Post-Raiser's Edge PUB thoughts

by Dave Woodley, @Donorology

Botton line up front

-This isn’t your parents’ Raiser’s Edge anymore

-CRMs are missing something

-There must be and will be an alternative

Every six months Blackbaud’s intentions become more clear. This spring’s product update briefings were no exception.

I think it’s fair to say that if you were a Raiser’s Edge institution before the advent of web view a decade ago, the trajectory of what will become “unified view” that you are now seeing is decidedly different. You might even be wondering if it’s really even the same product.

Classic Raiser’s Edge was made for different times. While a number of long-time user organizations have been holding out hope that their favorite features in database view would make their way into web view, I think that hope is beginning to sunset. Unified view is emerging as a different sort of philosophy. Blackbaud hopes that well-established users will come along for the ride, but Unified View is not made for those users. It’s made for a modern social responsibility organization that requires a different set of features and abilities.

Blackbaud appears to be doubling down on a comprehensive fundraising platform with a wide array of features and those that RE NXT doesn’t have, Blackbaud allows the possibility through third parties via the API. This has been understood for a few years now. I think the AI revolution forced Blackbaud to pivot. So as not to get lost or become an afterthought as their largest competitor that trail-blazed the use of agentic AI, Blackbaud felt the need to follow. In doing so they have a product that is still far from finished in terms of the original vision. I think it really was Blackbaud’s intent to be finished with Unified View by now and they probably would’ve achieved it but for the pressure to adopt AI.

There are two things that really stand out after the product update briefings.

First, the big focus is on the transactional element of the product - gift acceptance and management.

Second, while RE NXT has many features of a CRM, Blackbaud wants it to go beyond that. What I think is peculiar and interesting though are the choices Blackbaud is making. I think it’s fair to say that Blackbaud continues to gravitate around the transactional aspect of the relationship. The new functionality, the AI? Yeah, it’s all about the output rather than the journey.

So this brings me to my tectonic shift. In a few weeks, I will retire from my institution of 33 years. I have spent 25 years in higher education development, advancement services, and data operations. I will enter into private practice under the umbrella of Fractional Advancement LLC, a firm dedicated to making fundraising data useful, especially for organizations that can neither afford nor need full-time data professionals, data analysts, or data scientists.

Several times over for the last year, while skimming the Facebook Raiser’s Edge support group, the Blackbaud community, and other channels, I occasionally find the request “My organization needs an alternative to RE immediately. Where can we move our data until we can figure out how to get it on something else eventually? ” I think RE is an interesting and dynamic product, but it’s also fair to say it’s expensive, perhaps even cost prohibitive, and it’s clearly going a different direction from where it was a decade ago. If users are happy with Raiser’s Edge, they should stick with it. I still plan to support it through data engineering, pipelining, and consulting. Some organizations will have no choice to look elsewhere. As an experiment, I used Perplexity AI to create a Raiser’s Edge “table clone” based off of the public API. You can search for it on my Substack. This was intended as a proof of concept, but a number of individuals asked me if I had any intent to share it. My initial answer was “no”. But as I see the current direction of Raiser’s Edge, I’ve decided to embark on something that cuts to my major complaint with just about every CRM in the social responsibility domain.

Nearly every CRM is derived from a model of thinking that’s decades old - that a relationship is described as the mere association between the organization and the customer. It’s a sales model. By and large, the notion of a fundraising CRM is derived from the sales model. It’s nearly a total focus on the output of the relationship, the transaction. Once this may have made sense. As social responsibility work has evolved, the tools that describe those authentic relationships should evolve as well. The key term here is “authentic relationship”. With the traditional CRM, the relationship is seldom the focus. Instead, the focus is - how does the organization move the prospective supporter to make a gift (read - a sale)? And I don’t recognize anything in that sequence of events that speaks to authentic human relationships.

That needs to change. I have begun work on a next generation CRM Relationship Description application that prioritizes authentic relationships over transactions. It directs existing technology and emerging AI uses to a different trajectory. I’ve done a lot of testing with Claude and Snowflake Cortex to analyze unstructured information and how it can be used to identify connective scenarios between potential benefactors and causes they might support. Humans do not develop authentic relationships based merely on proximity or the hope of material support. Authentic relationships exist by virtue of shared values. A social impact organization benefactor gives support because of a shared belief in a mission or a cause. This shared belief of what the organization needs and what compels the benefactor to act creates the “attraction” in a relationship. And it’s never described in a CRM. It’s not categorized. It’s not studied. It’s not analyzed. Relationships can yield material support in spite of the lack understanding of shared values, but that should be the exception, not the rule. Understanding the attraction within the relationship helps the gift officer, benefactor relations, reporting, strategy, and future such endeavors.

Lacking a better name, I’m calling the fledgling undertaking Project Authenticity. It will be built around the idea that the human relationship is the goal. A gift is a consequence of that relationship. It may not be the only consequence. Things like organization support, cause advocacy, other forms of championing are also important. Project Authenticity will use more accurate and purposeful language that eliminates reducing humans to their transactions and ordinal values. For instance:

• “Donor” reduces the person to the transaction

• “Major gift” is off-putting to those who give a greater percentage of their wealth even though their means are modest.

• “Donor acquisition” is simply a lie. Organizations do not acquire donors. Donors pick the charity.

• And so on…even the name “Raiser’s Edge” puts the emphasis on the fundraising. Don’t get me started on Salesforce.

• “Affinity rating 5/10” such ratings create conjecture impose bias without corroboration

I’m not sure where this project will end. I may acquire partners. This may be a solo project. It might be free forever. it may ultimately be monetized. It may be copied and replicated. It may be a flash in a pan. It may end with a whimper instead of a bang. Or it may set the sector on fire. I’m going to try to push it towards the latter.

Stay tuned and follow this project in future editions of Donorology. If you’d like to help as a partner or tester, drop me a line.