On Tuesday, December 8, check out our complimentary support roundtable to discuss how you can make the most of your resources on our support website. Read the whole story on the Web Sitings blog.
We also have a couple of polls on the Forums right now about Knowledgebase. How often does Knowledgebase provide you with the answers you need? Let us know! If you can't find the answer to your question in Knowledgebase, do you use Case Central or do you call? Take the poll!
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:
November 24:
Online Marketing Best Practices Featuring Today’s Most Successful Higher Education Institutions, 1:00 p.m. ET: Join us to review examples of organizations who have leveraged their websites to attract supporters and maximize fundraising efforts.
Exclusive to our Blackbaud Learn customers on November 24 at 1:00 p.m. ET, join us for Finish 2009 Strong: Finding Last-Minute Donors! to learn about finding last-minute donors, implementing volunteer policies and procedures, handling high-volume gift processing and creating consolidated receipts.
Have a super weekend!
In Raiser's Edge 7.91, an inactivity feature was added as part of the PCI DSS requirements. In version 7.91.5056, which is being released today, this feature has been made OPTIONAL for all non-Supervisor users. 
A Supervisor user is any user who meets any of the following criteria:
-
Is logged into RE as Supervisor
-
Has Supervisor rights
-
Has rights to Admin > Security
Check out the new look of this feature, and how it can be made optional when your organization updates to 7.91.5056:
For more information, please visit BB700189 in our Knowledgebase.
Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:
Most Popular Topics:
Unanswered Posts:
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:
November 18:
Activate Online Marketing and Engagement: An Overview of Blackbaud NetCommunity Grow, 2:00 p.m. ET: Come see how Blackbaud NetCommunity Grow can help you engage your donors.
Internet Solutions for All Organizations, Budgets, and Needs, 2:00 p.m. ET: Take a look at our various online solutions.
Online User Clinic: Mail Merging, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn how to use the Mail Merge more efficiently from the comfort of your desk.
November 19:
How to Talk to Donors About Planned Gifts, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn how to start your planned giving program.
November 20:
Improve Fundraising Results with Fundraising Effectiveness Programs and Analytics, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn about Fundraising Effectiveness Programs for running an annual health check on your fundraising efforts.
The Secrets to Multi-Channel Fundraising Success, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn about services that can save you from the wasted time and expense that inaccurate data can cause.
Have a super weekend!
In The Raiser's Edge, you can use address sharing to link records so that an address change is reflected on all records who share that address. When you copy and share an address between records, phone numbers in the Phones/Email/Links grid are also shared. This means you can change the phone number on one record and it will be updated on all the constituents that share it. While a website or home phone number are likely to be shared by everyone who has the address, email addresses and cell phone numbers are more likely to be unique to each constituent. You can choose to share or not share phone numbers on a case-by-case basis.
By default, all phone types are shareable. To make a phone type shareable or not shareable, go to Config, Tables, highlight Phone types in the left frame, and double-click the specific phone type in the right frame. To allow the phone type to be shared, unmark the Do not share phones of this type box. To prevent the phone type from being shared on any record, mark the Do not share phones of this type box and click OK.
To share a phone number between records, you must use a shared address. For each phone number, select one of the following options:
Not Shared: Indicates the phone number is not currently shared, but has the ability to be shared if the appropriate options are selected.
Shared: Select this option if you do want to share phone numbers. If a phone number of this type is already on the other constituent's record, a prompt appears to overwrite the existing phone number of that type on other records. To accept the changes and update the numbers to share, click Yes. To maintain the numbers already on the records and not share them, click No or Cancel. To see which addresses are shared, click Show Addresses. If the phone type is not on the other record, the phone type and phone number are added to all records that share the address.
Do Not Share: Select this option if you do not want to share a specific phone number.
Cannot Be Shared: When the phone type is marked as Do not share phones of these types in Configuration, The Raiser's Edge automatically selects Cannot Be Shared as the phone type for the phone number and you are unable to manually change it. If you need to share this phone type, make it shareable in Configuration. This will change these phone numbers from Cannot Be Shared to Not Sharedand you can then manually change those phone numbers to Shared.
You can also find this information in Knowledgebase solution BB192490.
Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:
Most Popular Topics:
Unanswered Posts:
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:
November 10:
There Ought to Be a Law: Best Fundraising Practices We Probably Don’t Practice, 3:00 p.m. ET: Learn how to break away from practices that are less than the best and seek new levels of success for your organization.
November 11:
Maximize Reach and Revenue with "Friends Asking Friends" Online Events, 1:00 p.m. ET: Join us to see how Blackbaud Sphere Events makes it easy to set up and run one event or hundreds, through standalone microsites or fully integrated into your current website.
November 12:
Social Networking Strategy for Nonprofits, 2:00 p.m. ET: We'll answer the key questions you need to understand this important trend, evaluate projects and opportunities within your organization, and participate in the process of constructing your own social networking strategy.
Time to Upgrade – Moving Beyond Blackbaud NetSolutions, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn about Blackbaud's Internet Solutions and how they can provide you with all the functionality you currently have, but with a more up-to-date look and feel, plus added functionality.
November 13:
Uncover Your Best Prospects with Target Analytics, 2:00 p.m. ET: Target Analytics offers powerful tools to provide you the up-to-date information you need to find your best prospects and boost fundraising by segmenting prospects to reveal who’s most likely to give.
Have a super weekend!
We want to know how you use the Forums - please take our poll in Forums Feedback.
Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:
Most Popular Topics:
Unanswered Posts:
Happy Halloween, everybody! Well, almost Halloween, anyway - there's still another day before it's time to light Jack O'Lanterns, put on costumes, and go trick-or-treating - but there's nothing wrong with celebrating a day early 
.
Halloween is a day for ghosts and goblins and other really scary things. One thing that scares people in The Raiser's Edge is duplicates in query. Like a movie monster, query duplicates leap out and scare you when you least expect them. You don't have to be afraid of query duplicates; they appear in your results because the record either meets the query criteria multiple times or the query output includes one or more one-to-many fields. When you save the query and use it in an export, report, or mailing, each record is included only once. In other words, your database isn't haunted with mysterious duplicates, it just looks that way.
Query is one of the most popular topic in The Raiser's Edge. Besides Why are there duplicates in the query results (which includes a demo video), here are the five most poular query solutions in Knowledgebase from last quarter:
- How to query on constituents' total giving within a date range (also includes a demo video)
- How to troubleshoot incorrect query results in The Raiser's Edge
- How to create a query from an Excel list of constituent or Import IDs
- How to query on gift batch number
- How to query on soft credits
Of course, those solutions can be pretty confusing if you don't understand the basics of query. If you're a new user, or are just rusty on the basics, you can take a free query class with Blackbaud Learn. Blackbaud Learn is an annual subscription that provides ongoing skill development and job training for software users. Course offerings range from basic training for beginners to advanced training for experienced users, and new classes are added every month.
The complimentary online class is called Query Essentials for The Raiser’s Edge. Enter the promo code “FreeQuery” on the registration form when you sign up and you'll be on your way!
Enjoy your Halloween weekend and remember to set your clocks back on hour!
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:
November 3:
Optimize your Website and Email Marketing Program with Blackbaud Sphere eMarketing, 1:00 p.m. ET: We will review examples of organizations who have leveraged their websites to improve their fundraising efforts through social media, online communities, and personal pages.
Building a Brand with Social Networks, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn how you can assemble a large, active, social networking community.
Building Donor Loyalty with The Raiser’s Edge Solution, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn how The Raiser's Edge can help increase your productivity.
November 4:
Grow Your Support Online: An Overview of Blackbaud Sphere Grow, 1:00 p.m. ET:See how Blackbaud Sphere Grow offers the tools and training you need to succeed online.
November 6:
How to Build a Strong Planned Giving Program, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn about planned giving donors and their behavior in a slow economy.
Have a super weekend!
Imagine that you are Mr. Belding, principal of Bayside High. It's time for you to send out the Class of 1993 alumni newsletter, and you want to make sure that it goes to each alumnus's address only once. For some of your alumni, that's easy - Jesse Spano, A.C. Slater, and Lisa Turtle all married non-Bayside alums, while Samuel "Screech" Powers unaccountably single. There are some exceptions, such as Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski, who married each other. Zack and Kelly aren't the only members of the Class of 1993 who married each other, and you want to make sure that alumni households receive only one copy of the newsletter without sorting the mailing by hand.
The way you can do this with The Raiser's Edge is by using Head of Household Processing, which excludes duplicate spouses from a mailing. Zack and Kelly and other constituents linked on the Spouse button will receive only one copy of the newsletter as long as you choose the correct option in Head of Household processing.
The default head of household is the constituent on which the spouse was added. For example, you added Zack and Kelly as constituents when they graduated from Bayside High. When they got married in Las Vegas, you opened Zack's record, clicked the Spouse button and linked to Kelly's record. As a result Zack defaulted as the head of household. Had you added Zack as the spouse from Kelly's record, she would have been the default head of household. The option 'This individual is the Head of Household' is only available if two constituents are linked on the Spouse button. If the spouse on the Spouse button is not a constituent, the option is not available.
Where the Head of Household settings pay off is in Mail. The options in the Head of Household panel on the General tab of Mail functions break down like this:
- Mail only to constituents marked 'Head of Household': Selecting this option mails only to the record marked as head of household. In this case, the mailing would go to Zack.
- Mail to first constituent found: Selecting this option mails to the first spouse it processes and skips the linked spouse. Because the Class of 1993 query is sorted alphabetically, Kelly's record is processed first, Mail includes her record and skips Zack.
- Mail to both constituents separately: Selecting this option includes both spouses, for those time you want both Zack and Kelly to receive a mailing.
Head of household processing only applies if both spouses are selected for the mailing. In other words, even though Zack is the head of household, if your query only contains Kelly, head of household processing doesn't apply and Kelly gets the mailing.
An important consideration for mailings like this is to assign an addressee or salutation that includes both constituents, such as "Mr. Zack Morris and Mrs. Kelly Kapowski, Class of 1993". For more on that topic, check out our past posts on addressees/salutations.
This information is also in Knowledgebase solution BB520345.
We want to know how you use the Forums - please take our poll in Forums Feedback.
Here are last week's most popular Forums posts:
Most Popular Topics:
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:
October 27:
Flexible, Comprehensive Total School Solution for K-12 Independent Schools, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn how you can streamline your processes and increase communication with constituents with The Education Edge.
October 29:
The Changing Nature of Online Fundraising in Canada, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn how to keep up with market trends on this Blackbaud Internet Solutions website tour.
Have a super weekend!
A criminal profiler is a criminologist who studies a criminal's behavior for clues to psychology to aid in capturing him. Hopefully, your constituents aren't criminals in need of capture, but it is important to get a sense of who they are. One way you can do this is by running a Profile Report.
The profile reports summarize information in constituent records. You can choose between the Constituent Profile, the Individual Profile, and the Organization Profile reports in Profiles, Lists, and Directories. Individual profiles are available only for individual records, Organization profiles are available only for organization records, and Constituent profiles are available for both individual and organization records. While the Constituent profile includes all of the content available on both types of constituent records, the other profile reports exclude record-specific content such as Spouse information for organizations or Contacts for individuals.
You can run Profiles from the Reports module and from records. In the Reports module, the Profiles are located in Profile, Lists, and Directories. To run the report, highlight the appropriate report and click New. On the General tab, select which constituents to include. You can choose to include a single constituent, a query of records, or to print a profile for all records.
The Profile Contents tab is where you select the information to include in the profile. The available fields are extensive, and include everything from Biographical/Organizational information to giving history, relationship information, and constituent notepads. Once you have selected the content that you need, click Print or Preview to run the report.
You can also run profiles directly from constituent records. To do so, select File, Print, Profile from the menu bar and a list of existing profile parameters will appear. From there, you can select an existing profile parameter or create a new one and then run the report just as you would from the Reports module.
This information can also be found in Knowledgebase solution BB81531. If you would like me to discuss any of the profile contents at length, leave a comment below and I'll blog about it!
More Posts
Next page »