If your nonprofit is on Raiser's Edge 7 or eTapestry, you've probably had the conversation.
Blackbaud isn't cheap, and RE7 is on a clock: Blackbaud has announced that support for Raiser's Edge 7 and Database View ends in the first half of 2027. Newer platforms like Virtuous, Bloomerang, and Little Green Light promise a cleaner interface, better integrations, and a price point that doesn't require a quarterly budget conversation with your board treasurer.
The migration conversation is real, and for many mid-sized nonprofits it's the right move. But the platform decision is the easy part. What actually determines whether a migration succeeds is what happens to your data, and most organizations underestimate that part until they're already in it.
What you're actually migrating
A CRM migration isn't moving a database from one place to another. It's an opportunity to clean up years of accumulated data problems, or to carry them forward into a new system where they immediately become someone else's problem to explain.
Most organizations discover their data quality issues during migration, not before it. Deduplication that never happened, constituent records with outdated addresses or three variations of the same name, gift records that don't reconcile with finance, and custom fields that five people used in five different ways.
When these issues show up mid-migration, the project gets expensive and slow. When they're discovered after go-live, they undermine confidence in the new system immediately, and sometimes permanently.
The organizations that migrate cleanly are the ones that audited and cleaned their data before the migration started, not during it.
Raiser's Edge and eTapestry: the specific challenges
RE7 has been around long enough that many organizations have years of legacy data in formats that don't translate cleanly to modern platforms. Custom attribute fields that exist because of a configuration decision in 2008. Relationships that made sense in a previous version of Blackbaud's data model but create confusion in a new one.
eTapestry, Blackbaud's lower-cost platform, has its own migration challenges. Account-based structure rather than contact-based, which means the data model is different enough from most migration targets that a direct export and import rarely works without significant transformation.
Neither challenge should stop a migration, but both call for a clear picture of the data preparation work before you start.
What to evaluate beyond the feature list
Most CRM evaluation processes focus on features: does the platform have the reporting views you need, does it integrate with your online giving tool, what does the implementation timeline look like?
Those are the right questions. But there are a few others worth adding:
How does the migration handle your constituent matching? When records are imported, how does the platform identify duplicates? What's the default behavior when two records appear to be the same person? Understanding this before the migration saves a lot of cleanup afterward.
What's the data model for relationships? If your organization tracks complex relationships, like board members who are also donors and program alumni, how does the new platform represent that? Platforms vary significantly here.
What are you actually using in Raiser's Edge right now? Most organizations use a fraction of the functionality in their current CRM. Before evaluating a new platform's feature list, audit your actual usage. Features you're not using in RE7 won't suddenly become useful in Virtuous.
Who owns the migration internally? CRM migrations usually fail because nobody on staff had the capacity to own the process, even when the platform choice was right. Implementation partners help, but someone at the organization needs to be the decision-maker and point of accountability.
Virtuous, Bloomerang, and Little Green Light: a brief orientation
These three are among the most commonly considered alternatives for organizations moving off Blackbaud's mid-market platforms.
Virtuous is built around a "responsive fundraising" model that uses donor relationship signals such as engagement scores and giving patterns to guide outreach. Best fit for organizations with active major gift programs and staff capacity to use the platform's relationship management features. It has grown quickly, with four consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list and a $100 million funding round in 2024.
Bloomerang is built for donor retention. The interface centers retention rate and lapsed donor tracking in a way that most development directors find immediately intuitive. Strong fit for organizations where retention is the primary fundraising challenge and where a simpler, more focused platform is preferable to a complex one.
Little Green Light is a strong choice for smaller organizations that need a clean, reliable donor database without a lot of complexity. Well-suited to organizations with a part-time development function or a volunteer-led development committee.
The right choice depends on the sophistication of your development program and what your staff will actually use consistently.
The data question that comes before the platform question
Before you issue an RFP or schedule a demo, one question is worth answering first: what is the actual state of your current data?
A data audit before a migration surfaces the issues you'll have to deal with regardless of which platform you choose. It also tells you how long the data preparation work will take, which directly affects your migration timeline and budget.
Organizations that skip the pre-migration audit and go straight to implementation consistently underestimate the project. The data problems don't go away. They just surface later, at a less convenient moment.
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Joshua Barillas is the founder of Prismatic Consulting, a data services firm built exclusively for nonprofits. Learn more about our services or get in touch at hello@prismaticconsulting.us.