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I’ve recently helped a client implement Blackbaud’s NetCommunity (NC), and this report is my initial assessment of its capabilities.  NetCommunity is Blackbaud’s online tool built to provide a content management system (CMS) with Web 2.0 features that allows clients to not only manage their website and use the full featured broadcast email and analytics tool, but to integrate online transactions and constituent profile updates into Raiser’s Edge.  My client’s main reason for purchasing NC was for the integration, which as Raiser’s Edge customers have known has previously been a challenge.

Summary of Project

My client is implementing NetCommunity through Blackbaud’s Grow program, a limited-scope offering of the full product intended for organizations with simple websites with limited number of pages.  Since we were not going to be doing a full implementation of NC, but mainly using the form building capabilities of NC to integrate with our WordPress website, we purchased the Grow offering.  The costs for Grow include a year of hosting, implementation consulting & training, and emarketing consulting, and a certain level of email volume.  First year costs including hardware can range from $25 – $35,000, as opposed to a full blown implementation of NC which can cost 2 to 3 times as much depending on the complexity of your website.

If you don’t use Blackbaud’s hosting services, you will need to purchase and install a server on your local network and configure the appropriate firewall security.  As far as limited-scope engagements go, the project management and consulting provided were sufficient, albeit a little too scripted – we had to break the mold a bit since we were not implementing the CMS as usual.  Support was generally responsive, although as is common with all implementation consulting, sometimes there was a 2-4 day delay on responses if the consultants were onsite with other clients.

Benefits

So far my client has been satisfied with the new level of integration between their website and Raiser’s Edge.  It’s very nice to be able to transfer online donations straight into the database after a fairly simple process of review and confirmation.  There will be no laborious process of getting the gifts into RE, or the tedious reconciliation process at the end of the month.  Blackbaud has created a plug-in for RE that serves as a bridge, and allows the fundraiser to confirm whether a gift is coming from a new donor or a constituent already in the database.  RE evaluates for duplicates using criteria that can be adjusted slightly and allows users to search the database as well.  If a constituent creates an online profile, RE will automatically link future gifts to their record, and the donor will be able to see their giving history.

My client is looking forward to having event registrations that also transfer into RE, eliminating a lot of duplicate effort that is currently the status quo.  They already greatly appreciate that the email tool is integrated, which allows us to much more easily manage new subscribers and those that unsubscribe, and thus eliminate the need for separate distribution lists that have to be manually reconciled.  It is great to pull the recipient list straight from RE, based on criteria that can include donation, volunteer, event, or profile demographics.

In summary, they are enjoying the benefits of integration. This is one example of why the whole industry has moved toward integration, whether offered through open source, APIs, or web services.

Challenges

NetCommunity’s CMS features are decent and sufficient to manage a website – e.g., styles are CSS-controlled – but they do not yet stand up to a more full featured, best-of-breed CMS.  It does not have advanced file and site management, almost no image editing, or advanced survey building.  It has some flexibility in form-building, but not enough, especially if you are used to open source products.

Like all vendors, Blackbaud is working on upgrading the features of its products.  I hope they make the registration forms more flexible by allowing the re-ordering of parts and editing of sections, and that they also make registration for free events flow more naturally by removing the language and feel of billing. They need to fix the events page WYSIWYG editor so that it is full sized. The event registration does not have maximum capacity limits or wait lists, and the volunteer management does not have a schedule that allows volunteers to sign up for available opportunities.

We have also experienced some technical issues with Internet Explorer and iframes linked to their donation forms. Performance is also a bit slow.  As might be expected, I would like to see a reduction in costs as well, as implementing, hosting, and licensing of NC is not cheap – affordability has never been Blackbaud’s main selling point.

One of the features I would most like them to add is page versioning and support for draft mode.  One cannot take a current live page, start making changes in draft mode, save intermittently, and then publish the new version when fully ready.  While one can preview a change, as soon as you click Save on any change to any part of a page, it is saved to the live site.  To be truly safe, it requires one to create a copy of the page, and then to create copies of all the parts of the page, and then make changes on those copies, and then when ready to link the new page to the navigation so that it becomes the live page (hopefully it’s not a page that you have a lot of intra-site references and links to). NC also does not come with any built in fundraising reports, so one has to log into RE to see the actual gifts coming through the system, which is not always convenient.

Conclusion

If you get NetCommunity for the basic gift and event integration with Raiser’s Edge and broadcast emailing capabilities, you will likely be happy.  But do not expect a lot of flexibility out-of-the-box, or more advanced features in terms of events, volunteer management, or members-only portal capabilities. If you want complete flexibility and the latest and greatest CMS features, you will likely be disappointed. Blackbaud does offer an API for those that need more flexibility (usually $10,000 or so, but included with NC), and it does allow building of new modules, but as with most customization projects, expect it to require significant hours, expertise, and money. Blackbaud will continue to develop the product, so I don’t doubt it will improve over the coming years based on customer demands and trends in the market.

Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone. (Free registration required)

CITI helped sponsor the report with a paid ad in the directory section. We implement both Drupal and Wordpress sites.