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REAL solutions for The Raiser's Edge™

Raisers Edge™

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Prospect Management, Raisers Edge™, RE NXT ·

Volunteer Fundraising with Raiser’s Edge NXT

Canterbury School Flame

We recently helped Canterbury School in Fort Myers, FL launch a volunteer fundraising program using their Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT database.

After importing current year ask amounts as a currency attribute to get them to show on NXT work lists, setting appropriate access levels, and sending out email invitations, all it took were some simple screencasts (watch below) to get their volunteers up and running with RE NXT. I suspect Blackbaud’s long-view is giving everyone — every user, every constituent, every volunteer — a Blackbaud ID. Imagine wanting to help your favorite non-profit and all you have to do is sign-in to Blackbaud as easily as you sign-in to Google.

RE NXT seems all grown-up and ready to showcase the best of both worlds with software that provides both a modern, web-based CRM and traditional database access via Citrix.

This could very well be the beginning of how to harness the power of key volunteers, board members, and advancement committees.

No more emailing PDFs and Excel spreadsheets, ever.

I wonder how long it will be before most organizations have their volunteers logging in to RE NXT and Blackbaud builds a first-step that both thanks folks for volunteering and prompts them to get started by first making their own gift?

Check out the short screencasts below ….

Overview:

One-Time Setup:

Make a Call or Email:

Enter an Action:

Review Gift Status:

How To, Raisers Edge™ ·

How To Run Meaningful Parent Class Analysis Reports

The standard Parent Class Analysis Report in The Raiser’s Edge is fantastic. It quickly gives you statistics and donation totals for each group of parents based on their child’s class year. Unfortunately, the report is purely parent-based. When parents divorce, the report now treats each parent as a separate household for percent participation.

This is problematic because you have no way to remedy divorced parents (married parents can either have the spouse entered as a non-constituent or be soft-credited for the gift of the other parent).

To resolve this, and return the report to participation rates and funds raised based on if either / any parent of a student gave, you need to be able to exclude non-donor parents if the non-donor parent’s former spouse has given. It takes two three queries and a nested VLOOKUP formula in Excel, but here’s a screencast that shows how to remove those “extra” non-donor divorced parent households…

 

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Power BI, Raisers Edge™ ·

How to Raise More Money and Have Fun at your next Phonathon

Phonathons have nearly fallen by the wayside. Oftentimes they are an afterthought; deemed to be a burden to host with staff spending more time on logistics than could ever be re-gained from the funds raised. Cellphones and remote volunteers add to the complexity, and most folks simply shrug and hope for the best.

At least the callers got to see one another and catch-up.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Your data – both for your callers and the data they report back from their calls can be streamlined with Power BI and rendered into live dashboards that can turn a dull phonathon into some serious competition.

The screencast below does two things:

1. First, it gives a view of the insights (and fun) that adding live data dashboards can provide. The fact that the dashboards are projected onto large screens at the event AND online AND update in real-time as calls get logged make them relevant to the callers on-site and those calling remotely during the same time period.

2. Second, the screencast is a detailed introduction to Microsoft’s Power BI at the most basic, beginner level. Pray God that Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo don’t see this screencast and laugh at how simple the data model is. But if you’ve been looking for an easy way to begin learning Power BI, this could help.

As always, the greatest thing about this solution is that it’s completely free. That said, just say the word if you want some help setting this up for your organization….

 

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