The Blackbaud NetCommunity online alumni management system helps users to gain a deeper understanding of alumni relationships, execute multichannel engagement strategies, and eliminate tedious back-office tasks. Blackbaud NetCommunity provides tools to engage alumni and supporters, wherever they may be, helping users: Connect in person and create memorable alumni engagement events with online alumni management system tools to help foster a personal connection between alumni…
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Kindsight iWave
Score 9.0 out of 10
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iWave offers their nonprofit fundraising intelligence platform, for performing prospect research online with VeriGift, the company's donor and donation database.
For those using the events module, NetCommunity is great, though if you do a lot of walk/run type of events where individuals sponsor other individuals, something like TeamRaiser might make more sense. If you don't have the staff resources for web developers dedicated to fundraising tasks, then NetCommunity is a great tool. It's not as customisable as an experienced programmer/developer might want, but it still has a lot of options. It also has a lot of nuance, and if you cannot make an investment of time or money into getting staff trained, it's not going to work out well.
iWave is a great resource for getting a big picture understanding of a donor and their potential alignment to your organization. There may be times if you are wanting to dive deeper into a particular facet of the donor profile that you would need to continue researching through other sources. Overall iWave has a user-friendly interface and is a must-have program for any prospect researcher.
Email marketing efforts are more targeted and now have a higher response rate. This equates to increased fundraising dollars.
A/B split testing has allowed us to further tailor content that is preferred by our audience. This targeting allows us to be more successful in gaining conversions, event registrations, etc.
iWave is very user friendly. It did not take long at all to figure out the most efficient way to use their website. There are many Training Webinars and a support center. Customer Support is very helpful.
The credits you purchase are only used if you use a batch screening. Individual screening is unlimited.
We have found that the information discovered in iWave about our donors is up-to-date and accurate.
The Foundations/Charities search function is particularly helpful. You are able to see the financials, 990s, grants awarded, and the people connected to the organizations all in one place without having to search the internet.
NetCommunity has very simple analytics. It would be great to be able to see more in depth information on how constituents are reacting to the email they receive.
Though it is simple to construct an email, making a complex design can be challenging due to the limitations of the design tool.
Although A/B testing is available within NetCommunity, it is not easy to set up.
The biggest piece of missing functionality has been data integration with Raiser's Edge, but iWave is working feverishly with Importacular to make that an option for users as well. I expect that process to be more user-friendly in the next year or so.
I love that iWave is always adding new data sources to their 360 Search with Database USA being the newest piece. I hope the "COMING SOON" section of that data source will be populated soon.
The only reason for this is due to the fact that we are only using the product for a specific purpose that is not directly tied to the newsletters. There are better products out there for what we are doing with grant processing. We will most likely move to a new software instead of renewing for our purposes
The interface with Raiser's Edge and the many different ways our users can interact with the website are a big plus for us. Event registrations are our most popular transaction type and having this on line makes our lives much easier.
I think it's very usable, but think the variety of different search functions, search by features can get confusing and overwhelm the user. I would prefer a "master" search function instead of having the user need to figure out to search by company name, employee's name, employee's title, etc. The website is a great resource and my team utilizes its uses often.
Product is stable is up 99.99% of the time. As a hosted customer, we do experience some minor downtime when routers or switches malfunction. We feel the downtime has been minimal and the communications around these outages has been good.
Blackbaud NetCommunity uses .NET technology. It can be sluggish at times if not optimized, but overall we have been pleased with the performance when handling large volumes of traffic.
Blackbaud NetCommunity and all of the Blackbaud products have a great support system. Blackbaud NetCommunity offers support through phone calls, chats, online, and email. Their response time is very quick and the support analysts work with you to resolve issues in a very timely matter. If they do not personally know the answer they will direct you to another support analyst that will be able to assist in a resolution.
iWave customer support is more responsive than most software platforms I currently use. My requests are always handled promptly, and support is incredibly responsive, friendly, and patient. Plus, I can always get someone on the phone immediately if I need a problem resolved right then and there. In addition to the live and personal support, the iWave knowledge base is frequently update with new content, including video webinars that help you become a more powerful user of the software.
I truly wish that "0" was an option. I never really pin-pointed whether the implementation issues that we had were caused by Blackbaud, or if it was part of a larger issue that began in-house.
We started out with Blackbaud NetCommunity but eventually switched to Blackbaud's Online Express. Online Express offered more features and was included with the upgrade to Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge NXT. Blackbaud NetCommunity did meet most of our needs and was a great starting point for our e-communications and online forms within our website.
W e originally selected iWave because w e believed the return on our ROI would happen faster than it would with Donor search. Looking back, I wish we had realized that is kind of how it goes with major giving in general. We also didn't have a system the linked to DonorSearch at the time and iWaves reports pulling seemed simpler for our database type.
We are able to manage quick turn-around when needed for Event pages and registration.
Integration with Raiser's Edge is certainly efficient
I believe the unsubscribe functionality is potentially removing folks permanently from all of our communications for one small reason, thus eliminating future fundraising opportunities because they cannot be selective.
Every year following our annual gala we run a list of all event attendees to learn more about their interests and giving history. This has led us to new board and/or major donor candidates.
iWave helps us understand details and less-known interests of our current donors, which helps us with donor stewardship. In today's digital age, these personal details help craft relevant stewardship and communications plans with our existing supporters. With so many competing charities, these small differences can account for a supporter to choose your organization over others who aren't making that personal connecting to the donor.
