The Raiser's Edge & FirstClass Integration

Many times in talking to clients and prospects we hear, 'Does The Raiser's Edge integrate to FirstClass?'. Even when organisations are consolidating all of their systems into one central CRM, they keep FirstClass in place. We've even heard, 'Over my dead body you are taking away FirstClass!' (OK, a little legacy humour there).

In response to the market, Blackbaud has entered into a partnership with Clearwater Consultancy Ltd., makers of the leading legacy management software, FirstClass. FirstClass enables legacy staff to keep track of all bequests made to their organisation. They can record all the important details about each legator and bequest together with estimated values, income received to date, review dates and a complete contact history. The partnership entails an integration between The Raiser's Edge and FirstClass.

The integration allows users to:

• Search for existing records in RE7 before creating a case
• Add new records in RE7 from within FirstClass
• Pull constituent data from RE7 into a case record in FirstClass
• Implement appropriate business processes such as marking Legator records as deceased in RE7 before adding to FirstClass

Key benefits of this solution are:

• Prevent duplicate records between systems by linking constituents (RE7) and cases (FirstClass) appropriately
• Better, cleaner data between systems - ensuring that records are marked as deceased and ‘do not contact', etc.
• Less administrative burden to maintain data between systems
• Gain a better understanding of where legacy gifts come from (having a view of whether or not the constituent had a relationship with the organisation previously)

If you are interested in learning more, just let me know.

PCI Compliance: Do you have a plan?

PCI Compliance seems to be getting a lot more attention lately. I hear about it at industry events. I see it in publications. And while I'm glad that there is discussion, I'm afraid that I'm not seeing a whole lot of action. When I speak to people in the not-for-profit market, it is a rare occasion that I come across an organisation that has a plan for achieving PCI Compliance. Does your organisation have a plan?

What is PCI Compliance? There are two key worldwide compliance requirements:

• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements developed by the major credit card companies to enhance credit card data security. All organisations that process, store, or transmit payment card data must be PCI DSS compliant or risk losing their ability to process credit card payments.
• Payment Application Security Standards (PA-DSS) is the PCI Security Standards Council-managed program to help software vendors and others develop secure payment applications that do not store prohibited data.

So that means that it is the responsibility of each organisation to comply with PCI DSS - you should review the standards provided by the security council and assess your PCI requirements. The Security Standards Council provides a Quick Reference Guide and a Self-Assesment that you can download from their website which could be starting point for your plan.

What is Blackbaud's Plan? In order to make The Raiser's Edge, NetSolutions, Blackbaud NetCommunity, and Blackbaud Enterprise CRM compliant with PCI DSS and PA DSS, we have developed the Blackbaud Payment Service (BBPS). BBPS integrates with the PA DSS compliant versions of our software and stores credit card and merchant account information in a secure environment. Credit card numbers will no longer be visible in our software and will be replaced with reference tokens. When you process credit card transactions, the reference token in your database will summon the stored credit card number from BBPS to be used in the transaction (so you will be able to process recurring transactions). The BBPS has successfully completed our PCI DSS audit.

For more information on PCI, check out our PCI Compliance Resources such as our PCI blog, PCI video and FAQs. I'd love to hear from you if you do have a plan.