is relatively simple; however, as our development program grows, we can easily grow the software. We manage a database of about 4,000 persons, some of whom are on donor lists and some of whom are only included for our newsletter. Reports are a little more difficult to design, but we have not yet had a need that we could not meet. I am sure that RE has many features that we do not have built in, but for the expense (initial and ongoing), we are very happy with our system.
It is always good to hear from other FMPRO users

I have worked as a consultant to numerous non-profit associations over the past few years. For organizations that conduct a lot of meetings in addition to raising money, we recommend a software product called iMIS by Advanced Solutions International. It provides a fully functional A/R package and includes a web interface both for meeting registration and fundraising.

About 4 years ago when I worked with a housing non-profit with a 6000 member database and about $500K per year of fundraising, I researched fundraising softwares extensively. My findings regarding Raisers Edge were similar to those noted in previous messages. If we had experience with BlackBaud, if we had the staffing to manage it, etc., then ok. The expense was also a major consideration.

Ultimately, given our staff and needs, we selected DonorPerfect. It was about 1/2 the cost, worked simply enough and we could customize it. In the long haul, customer support was good and we were able to expand its use to a more widely used database than just fundraising. In retrospect, I believe it worked out nicely.

Hi all,

This is a very interesting discussion as we are now considering some options including Raiser's Edge and DonorPerfect. So far what folks have said here seems to bear out our impressions of the products. The main difference for us is that we want our fundraising system to integrate with other business systems - BusinessWorks (our financial package) and a Cemetery database package. A lot to tie together!

Other opensource options that I am curious about include Visible Results www.visres.org and ODB
www.organizenow.net

I've looked through an early copy of ODB. It's a nice small system that is tailored towards grassroots organizing. It appeared to be pretty tightly coded.

Visible Results is apparently Java and SQL based, and it claims to have good support for multiple languages. It was originaly created for The Danish Bible Society and is supported by a commercial company.

Claims to have features that no commercial product has. Seems to be designed to update address information externaly (in another database) so you can keep your information synchronized.
Because it is Java based, the client can run on the Mac (though it needs a PC as the server). Anyone hear of this one before? It's quite intriguing...

Thanks,

Rich

Boy, I must say this has been a good topic to read. Thanks to everyone for their input. We currently use a product called Results Plus to track our donors. It is a good product and one our national organization recommends the local chapters use. We have not purchased the additional EventsPlus module - my discussions with other chapters in the organization give mixed reviews about how it can handle walk-a-thons and auctions (our 2 major fundraising events).
I find that I too export the results into Excel to get the results I need when dealing with customized data. I do like the mailing feature that "collapses" related entries - but setting those up takes time and patience.
--Cora

I had the opportunity to use RE 6 for several years and most recently RE 7.5. I think it is a great program for one mid-size institution, we tried to use it for a joint campaign with 4 insitutions collecting $ and found there were limitations.
It is user-friendly from my point of view and can do many things with your data.
I would suggest, regardless of the software you choose, you pay close attention to the MINIMUM desktop speed/memory requirements and locate the DB on a dedicated server!!! I believe any slow downs or dificulties we are experiencing are due to these 2 factors. (I was not here for the pre-planning stage).
Extra modules are expensive (we recently looked in to the e-module), this disappoints me because I like the program's capabilities and think we would benefit from what it can do. Maybe next year's budget.
Like any DB though, make sure your staff are trained and USE it to its full POTENTIAL or it will never contain the data that you had hoped it would capture.
All in all, I would recommend it over anything else I've used in the charitable sector and elsewhere.

**N.B. In Canada, I have heard of a new program called Helix - or perhaps this is the vendor - looked promising and cheaper.

>I would love to hear about people''s experience with eBase and/or FileMaker itself.
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Randall

I have been using ebase 1.02/Filemaker Pro for almost a year with no previous database experience. ebase is pretty easy to learn, but can be very fickle if you have a large amount of records (We have 23,000). Slightly complicated queries and exports makes ebase crash and it can take a long time to search for common criteria. I waste a lot of time restoring ebase, cursing and waiting for queries.
On the other hand, I have found their tech support email lists to be very helpful, though not as good as if ebase handled everything perfectly. We use it for events, membership and donations, though it would be nice if it could handle monthly giving automatically.
We are considering switching databases, though we have already switched over from RE about 4 years ago, and my predecessor says it was even worse! Are databases just ornery to begin with and I should get over it if we don't have massive amounts of money to sink in to them?