Get Started with the Portal

The portal is a website constituents can use to stay connected with your organization. From Raiser's Edge NXT you customize and manage the site.

To make the portal available to constituents, link to it from your organization's website, or include the custom URL in your marketing or printed materials.

With the portal, constituents can:

  • Give one-time or scheduled gifts using a debit or credit card, or bank account draft.

  • Manage recurring gifts such as to change payment amounts, or to skip, hold, or end payments.

  • Save payment methods — or use ApplePay or Click to Pay — to avoid entering their payment information each time they give.

  • View their lifetime history of giving, including cash or checks given offline.

    Note: The giving history includes these gift types: one-time, gifts-in-kind, matching gifts, stock/property, pledges, payments for pledges and recurring gifts, and "Other." Gift subtypes are not included.

  • Email giving statements to themselves for the last calendar year or the year-to-date.

  • Update their name and contact information to keep your organization up-to-date.

    To manage those updates, view linked accounts, and send portal invitations, navigate to Portal activity from Constituents.

Set Portal Permissions

From Security, you can specify which users can set up and manage the portal.

Under Role management, Tools roles, add a role. Under Portal tasks, select which permissions to grant to the role. Then assign the role to the appropriate users.

Role tasks:

  • Manage setup and configuration — Can set up the portal and update settings.

  • Manage portal user access — Can invite and block portal users, and access the user activity log.

  • Manage portal user updates — Can manage changes to constituent records in the profile update log.

Tip: Depending on how your staff divides up responsibilities, you may need multiple roles to manage portal tasks.

Set up and Activate Portal

Before constituents can use your portal, an admin must complete the guided steps to configure and activate the portal. Activation secures your custom URL and makes the site available to access on the web.

Note: You don't have to complete all set-up steps at one time.

  1. From Settings, Tools, select Portal settings.

  2. Under Activate portal, select Begin setup.

  3. Under 1-Set support contact, select Enter contact information. Next, enter a name and email address or phone number for the person (or office) at your organization users should contact for help with the portal. Then select Save.

    Note: Contact information appears on the portal invitation, gift confirmation, and giving history.

  4. Under 2-Add branding, select Edit branding. Update the visual elements in the portal and authentication pages to match your organization's branding, such as the display name, logo images, and primary color.

  5. Under 3-Manage branded authentication, select Manage settings. Enter custom summary text and link to custom help content from the authentication pages.

  6. Under 4-Add privacy links, select Edit privacy links. Enter the URL to your organization's privacy policy. Next, enter the URL to a form hosted on your website where users can submit privacy related requests, such as to delete their accounts from your database. Both links appear at the bottom of all portal pages.

    Tip: For the link to the form, enter text to match the link name with the form’s page name on your website.

  7. Under 5-Claim URL and activate portal, select Finish setup

  8. Enter a unique subdomain for your portal's web address and select Continue.

    Warning: After activating your portal, you can't change the URL.

  9. Review each setting and then select Activate portal. A confirmation appears with your live URL.

After you activate your portal, you can return to Settings, Tools, Portal settings at any time to:

Enable features

To turn on features for the portal, from Settings, Tools, select Portal features.

Roll Out to Supporters

To educate and excite your supporters to use the portal, you should plan a coordinated effort to explain what the portal is and how to get started using it:

  • Plan which events and meetings you'll use to announce the new portal option. Distribute this customizable handout to answer common questions about creating accounts and using the portal.

  • Add links to the portal to your website and include these FAQs about the portal. Use social media and other communications to direct constituents to this information.

  • Announce when you plan send portal invitations so constituents will know when to expect to receive theirs.

  • Add details about the portal to your new member materials to onboard constituents who join after the initial rollout.

Send Portal Invitations

After you activate your portal, you can send email invitations to constituents asking them to create Blackbaud IDs to access the portal. Invitations help ensure user accounts are linked to the correct constituent records. When a constituent accepts the invitation, the account sign-up screen is pre-filled with the first name, last name, and primary email address from their constituent record.

  1. From Settings, Tools, select Portal settings. Under Portal URL, select Send invitations.

  2. Enter the sender name, such as your organization, and email address to include on the message.

  3. Select an individual recipient or list.

  4. If you selected a list, choose whether to include constituents with pending or expired invitations.

  5. Select Send invitations. A confirmation message displays the number the number of invitations sent.

    Note: You can also send a portal invitation to a constituent from their constituent record, under Portal.

Note: If you prefer to send custom email messages or link to the portal from your website, you can use your portal URL to invite users. When a constituent accesses the portal URL for the first time, they're prompted to sign up for a Blackbaud ID. Raiser's Edge NXT uses the email address, first name, and last name from the Blackbaud ID to match them to a constituent record. If it finds a match, it links the Blackbaud ID to the constituent record automatically. If it doesn't find a match or finds multiple matches, the constituent receives an error and may need assistance to create their account. Use the user account activity log to troubleshoot Blackbaud ID issues. You can unlink a constituent's Blackbaud ID, if needed.

Manage Portal Access

To access the portal, a constituent logs in with a Blackbaud ID account, similar to the one you use to access Raiser's Edge NXT. This account links the constituent's portal profile to their constituent record so giving and profile information flow securely between the applications.

When creating a Blackbaud ID, the constituent must enter their name, email address, and a password. Raiser's Edge NXT uses this information to match the user to an existing constituent record.

Note: To avoid possible duplicate records, encourage constituents to use the primary email address from their constituent record to create their Blackbaud ID. If duplicates are created, you can manage them in Data health. For more information, see Duplicate Management.

Troubleshoot Access Issues

  • If a constituent has issues creating a Blackbaud ID or logging in to the portal, you can check the user account activity log in Settings, Tools, Portal activity to help troubleshoot issues. For example, a constituent receives an error if they attempt to create an account using an email address that's associated with multiple constituent records. The activity log provides additional information about errors and tips for how to resolve them. For more information, see Portal Activity.

  • With the portal users list in Settings, Tools, Portal activity, you can view status details for linked, invited, and blocked users. For more information, see Portal Users List.

  • On a constituent's record, under Portal, you can view the email address used for their Blackbaud ID and unlink it if they want to use a different one. You can also block and unblock their access to the portal. For more information, see Portal Access.

Manage Profile Updates

If you enabled profile updates in portal features, portal users can update their personal and contact information to help your organization keep constituent records up-to-date.

To manage changes made by portal users, go to Settings, Tools, Portal activity, and then select View profile update log under Profile update log.

Updates to name, address, phone number, or email address appear on the user's constituent record immediately. An admin can review the changes and undo or edit values as needed.

For more information, see Portal Profile Updates.

Manage Gifts Received from the Portal

Payments received from the portal appear in Gifts, Overview in a batch with "Donation forms transactions" as the description. Batches are created — one for credit and debit cards and another for direct debits — each day you receive transactions from the portal or donation forms.

Gifts from the portal are given through a Standard Donation Form. Each day you receive gifts, they appear in batches with the description "Donation forms transactions" and their payment method. You can access unapproved batches from Gifts, Overview and Gift batches under Related links.

After you approve a batch of gifts, those gifts appear on the associated constituent records, under Giving history. For more information about batches, see Gift Management.

Note: For recurring gifts paid by bank account draft (direct debit), payments take 24 hours to fully complete.