Friends don’t let friends use Raiser’s Edge, especially if they expect great user experiences from technology to transform their work. For nonprofit teams, the technology and tools you use should amplify your impact, not hold you back. This ability to deliver great user experiences is one of the strengths of Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud—and other Salesforce solutions—that makes it vastly superior to Blackbaud brand fundraising solutions like Raiser’s Edge. From its clean, modern layout, dynamic page layouts and graphics, drag and drop data visualization, support for multiple form factors, ability for Salesforce Administrators to configure the platform to augment and meet users’ work needs, and more, Salesforce was designed with the user in mind. Let’s dive into the user experience differences between Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and Raiser’s Edge and explore why Nonprofit Cloud is the better solution for providing superior experiences that transform the way users work.
Intuitive, Persona-Based Interface vs Learning Curve
Raiser’s Edge has an interface that is functional, but dated. While Raiser’s Edge is designed specifically for fundraising, its interface can also be cluttered, making it harder to find the tools and information you need for fundraising tasks. Features and information that should be readily available are buried many ‘clicks’ deep. For users new to the platform, the learning curve for Raiser’s Edge can also be steep, often requiring additional training to become proficient.
Salesforce understands that time is valuable, so it prioritizes a persona-based, user-friendly design that makes it easy to navigate. This extends to Nonprofit Cloud, which has a sleek, modern, and intuitive interface designed with user experience at its core. Whether it’s updating donor records, launching a new campaign, seeing relevant information in-line, or generating a report, Nonprofit Cloud’s intuitive layout ensures that tasks can be accomplished quickly and efficiently. For end-users, this means less time spent searching for features or information and more time focusing on their mission.
Adaptable vs Rigid: Configuration That Supports Your Work
Let’s say a nonprofit is launching a new program that requires a unique set of data fields and workflows. With Raiser’s Edge, configuration and customization options are limited, meaning users might have to work within the confines of what’s already built into Raiser’s Edge’s system. This can be problematic if users need more flexibility, causing them to seek and rely on third-party vendors or expensive custom development, which can slow down their progress.
On the other hand, Nonprofit Cloud offers out-of-the-box tools and applications with increased configuration support. This allows Salesforce Administrators the ability to adapt their organization’s Salesforce platform to fit their organization’s specific needs. For example, if Salesforce users need additional features on their Salesforce org to support their work, such as custom fields, automated workflows, or personalized dashboards, they can partner with their organization’s Salesforce Admin to implement those features and configure the platform to their exact specifications. Having this adaptability ensures that the software evolves with the organization and provides users with a meaningful, high-value software solution that can work the way they do—not the other way around.
Data Reporting and Analytics
Nonprofit teams need access to data—ideally real-time data—to drives informed decision-making. In particular, leveraging data about constituents, donors, supporters, and other audience members has become at the heart of many organizations’ strategic plans for growth and success. Raiser’s Edge offers basic reporting and analytics features that are useful for generating standard donor reports and tracking fundraising progress. However, their reporting dashboards can be basic and their analytics tools are often clunky to use or limited in their functionality to produce deeper, more advanced data insights. Users consequently must undertake additional, manual analyses, utilize third-party platforms, or even custom development to dig deeper into their data and gain deeper, more valuable insights than the surface-level insights that Raiser’s Edge’s analytics provides. It is worth noting that Blackbaud offers a more advanced, more modern version of Raiser’s Edge, which is Raiser’s Edge NXT. At first glance, the NXT dashboards and reporting interfaces look significantly more insightful and modern. However, NXT’s reporting, though cloud-based, is still clunky overall, lacking in richness, difficult to navigate, and—according to user reviews—has bugs.
Nonprofit Cloud, in contrast, takes data reporting and analytics to a whole new level for its users. With Nonprofit Cloud’s powerful reporting engine, users can create highly customizable reports and dashboards that provide real-time insights into every aspect of their organization. Want to know which campaigns are performing the best, track volunteer hours, or forecast future donations? Tableau and Salesforce’s powerful analytics tools also make it easy for users to pull meaningful insights from their data. Nonprofit Cloud, as another example, also leverages a data processing engine that reads source codes for marketing to show Salesforce users how campaigns and marketing strategies are performing in relative real-time and can be configured to highlight other complex metrics. Having data displayed this way reduces the need for users to generate weekly reports to see which campaigns or marketing strategies most effective, are generating more revenue, or even what a contact’s giving history is. In addition, for Salesforce users, this also means saving time and making smarter, data-driven decisions that can amplify your organization’s impact.
Constituent Views: The Power of 360-Degree Views
Whether you’re managing donor relationships, tracking volunteer engagement, or monitoring program participants, the way you interact with your data can significantly impact your efficiency and effectiveness. Thus, having a clear, comprehensive view of your constituents is crucial.
When viewing a constituent record in Raiser’s Edge, users are presented with a structured, tab-based interface. Constituent data is organized into separate sections like biographical information, donation history, event participation, and notes. This structured approach provides a clear, linear view of each constituent’s information. For users who are focused solely on donor management, this can be sufficient. However, the rigidity of this structure and interface can also be a limitation. The tab-based layout requires users to click through multiple sections to get a complete picture of a constituent’s interactions with their organization. This fragmented view can also slow down a user’s workflow, especially if they are trying to quickly understand a constituent’s overall engagement or locate specific data points.
In contrast, Nonprofit Cloud offers a 360-degree view of constituents, bringing together all relevant data in a single, unified interface. When users open a constituent record in Salesforce, they can see a timeline view of a constituent’s donation history and their interactions with the organization—from event attendance, volunteer hours, email interactions, social media mentions, and more—at the click of a button and all on one screen. In addition, Salesforce’s dynamic, configurable UI allows users to arrange and display data in a way that makes the most sense for their role or needs, the ability to mark their favorite records, pin tabs, and more. Whether a user is in fundraising, volunteer management, or program administration, they can have their Salesforce Admin configure the constituent view in Nonprofit Cloud to highlight the information that is most important and relevant for their needs and role. For users, this holistic view means they do not have to switch between tabs or hunt for information; all the information they need about their constituent is already in the forefront of their screen and mapped and presented in a way that is readily accessible, intuitive, and actionable.
Integration: Seamlessly Connecting Tools vs. Working in Silos
Consider the various tools your organization uses: email marketing platforms, accounting software, event management systems, and more. Nowadays, it is a common, more convenient, best practice to integrate, or connect, these tools and systems together with technology. Raiser’s Edge offers some integration capabilities, but they can be challenging and are often limited, requiring multiple queries, workarounds, or additional software to achieve the level of connectivity a user needs. Raiser’s Edge NXT does offer more integrative options through the Blackbaud SKY API, which offers a more open API for integration. However, there is still developer work and coding required to make those integrations work, which can be intimidating for end-users who prefer a more declarative integration. As a result, this can cause work siloes or disparate systems within an organization that can inhibit productivity or collaboration.
Nonprofit Cloud, however, shines in its ability to integrate seamlessly with ETLs, data connectors, and a vast ecosystem of third-party apps through Salesforce AppExchange. For Salesforce users, this means their Salesforce Admin can connect their favorite tools directly to Salesforce, creating a unified platform where all their data flows together more effortlessly and the convenience of having donor information, financial data, marketing campaigns, and more accessible within a single interface. This ease of integration for Admins not only streamlines a user’s workflow but also reduces the likelihood of working in siloes or disparate systems, enhances collaboration and efficiency across the organization, and makes it easier to achieve their goals. Data Cloud is one especially powerful integrative Salesforce solution that, when connected with Nonprofit Cloud, can further extend these capabilities to bring systems together and enable meaningful engagement and collaboration experiences across an organization.
Why Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Is the Better Choice for User Experience
When it comes down to choosing the right nonprofit software and elevating your work, the user experience is critical. After all, you’re the one who will be using these tools to drive your organization’s mission forward. While Raiser’s Edge offers a solid, fundraising-focused solution, it often falls short in providing good user experiences.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, on the other hand, is designed to empower its users with superior user experiences. From features like its intuitive interface, high configuration support that allows powerful tools to be used within the platform, email tools to add messages directly from Gmail or Outlook, mobile support, Agentforce, powerful data visualization displays, and the ability to scale with your organization, Nonprofit Cloud is the ideal choice for nonprofits that want to do more with their technology.
As a nonprofit professional, your time is valuable, your work is important, and your mission deserves the best tools available. With Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, you’re not just choosing software—you’re choosing a platform that empowers you to achieve your goals, engage your supporters, and create lasting impact. It’s time to elevate your work and embrace a solution that truly works for you, and Cloud for Good is here to help if you need guidance on how make the most out of using Nonprofit Cloud or migrate out of Raiser Edge.
Contact us today to learn more or read our eBook on migrating from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce.
