Experience with NXT Donation Forms? And comparison to OLX

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Tyyne Parakhen 2
Tyyne Parakhen 2 ✭
Fourth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
What are everyone's opinions on NXT donation forms vs. Online Express donation forms? I've only worked with OLX in the past, but our organization would like to move to NXT donation forms because they integrate with Email marketing, and we can then accurately track this revenue stream. There are a couple of things that concern me about NXT forms and would like to hear what everyone's experiences have been:


1) NXT automatically attempts to match donations to existing records, but if there is no clear match, it creates a new record. There is no possibility of manually matching donations to records. The duplicate records created this way then need to be merged manually. (This is a huge concern of mine!)

2) There is no specific field available for tributes (IMO, IHO) and the donor would have to use a free text Comment field for this.

3) There doesn't seem to be a lot of visual customization that can be done with the NXT form.


Thanks everyone in advance!
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  • Carrie Powell
    Carrie Powell ✭✭✭✭✭
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We, too, have the same issues, and we have opted to stay with OLX form for now because of the Tribute option (we have a lot of such gifts). But I think we're still experiencing duplicates using that form, something we have to check more closely. (We use a different email marketing platform, but I can understand why your organization would like to take advantage of the opportunities using RENXT provides to link them.) 
  • Troy Smith 4
    Troy Smith 4 ✭
    Fifth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Tynne,


    I think you have touched on the two issues that have kept us from moving from Online Express to NXT forms. We had considered NXT forms so that we could have the option to capture opt-in consent for email, but our donors use the the forms for tributes too often to lose that field. I believe there have been multiple petitions/requests from the community to have that the tribute field added, but it has not happened yet.
  • Koren Petersen
    Koren Petersen ✭
    Sixth Anniversary First Reply
    Hi Tvyne,


    Your post is very helpful as we weigh these two options. NXT Forms sounds like such a wonderful tool for tracking our Email marketing, but there are some major gaps before we can use it. My other concern is that you cannot change the fund description shown to the donors like you can in Online Express. Our fund descriptions were created for internal purposes and no donor would fully understand what they are donating to if they saw those descriptions as they are now.


    Fingers crossed for all these adjustments to make NXT Forms more usable soon.
  • Tyyne Parakhen 2
    Tyyne Parakhen 2 ✭
    Fourth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    JoAnn, thanks so much for the webinar link, I'll definitely give it a watch!


    Carrie and Troy, the workaround that BB trainers suggest is to create a free text comment field in the form and instruct the donor to include their tribute information there. We don't get a ton of tributes so this could be fine for us, but I wonder if anyone has had experience of actually using it this way and whether it created issues?


    Koren, that's so interesting about the fund description, I didn't know about that! I wish they pointed that out more clearly in the training class. Is it the fund name or the fund description that is displayed in NXT forms?


    If anyone seeing this post has actually used NXT forms with their organization, please let us know how you've found it! We really want to transition in that direction but the fact that everyone here seems to have decided not to is making me nervous! ?
  • Sarah Augenstein
    Sarah Augenstein ✭
    Fifth Anniversary First Reply
    Hi Tyyne!


    We use NXT forms right now and I found your post because I am interested in the features that OLX offers!


    What we are most interested in is the customization options in OLX including adding plugins (more specifically adding a FREE plug in that allows donors to opt in to pay a _% extra to cover credit card fees https://www.smartthing.org/demo/smartdonorcover-olx/) This would be huge for us and would cover a lot of cc expenses.


    We do not yet use the Marketing feature in NXT (We transitioned to RE Nov 2020) We are having issues with that as well - We are yet to work out how to get our mailing list from Constant contact into RE - and the pain of only being able to send emails to one email type at a time (and not spouses!) We will lose a lot of subscribers, but I guess once we are up and running using NXT for marketing it should(!) be smooth sailing.


    Other than that the NXT form is very simple. Well designed visually, but customization ability is low. We use the comment field box for fund designation requests and tributes. I assume OLX allows donors to choose a fund - that is a nice feature! NXT does allow automated recurring gifts to self process with no need to manual process or convert these gifts. But like I said - We would love to be able to add the plug-in to cover cc fees.
  • Kristen Jaoui
    Kristen Jaoui ✭
    Fifth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Tyyne,


    I'm late to your thread, but wanted to weigh in. We were so excited to switch to NXT Forms because then those who only use the front end could see the forms, we liked the idea of approving gift batches versus having to enter everything, for some reason our database recurring gifts never processed right, and a few other reasons that escape me now. We tried NXT forms for about six months before switching them back to OLX. 1) The contact info on the emails disappeared so it wasn't as easy for my DOD to thank people, 2) if NXT couldn't easily match someone to a current record it would create a new one. I'm still cleaning up duplicate records from this. Even if you go in and assign the gift to the right record, the damage is done. The duplicate record is instantly created and then has to be deleted. 3) We are still having problems with the recurring gift side of things with the NXT form.


    I think it just depends what is important to you and your team. For us, it made way more sense to switch back to OLX. I hope they keep improving this system because seeing the data for each form was very useful for my DOD.


    Good luck!


    Kristen
  • Tyyne Parakhen 2
    Tyyne Parakhen 2 ✭
    Fourth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Thank you for your insight, Kristen! This is super helpful.


    After doing just a few test donations, those are exactly the issues we are running into. Not being able to see donor information in the confirmation email, and the duplicate issue. The latter is the most concerning to me, and is actually the reason why we have decided not to move to NXT forms for now. It's a bummer because I think it has a lot of promise, but it is clearly not to the level of full functionality yet.


    Do confirmation emails from OLX still display donor information? I was told by support that this change was across the board.
  • Madeleine Holdsworth
    Madeleine Holdsworth ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    The fund designation on the NXT form is a concern for us - our internal fund names are certainly not public facing and since you cannot customize those in NXT that pretty much forced our hand into using the OLX donation form. The issue of NXT creating new records if it can't match a record is also an issue.
  • Elaine Tucker
    Elaine Tucker ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Madeleine, where does the fund designation appear? Is it included in the "transaction details" on the acknowledgement email?
  • Carolyn Wisniewski
    Carolyn Wisniewski ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic First Reply
    Can you tell me more about the plug-in? Super interested in that!
  • Jacqueline Kordsmeier
    Jacqueline Kordsmeier ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic First Reply

    @Tyyne Parakhen
    Here we are 4 years later and NXT has added the Honor Memorial to NXT but there is a problem with the NXT donation form and the honor memorial. We do not have separate honor memorial accounts for married couples. When one predeceases the other, the honor memorial is still for the couple. In NXT, when the donor puts in a name that does not match a constituent record it automatically creates a new constituent record. Who wants these excess records in their database? We don't. When verifying the gift you are given the option to connect the donor to someone already in your database and make any modifications you need to but you have no option to modify the honor memorial for the gift. Does anyone have a suggestion?

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