RQ PLATFORM COMPARISON
RESULTS FROM REAL PROGRAMS
“A time saver, staff saver, life saver.”
Capterra Review
Customer review
“Always available 24/7.”
Capterra Review
Customer review
“Our experience has been phenomenal.”
Capterra Review
Customer review
“Customer service has been outstanding.”
Capterra Review
Customer review
“We switched from OpenWater for the usability.”
Capterra Review
Switching experience
180% increase in applications. 244% increase in page visits.
RQ Platform Customer
Mirzayan Fellowship Program
A side-by-side look at what each platform delivers.
Information reviewed August 2026. See sources below.
Where RQ Platform Goes Further
Purpose-built beats bundled.
Eight program types under one roof. RQ Platform runs awards, scholarships, grants, fellowships, mentorship, board nominations, volunteer recruitment, and review management natively. Blackbaud's suite has only few of these dedicated product. [3][8]
Transparent pricing. RQ Platform publishes a $2,500/year starting price. Every Blackbaud product is quote-only with no published figure anywhere in their own marketing or on G2/Capterra. [1][2][10][11]
A cleaner security and compliance record. RQ Platform is SOC 2 Type II certified with PCI DSS 4.0.1 and GDPR-ready infrastructure. Blackbaud settled with the SEC for $3 million in 2023 over misleading disclosures about a 2020 ransomware attack, and separately paid $49.5 million to 49 states and Washington, D.C. over the same incident. [13][14][15]
A shorter learning curve across the board. Independent reviewers describe both Blackbaud Grantmaking and Raiser's Edge NXT as powerful but difficult to learn, citing steep onboarding, costly customization, and support that can be slow to reach. [2][4][10]
Sourced from Blackbaud's own customers on Capterra & G2
If your organization already runs Blackbaud for fundraising or fund accounting, you don't have to rip it out. RQ Platform is built to integrate through APIs and SSO alongside Raiser's Edge NXT or Financial Edge NXT, it's a program management layer, not a donor CRM or accounting replacement. [16]
Blackbaud's scale, 40,000+ customers in over 100 countries, means a large, established partner and consultant ecosystem for complex, multi-product deployments. That's a genuine advantage for large institutions consolidating everything under one vendor. [7]
“Blackbaud” isn't one product or one price. Fundraising, accounting, grants, and education administration are separate products with separate contracts. Confirm exactly which product you'd be replacing or adding before assuming a single Blackbaud quote covers everything RQ Platform does. [6][8]
If mentorship, board nominations, or fellowship management are anywhere on your roadmap, Blackbaud has no dedicated product for them today, so you'd need a separate vendor for those regardless of which grant or fundraising tool you choose. [8]
Comparison information is based on publicly available vendor information, third-party software review platforms, and the sources listed above. Product features and pricing can change. We periodically review these pages for accuracy.
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