I am in the same position, IT manager for a non-profit of about 70 people. We currently use Raiser's Edge and I find it to be at least twice as expensive as any other product on the market. Maintenance and support are very expensive and if I could use that money for a part time developer, we would be better off. And I've found that the sales people know next to nothing about their product. Every time you turn around, there's another module that they should have suggested for the last upgrade. Plus, you pay by the seat so it's not a good solution if you want several people to have access to the database.
I've done a bit of research and testing with CiviCRM and I would like to replace Raiser's Edge with it. Raiser's Edge is a lot of overkill for what we do and CiviCRM looks like it would handle things nicely. But Raiser's Edge is entrenched so there's no replacing it anytime soon. But if I were starting from scratch, CiviCRM would be the way to go.