Blackbaud K-12 Solutions

Pros: Blackbaud was a great move at our high school for combining business needs and the LMS functionality. It was a single tool that served the full community well.

Cons: There is a definite learning curve in the transition to the LMS side. It sounded as if the business end was much smoother.

Pros: I love that there are so many different options available on this software. I can see my students' information, their parents' contact information, birthdays, grades, and assignments all in the same place. It is a good central location for all the important information of my classroom.

Cons: This software can be hard to predict when it will time out. Unfortunately there were occasions when putting in grades that I would lose entire portions and have to retype the grades because the page would time out without warning, and the grades hadn't been saved. I had to be very diligent about saving the page manually after entering any grades.

Pros: The home screen pops up your daily schedule which makes it easy to review your classes and take attendance. Attendance function includes student photographs which is helpful when just getting to know a new class.

Cons: Some functions, like running reports, are not intuitive to use at all and seem almost buried in the software. It's colorful and very visually driven which may work well for some but I find it unnecessary and distracting.

Pros: I love the "recently accessed" side bar that comes up every time I sign in. This allows me to go back to a record that I was previously looking at, which makes it much easier when researching donors and alumni. I also like that their constituent ID is right there next to their name for a quick reference!

Cons: Blackbaud does pretty much everything I could want it to do. If there was something to improve on, I think it would be the constituent search screen. When I search for a constituent, Blackbaud brings up all possible matches. Sometimes, I use broad search words and the system will only show me the first 100 matches or so, limiting the number I can see. When I'm searching for someone with a very common name, this can make it difficult to go down the list and try to find the one I'm looking for.

Pros: We have used blackbaud for over 15 years. We use this for tuition payments and payables. Extremely easy to use.

Cons: If there are 5 people in the system then you can't get in. Not a problem except for busy times of the month

Pros: One of the great pros of using blackbaud has been it's reliability and ease of use. It's the most intuitive program I've found as far as simplicity for new users, as well as customization for those advanced or more experienced. I also like that any time I ever had an issue, a quick google search or email usually cleared up the error. Overall, it was a solid product and I would use it again

Cons: The problem with this product as well as some others by the same company is that they can be cost prohibitive. While I had a positive experience with this particular software, one school I was at dropped it due to cost.

Pros: Holistic, cloud-based platform which allows data to move seamlessly and in realtime.

Cons: The implementation process needs a lot of work.

Pros: The program is multi-functional, addressing most needs any school would need.

Cons: There have been separate purchase options, and we purchased just what we felt we needed. Later we discovered that many functions of the program we purchase would not work without purchasing another part of the program. The new software appears to well-integrated, but at a much higher cost to the customer.