Raiser’s Edge Database View ends in summer 2027. Here is what it means for a Catholic school office.
Two deadlines land in 2027: Blackbaud retires Database View, and the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit begins. This guide covers both, plainly, and ends with a five-minute survey that turns your answers into a printable report.
What Blackbaud announced
Blackbaud has published an end date for Raiser’s Edge Database View, a features grid comparing it to Web View row by row, and, on September 3, 2026, a dated roadmap for what arrives in Web View when. The table below is built from those three sources.
| What | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| The end date | Blackbaud’s help page says Database View “will end on September 15, 2027.” Plan for summer 2027. |
| Already in Web View | Query (Blackbaud says it stays supported in both views). Attribute management, since January 2026; Web View calls attributes custom fields. Gift batch entry. Basic list export. Email marketing and donation forms. |
| Stays in Database View until the end | Global Change, Import, and Export. Blackbaud’s dated plan: export and import of constituents and gifts by December 2026; Mail, receipts, acknowledgements, and pledge reminders by December 2026; Global Change releasing through June 2027. |
| Marked “Never moving to web view” on the features grid, as of August 2026 | Custom Crystal Reports. 113 of the 166 standard reports in the Database View library, including the constituent profiles and the parent and alumni directories. Saved import definitions, which must be set up again. Four query capabilities. Six deceased-processing rules. Online giving in currencies other than US dollars. |
| Ends with Database View | Online Express, NetCommunity, and Database View plug-ins, integrations, and customizations, per Blackbaud’s September 3, 2026 post. |
| Still supported after | Backups, Bulk Data Delivery, and on-demand backups, with the limits Blackbaud publishes: one free backup a month, a seven-day download window, and backups described as “for database view information only.” |
| Not published by Blackbaud | Whether Web View enforces batch control totals on approval. Anything about Access reports. What table-type, date, and comment attributes lose in the move. What “Partially available” is missing, in any row. Verify each with Blackbaud. |
Sources: Blackbaud’s transition help page, its Raiser’s Edge NXT features grid (data current to August 12, 2026), and its September 3, 2026 community post. The grid is a snapshot and has already been contradicted once by the newer post; check both before you plan around a single row.
What this means for a small school office
The sunset is not one event but six: entering a batch of gifts, running a global change, importing and exporting files, producing letters and receipts, running custom reports, and taking online gifts through Online Express each land somewhere different, on a different date.
The question nobody asks first: what is actually in your database
Most development officers have never seen their own database profiled, and the attributes, solicit codes, and duplicates in it decide whether any move, including the move to Web View, keeps your history.
Your 2027 has two deadlines
The federal Education Freedom Tax Credit begins January 1, 2027: a donor in a participating state can direct up to $1,700 of federal tax to a scholarship granting organization, states opt in one by one, and scholarship donors will ask which students their gift educated.
Your options
There are four honest answers, and for many schools the first is the right one.
- Stay on Raiser’s Edge and learn Web View. Right when your office lives in gift entry, query, and email, and your custom reports can be retired.
- Move fully into Raiser’s Edge NXT and rebuild your Database View work there. Right when you want one vendor and can wait for Blackbaud’s roadmap dates.
- Move to a general-purpose nonprofit CRM. Right when your office looks like any small nonprofit’s and you have a database person to run the migration.
- Move to a purpose-built tool for Catholic schools, which is what Matreas builds. Right when tuition families, parishes, and scholarship reporting are the shape of your work.
A calendar for a July–June school
For a school on a July-to-June year, the inventory belongs to this fall, the decision to the January-to-March budget conversation, the parallel run or the renewal to spring, and the cutover, or the settled life in Web View, to summer 2027.
Take the survey
Fifteen questions about what your office does in Database View and what is in your database. About five minutes, nothing to upload. You get a printable report with your school’s name on it and a timeline for your renewal.
Questions
- Who are you?
- Matreas builds donor software for Catholic schools. We wrote this guide and the survey.
- What does it cost?
- Nothing. The guide, the survey, the report, and the in-depth assessment are free and stay free.
- What if we just renewed?
- The report still tells you what changes for your office and when; your renewal date only changes which budget cycle you decide in.
- Do you see our data?
- The survey uses no data at all; your answers live in the link to your report. The assessment uses only the two exports you send, under the agreement on the assessment page.
- What if we stay on Web View?
- For many schools that is the right answer, and the report will say so.
- Is this the same as Blackbaud’s Data Health Center?
- No. The Data Health Center checks completeness and accuracy inside Raiser’s Edge; this asks what the sunset does to your office.
Matreas is donor software built for Catholic schools. We made this survey because most development officers have never seen their own database profiled, and 2027 has two deadlines, not one. The survey is free and stays free. Plenty of schools will read their report and stay on Web View. That is a fine outcome. If you want to see what we are building, it is at matreas.com.