April 2009 - Posts
Here are last week's most popular forum discussions as well as unanswered posts:
Most popular topics:
Unanswered Posts:
A couple of users had questions about creating Policies and Procedures manuals this past week:
Join the discussion!
There were active forum threads about the Media tab both this week and a couple weeks ago, so a blog post about the Media tab seems appropriate.
The Media tab is a catch-all space to store newspaper clippings, letters, pictures, and graphs on constituent records. There are two ways to add a Media object to the record: by embedding the file in The Raiser's Edge and by saving a link to the file.
Embedding an object places a copy of the original file into The Raiser's Edge database. When you embed objects, it increases the size of the database by the size of the files. If you embed a file that is 1 MB, the database grows 1 MB. If you use the SQL Express version of SQL Server, Microsoft limits the database size to 4 GB. If you reach this size limitation, you will need to purchase SQL Server Standard or Enterprise.
If you are running SQL Server Standard or Enterprise, the database has no size limit and media storage isn't a concern. If embedding files would cause you to hit the 4 GB limitation, link to the object instead. When you link to an object, you add the path to the file, rather than copying it into the database.
Because they are stored in the database, embedded files are automatically available in The Raiser's Edge to everyone who can access the Media tab. Also, if changes are made to your server or network, these files would be unaffected.
With linked media objects, the files need to be stored on the network, where everyone can access the link. If you relocate the media files, you may have to update the links in your database. You can do this globally by running the Update Linked Media plug-in.
For steps on adding, editing and deleting Media objects, check out Knowledgebase solution BB42288.
Here are some web seminars coming next week. Web seminars are free, usually last about an hour, and discuss Blackbaud products and best practices for nonprofits. To register, select Web Seminars from the Events menu on our website, find a seminar you want to attend, and click Register Now. All web seminars are at 2:00 p.m. EST:
April 27: Measuring Donor Retention within The Raiser’s Edge: Learn about analyzing your current fundraising efforts in The Raiser’s Edge through standard workflow procedures, easy-to-use reports, and developing a retention plan using supporting, readily available industry data.
April 29: Blackbaud NetCommunity for Healthcare Organizations: Learn how Blackbaud NetCommunity helps healthcare organizations build stronger relationships by creating a personalized, interactive experience for constituents, donors, patients, and board members.
April 30: Blackbaud's Solution for Environmental Organizations: Learn about Blackbaud's commitment to helping environmental nonprofits succeed and fulfill their ever-important missions.
Monday's session (Measuring Donor Retention within The Raiser’s Edge) will discuss the Fundraising Effectiveness Plug-in, which we'll be talking about more on this blog.
To repeat the offer from my last post: The first topic suggested in the comment section on this post will be the subject of a post in the next week. Only suggestions related to The Raiser's Edge, please. Have a super weekend!
Here's a pair of unanswered forum posts from the past week:
Leslie Heisler of Southwestern Vermont Health Care has a question about issuing a receipt for a gift that was made by cashier's check. If you have experience with this, reply to Leslie.
Marla Strickland of the Peabody Essex Museum is working on sending Renewal letters to soft credit recipients. If you have a best practice for this, reply to Marla.
The April issue of Fundraising Well was sent today. Fundraising Well is a monthly nonprofit newsletter that features methods to improve fundraising efficiency through the use of modern technologies and philosophies. This month, Bob Cramer, co-founder, CEO, and chairman of ThePort™ Network, Inc., offers his insight on how social networking can help nonprofits in a down economy and how building online social communities to create more personal relationships with supporters can help your organization gain a competitive edge.
Subscribe to Fundraising Well to receive each issue in your inbox, and view past issues in the archive. Also, check out the new Fundraising Well blog, which you can follow with its RSS feed.
Last August, Kevin Brunson wrote a post about the Fundraising Effectiveness Project administered by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. In the coming weeks, look for additional posts about this project, and how it can help your organization.
On a lighter note, check out the April Fools Fun! thread to read about some of the shenanigans perpetrated by members of the community on April Fools Day and share your own stories.
What would you like to read about in an upcoming blog post? The first topic suggested in the comment section on this post will be the subject of a post in the next week. Only suggestions related to The Raiser's Edge, please.
Here are the discussions that generated the most chatter in The Raiser's Edge forums last week:
If you have advice or insight to share, join the discussion today!
Membership reports provide statistics to make sense of changes to your constituents' memberships. The Membership Statistics by Category report provides a starting number of Memberships within each category, then lists the different memberships that had activity in a specific time period. For the memberships in the Start column, this activity includes upgrades, downgrades, drops, lapsed memberships, and renewals. You can use this to analyze the data between your programs, categories, and subcategories.
You can use this report to determine which programs are struggling. Let’s say you’re an organization geared towards helping animals, and one of your Programs is the Adopt an Animal program. You have several categories in this program – Family, Individual, and Couple. Your family attendance is down, so you run the Membership Statistics by Category report. This confirms your suspicions – of the 30 Family memberships you had at the beginning of the calendar year, 15 have dropped, and 10 have downgraded. This tells you it's time to start promoting the Adopt an Animal Family memberships – maybe by adding some new benefits.
The report parameters are pretty standard. A unique option in this report is the option Include only Active memberships in ‘Membership as of’ counts. This means that the report only considers memberships that were Active during your date range when calculating the Memberships Prior to, Lapsed, and Memberships as of values.
The report splits the memberships by Program, Category, and Subcategory (e.g., Adopt an Animal.Couple.Koala). The report in the example above first lists the memberships before your specified time period (Start Memberships, or ‘Memberships prior to…’ is an optional column, selected on the Format tab), followed by new memberships that started during the report's date range.
In the next set of columns, the report lists the numbers within each of the other possible activity actions: renewals, rejoins, upgrades, and downgrades.
Membersships that upgraded or downgraded during their cycle (as opposed upgrading or downgrading after their lapsed memberships – which is calculated in the previous section) are listed next, followed by dropped memberships.
After taking all of this activity into account, then provides a final total (column titled ‘Memberships as of…’). Here's how the final total is calculated:
Beginning number = Start Memberships (Memberships prior to…)
ADD x:
New + Renew Up-In + Renew Down-In + Rejoin-Same + Rejoin Up-In + Rejoin Down-In + Upgrade During Cycle-In + Downgrade During Cycle-In
SUBTRACT y:
Renew Up-Out + Renew Down-Out + Upgrade During Cycle-Out +Downgrade During Cycle-Out + Dropped ( + Lapsed only if the 'Include only Active memberships in ‘Membership as of’ counts' option is marked)
So, Start Memberships + (x – y) = Memberships as of…(end of date range)
The following activity is not accounted for in this formula:
- Renewals - Same: This is accounted for in the Start membership value, adding it to the totals here would double count the membership
- Rejoin Up-Out: This membership is not counted in the start membership value for this membership, but rather on the membership to which it was upgraded
- Rejoin Down-Out: This membership is not counted in the start membership value for this membership, but rather on the membership to which it was downgraded
This information is also in Knowledgebase solution BB136964.
Several times a week, we offer free, hour-long web seminars on our website. The seminars usually focus on Blackbaud products or best practices for nonprofits.
To register, select Web Seminars from the Events menu on our website, find a seminar you want to attend, and click Register Now. Once you submit the enrollment form, you’ll receive an email with instructions for viewing the online presentation, as well as the telephone access number. If you’d like to enroll for additional seminars, click Continue after you fill out the enrollment form.
Here are some of the web seminars coming up next week:
April 20:
Fundraising in Difficult Economic Times, 1:00 p.m. EST: Learn positive steps to take in order to fortify fundraising efforts and increase efficiency in the following areas: donor relations, annual giving, major giving, planned giving, and special events.
April 21:
Blackbaud NetCommunity for Cause-Based and Service Organizations, 2:00 p.m. EST: Learn how Blackbaud NetCommunity helps cause-based and service organizations build stronger relationships by creating a personalized, interactive experience for constituents, donors, and members.
Introduction to The Raiser’s Edge – Sphere Data Connector, 3:00 p.m. EST: The Connector synchronizes data between Sphere eMarketing and The Raiser’s Edge to produce reports and develop marketing campaigns.
April 22:
Let's Go Paperless! PaperSave for The Raiser's Edge, 1:00 p.m. EST: PaperSave is a comprehensive electronic storage system and audit trail for your documents.
Activate Online Marketing and Engagement: An Overview of Blackbaud NetCommunity Grow, 2:00 p.m. EST: Blackbaud NetCommunity Grow is for organizations who want to improve their online marketing and communications, but lack web development resources or expertise.
April 23:
Best Practices for Data Integrity, 2:00 p.m. EST: Learn how integrating The Education Edge and The Raiser’s Edge has helped Landmark Christian School save time and ensure all offices have access to the most up-to-date information possible.
Have a super weekend!
Here's a list of unanswered posts from the past week:
If you have advice or insight to share, join the discussion today!
The answer to the Brain Buster in this month's edition of The User's Edge is either one or zero. Since most animals can't talk, the traditional answer is that none of Robert's animals would be able to say they are the same animal as Yoshi's. Of course, since some parrots can talk, and one of Robert's animals is a parrot, it's possible that one of his animals could say it is the same animal as Yoshi's. 
This applies to organizations that store credit card data in The Raiser’s Edge, and authorize credit card transactions by exporting or printing credit card numbers. If your organization uses IATS or ICVerify to authorize credit cards in the Batch module, or you don't use The Raiser's Edge to store credit cards, these changes do not affect you.
As a result of new credit card regulations covered under PCI, The Raiser’s Edge 7.91, scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2009, will no longer store full credit card numbers. To achieve compliance Blackbaud has removed storage of full credit card numbers from all products, including The Raiser's Edge 7.91.
In The Raiser’s Edge 7.91 full credit card numbers are replaced with reference tokens. These tokens map to the full number stored in the Blackbaud Payment Service (BBPS). Only the last four digits of credit cards will display on constituent and gift records and in the Batch module. Credit card numbers will appear as 12 asterisks followed by the last four digits of the card (i.e. ************7864).
After installing this update, you will no longer be able to view, print or export full credit card numbers, or authorize credit cards by printing or exporting credit card data.
To authorize credit card transactions in The Raiser's Edge, you must create an account with a supported credit card processor. Current supported processors for The Raiser’s Edge are IATS and ICVerify.
• IATS is an online solution that has a direct interface with The Raiser’s Edge. To create an account with IATS or to learn more, please see Knowledgebase solution BB142121.
• ICVerify is a third-party software application that is installed on any workstation you use to authorize credit card transactions. For information on purchasing ICVerify, see Knowledgebase solution BB126. If you use ICVerify you must be on version 4.03 SP2 or higher.
If your organization selects to remain on your current version and continue processing credit cards by exporting or printing credit card numbers, we strongly recommend that you contact a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). A QSA can advise your organization on how to secure your credit card data and authorize credit card transactions in accordance with PCI.
To learn more about PCI or to take the PCI self-assessment questionnaire, please visit the PCI Security Standards Council's website.
We will continue to provide information about PCI compliance on our PCI compliance page, our PCI Compliance blog, and in our newsletters. Subscribe to the PCI Compliance blog RSS feed to be notified when new posts are made.
For even more information, check out the PCI FAQs. The FAQs are updated as additional information becomes available.
The Raiser's Edge works well in bulk. When you need to create a mailing for groups of constituents, Mail and Export offer you plenty of options. There are times where a more surgical approach is called for, when only a single letter is necessary for a constituent (or gift or action), in which case you can create your Letter in Configuration.
To begin, go to Configuration and select Letters. Highlight the letter type and click New Letter. Letter types are organized based on the record type each Letter is associated with. On the New Letter screen, enter the letter description and click the binoculars to associate it with an existing Blackbaud Simple Word Merge or Blackbaud Conditional Word Merge export.
After selecting the fields to export, click Edit merge document to open the document in Word, place the fields, and enter the letter text. When you save and close the letter, you can access it either in Records from the constituent's Letters menu bar or in Export. In gift or action records, access letters from the Letter field.
To read about this in Knowledgebase, check out BB31111.
Here are the forums discussions that generated the most chatter in The Raiser's Edge forums last week:
If you have advice or insight to share, join the discussion today!
Unless Jamie Madrox is one of your constituents, duplicates in your query results are never a welcome sight. A record can appear multiple times in your query results for two reasons: either the record meets the query criteria multiple times, or the query output includes one or more one-to-many fields.
The important thing to keep in mind is that while it may look like a record is included multiple times in your query, it is not the case. When you save the query and use it in an export, report, or mailing, each record is included only once.
Even though these duplicate records aren't actually inflating the number of records in your query, they're still pretty ugly to look at. If you have records that meet the query criteria multiple times, you can usually remove them by selecting Tools, Query Options from the menu bar, then going to the Record Processing tab, and marking the Suppress duplicate rows checkbox.
If this doesn't remove all duplicates, it means that you have one or more one-to-many fields in your query output. In The Raiser's Edge, fields are either one-to-one or one-to-many. First Name is a one-to-one field, because a constituent can only have one first name. Constituency Code and Phone Number are examples of one-to-many fields because each constituent can have multiple values for those fields.
To get rid of duplicate records altogether, remove all one-to-many fields from your query output. For more information on duplicates in Query, check out Knowledgebase solution BB61118.
Last night, the 25,000th post was added to The Raiser's Edge forum! The milestone post was by Judi Wuebker at the Center for Bioethical Reform in Lake Forest, CA, who posted a question about receipting and acknowledging anonymous gifts. If you have insight you'd like to share, reply to Judi.
Another Forums milestone was reached by Melissa Graves at the Village for Families and Children in Hartford, CT. Melissa has posted on the Forums over 1,000 times! Melissa has helped countless users over the years with her extensive product and nonprofit knowledge. Thanks, Melissa!
What makes Batch such a handy tool is that you can enter a large amount of data on one screen to add records to the database en masse. Using Batch, you can save time by selecting prompts to automatically display for each record or by adding default fields for every record in the batch.
Because you can enter so many records into a single batch, making manual changes to data entry rows can be time-consuming. For instance, if you entered a batch of 100 gifts with the 2008 Annual Fund on them instead of the 2009 Annual Fund, going back and changing each record individually would be a chore.
Fortunately, Batch was designed with just such a situation in mind, and you can correct the data quite easily. In this instance, you would follow these steps:
- In Batch, open the gift batch to change.
- Place the cursor in the Fund field.
- Select Tools, Globally Change from the menu bar.
- Select the Fund to add to the gifts.
- Mark the Overwrite Existing Value checkbox.
- Click OK.
Once the change is made, you can commit the batch. If gifts are already committed, making a global change in the batch will not change the committed gifts. To change committed gifts, back up (BB94455) your database and perform a global change (BB76966).
To find this information in Knowledgebase, enter How to globally change a field in a batch, select Raiser's Edge 7, and click Search. It's BB215678.
Every day people post questions on our Forums. Sometimes people are looking for help with a specific issue, and other times they might have more general questions about best practices. Here's a list of unanswered posts from the past two weeks:
If you have advice or insight to share, join the discussion today!
EFT, or Electronic Funds Transfer, is the banking system by which transactions, such as deposits or bill payments, are made through computer databases. The process takes place electronically and requires minimal paperwork; all or most paperwork and bookkeeping is done online.
If your organization has the EFT module, you can use a new integration with IATS to electronically process direct debit transactions directly from The Raiser’s Edge. This works like the current IATS integration for credit card processing. With direct debit integration you receive rejection codes for direct debit gifts that are incorrectly formatted (for example ‘Wrong Format’ if a bank account number is missing). You can then correct any issues and process the direct debit again rather than waiting several days to hear about the rejection from your bank. You won’t receive authorization codes in your batch, but you will be able to log into your IATS account and view direct debit gifts as they are processed. With IATS direct debit integration you’ll no longer have to export your EFT direct debit transmission file and manually transfer it to your bank by FTP, email, or other less secure means.
To use the new IATS direct debit integration, you’ll need to be on The Raiser’s Edge 7.85 patch 6 or higher. To download this version, go to our Downloads page. Next, you’ll need an IATS direct debit account. If you don’t have an IATS direct debit account email reprocessing@ticketmaster.ca or call 1.866.300.4287.
Once you have your IATS direct debit account, you'll be ready to enter your gifts into batch or automatically generate transactions. After your gifts are entered in batch, select Tools, Create EFT Transmission Files on the batch data entry screen. Under Direct Debit Transmission File, mark the Create direct debit file checkbox and select IATS. In the Account drop-down, select your appropriate IATS account. In the Control Report field, select the option to Create control report and mark Print or Preview. Click Create Now.
If you use IATS direct debit integration to process your direct debit donations, leave a comment letting other organizations know how you use this feature.